Witness 2. The Weather Engine

Michael Begg releases Witness 2. The Weather Engine on May 1st, 2020, exclusively on Bandcamp.

Where Witness 1 focused on the live positions of earth, land and sea monitoring satellites, Witness 2 introduces the Weather Engine.

The Weather Engine is a 24/7 composition/installation using live local weather data from Openweathermap to ‘sound the day’.

All sounds are generated by mapping live data to sound generators, filters and sample libraries.

Michael Begg:

“I wanted to make a kind of fingerprint from moments in the days of lockdown. Each individual composition carries the same sense of suspension felt throughout this time. For this recording, I took the starting point of how time has become deranged. The days slip into each other, moments repeat themselves, whilst other events seem to hang perpetually in limbo. I took Weather Engine clips from the period 23 – 30 April and allowed them to come together in various clusters – determined by the hour of the day, or the nature of the weather.

“Because the musical keys are constrained by the programming this never becomes entirely atonal – but nevertheless the accumulation of the information, the moments tearing into each other, becomes overwhelming – even at moderately low volume – which I recommend for this recording”