What: Since the ethos of this installation is participatory, the installation itself is designedly interactive. Participants will be invited to pedal to power an animated Google Earth film of the journey, tune-in to a soundtrack of some climate collage poetry and music by Thea Gilmore and Eddie Lang, flip through an artist’s book and some ‘through the weather glass’ photography, or to pen their own literary or artistic responses to climate change on some paper feathers and attach these to Icarus’s willow woven wings!

Why:  Through the Weather Glass is founded in a belief that art’s role is not to persuade people of a point of view about climate change, but rather to open up space for new ideas and to enable audiences to negotiate their own forms of response. Drawing on the myth of Icarus, the novel and associated installation interrogates our usual ways of thinking about climate change, asking whether fear is a useful motivating emotion, and more controversially proposing that the assumption we can ‘solve’ the weather might involve the same hubris which got us here in the first place. Through the Weather Glass instead invites audiences through the weather glass of our combined environmental knowledge into the world beyond – a more open-ended world where everyone participates in negotiating climate change in a spirit of curiosity not fear.

Other artists:

The bike generator was built by Tom Evans at Reaction Bike Power. Reaction Bike Power is a social enterprise developing, and providing hire of, pedal-bike powered Public Address (PA) systems, stages, energy demonstrations and science games. www.bike-power.co.uk

The willow wings were designed with the assistance of Joevanka Gregory of Creative with Nature in Todmorden. See more examples of her work at http://creativewithnature.co.uk/.

Special thanks to the wonderful Thea Gilmore for giving permission to use her song, ‘Icarus Wind’, as the installation theme tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6WVYs9aYU