"Tropical Depression" is a documentary film installation aimed at exploring the role of data and simulations in shaping our understanding of climatic phenomena. The film installation focuses on the development and course of the 2023–2024 cyclone season in the Southern Hemisphere, following each cyclone on its journey around the planet through the lens of a weather simulation. The film begins in late November 2023 with Cyclone Michaung in the Bay of Bengal and, over its duration, tracks more than 20 cyclones that formed in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific in the past year. Due to rising water temperatures and intensified convection, this annual weather system is growing stronger, with increasingly severe impacts on communities in affected areas. At the same time, technological capabilities for tracking such weather systems through satellite remote sensing and terrestrial weather sensors have significantly advanced. However, one consequence of this progress is the abstraction of dangerous weather events as aesthetic experiences.
Much of the film footage was recorded using the real-time weather simulation in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. Thanks to an extensive network of ground and satellite sensors, the simulation can access real-time data to accurately depict weather conditions anywhere and at any time as they exist in the physical world. The soundscape incorporates instrumental sounds, field recordings, and sonified data from each tropical cyclone featured in the film. By combining these various sources, the work aims to create a tension between data and image on both visual and auditory levels.
Project Lead, Contact: Alexander Walmsley (MA Creative Technologies)
Projekt Collaborator: Eleni-Ira Panourgia
Funding: Fund for Research and Transfer, Award for Artistic Research (IKF)
Website: Tropical Depression