“A planet in a book” commissioned by the New York and cyberspace-based lending library, Library Stack, with the support of NN Contemporary Art.

The book, co-created by open-weather and Rectangle, is an archive of the project, ‘When I image the earth, I imagine another’, and a set of lenses on the materials that compose it.

What would it mean to collectively image, and in doing so, reimagine the planet? To see its details and patterns from many situated positions? If we could each take a photo of our home from space, could we build a patchwork, an impossible view, another whole earth?

On the first day of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, a network of people operating DIY satellite ground stations around the world captured a collective snapshot of the earth and its weather systems: a ‘nowcast’ for an undecided future. Tuning into transmissions from three National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites orbiting 800 km above Earth’s surface, members of the network collected imagery and submitted field notes from their different locations. Combined, these contributions create a fractal image of the earth: a record of weather at different scales in which alternative patterns and relations emerge.

Ground stations
Alison Scott and Aaron McCarthy (Glasgow, UK)
Anna Pasco Bolta (Munich, DE)
Ankit Sharma (Mumbai, India)
Aouefa Amoussouvi (Bucharest, Romania)
Barfrost (Kirkenes, Norway)
Bill Liles (Reston, USA)
Carl Reineman (Jefferson, USA)
Catherine Fletcher (Norfolk, USA)
Cedrick Lukunku Tshimbalanga (Kinshasa, DR Congo)
Chonmapat Torasa (Bangkok, Thailand)
Dey Kim (Seoul, South Korea)
Florent Leon Noel (Venice, Italy)
George Ridgeway (Melbury Abbas, U.K.)
Jasmin Schädler (Stuttgart, Germany)
Joaquin Ezcurra and Aimee Juhazs (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Ketsia Kinsumba Muanakiese (Kinshasa, DR Congo)
L Paul Verhage (Homedale, USA)
Natasha Honey (Newcastle, Australia)
Olivia Berkowicz (Paris, France)
Pablo Cattaneo (Mar Del Plata, Argentina)
Sofia Caferri (San Vittoria, Italy)
Steve Engelmann (Los Angeles, USA)
Sybille Neumeyer (Berlin, Germany)
WXVids / Zefie (Albany, USA)
Yoshi Matsuoka (Atsugi, Japan)
Zack Wettstein (Seattle, USA)

The ebook is published by Library Stack with the support of NN Contemporary Art (Northampton, UK), within the context of the NN Contemporary Art Branch of Library Stack. This eBook was generously supported by Arts Council England.

Images: open-weather and Rectangle