There exist infinite ways of occupying an atmosphere. There are no rules, no limitations, no criteria, only potential. While our protocols exist under three separate lines of action, this does not mean they don’t mix, match, and work under different classes. They work separately as efficiently and powerfully as they work together. They are, after all, working towards a shared goal. This platform aims to provoke, inspire, and set the ground work for what could be hundreds more. Our atmospheric protocols are therefore:
▷ the design of spaces, tools, and actions that
facilitate and initiate the collective interpretation and interaction of bodies
and weather
▷ the guidelines to collectively occupying, co-habitating, creating, and residing in an atmosphere
▷ a series of spatialisation exercises as a key to understanding the architecture and politics of air through material, affective, and social lenses.
▷ the projection of ourselves into the air, where land does not matter
▷ the guidelines to collectively occupying, co-habitating, creating, and residing in an atmosphere
▷ a series of spatialisation exercises as a key to understanding the architecture and politics of air through material, affective, and social lenses.
▷ the projection of ourselves into the air, where land does not matter
PROTOCOLS FOR REDIRECTING
The creative and unconventional exploration or manipulation of atmospheric data and technologies, by taking things that do not necessarily belong to us, reorganising, and redirecting them.
Over the past year, we have practiced regularly hacking into NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) satellites through the simple use of an antenna- to be exact, an RTL-SDR Dipole Antenna.
The Manual for Hacking describes the steps we have followed over the past months, from setting up the antenna, to positioning ourselves to receive signals from overhead passing satellites, to tuning into the needed frequencies to actually listen to this connection to outer space, and finally translating these beeps and sounds into live weather and satellite images from the interval of the hack.
Our trials have taken place in four different cities over the last 6 months: London, Sitia, Cyprus, and Beirut. The results, although slightly different, assure us of one thing: we are constantly situated in a connected system of shared weather and atmospheres.
Redirecting What?
Redirecting information does not mean simply changing its trajectory. When we say redirecting, we mean taking in, processing and analysing, and then and sending data back out as something else. Something changes in the process of redirecting, whether in the data or sender.
Redirecting How?
1- Hacking
This unconventional practice of hacking weather satellites has been revolutionary to us,
▷
through using the antenna as an extension of
our bodies
▷ through coming into contact with the atmosphere
▷ through listening to outer space
▷ through turning sound into an image that exists through us and because of us
▷ through seeing and feeling weather
▷ through occupying an atmosphere through this practice
▷ through situating ourselves within this infrastructure of weather
▷ through coming into contact with the atmosphere
▷ through listening to outer space
▷ through turning sound into an image that exists through us and because of us
▷ through seeing and feeling weather
▷ through occupying an atmosphere through this practice
▷ through situating ourselves within this infrastructure of weather
Through our downloadable Manual for Hacking, we have illustrated and laid out the simple steps to hacking into an atmosphere and transforming it into new sets of data. Since the co-production and sharing of forms of knowledge is something we strive for, share,upload, and look through the countless possible hacks that have been performed by us and members of the community here
2- Eavesdropping
Utilising and shaping the atmosphere of communication by silently intercepting and analysing, influencing the dynamics and perceived context of interactions.
3- Accountability: Redirecting to the Source
Creating, drafting, pushing for, and fighting for real, punitive, ecocide legislations and legal cases defending the wellbeing cross-national atmospheres.
Wind, weather, and air transcend borders on the ground, meaning we all live in the same shared atmosphere. While geographic proximity plays a role in how much is shared, whether materially or affectively, this does not cancel out the fact that we reside, while not in the same boundaries on land, in the same aerial field.
This implies that what happens on my neighbour’s land, and therefore air, also travels and happens in my air- to a certain extent. At a small scale, this realisation may be of little significance. However, in the matters of pollution, war, and violence, what happens on my neighbour’s land and in my neighbour’s air certainly and unquestionably happens in my air as well.
Take the case of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the continued aggression in Lebanon as we write this, and the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of illegal and harmful substances being dropped by Israel. All that is being released does not stay in these specific geographies and at Ground Zero, and actually make their way to other places in the world- such as Crete, where we had conducted most of our research about wind and weather, found in our archive.
Violence and occupation therefore do not only exist in one defined moment in space and time, and transcend boundaries, again, both materially and affectively.
Occupation can and does exist in the atmosphere and the weather, and is felt and understood around the world in different ways.
The weaponisation of weather should therefore falls- or should fall- under the legislations that hold other nations accountable for trespassing and harming another nation’s atmosphere. Whether intentional or not, creating not only an awareness, but real consequences to weaponizing, harming, or invading a shared atmosphere plays a crucial role in our understanding and practice of co-residing in a shared infrastructure of weather.