Alice Fang – Looking Outwards – 11

A demonstration of Weather Thingy

Weather Thingy is a climate sound controller which can affect how a musician performs music in real time based on current weather conditions. Created by Adrien Kaeser, using Arduino, weather sensors and C++, Weather Thingy allows “listerners to feel the impact of the climate on the composition.” Consisting of two parts, a weather station and a controller, the sound that is produced varies based on wind speed, rain and precipitation levels, wind direction, and UV level. The four weather variables in turn affect the pan, chorus, LFO (flow frequency oscillation), and delay. The controller converts data from the climate into midi data that can be interpreted by the instruments.

I think this project is interesting because it encapsulates some of the forces in nature to effect how music is performed. Instead of having purely electronic synthesizers, there’s this weird, beautiful combination of utilizing technology to have something beyond our control to create music. I also think the real-time capabilities of this is super cool; imagine if this project was scaled up and a whole orchestra was affected.