Stephen,

> I'm afraid that I find myself unwilling to
> contribute some
> Massachusetts 'weather'

Then you will be the second person out of
approximately 140 who has declined. (Diane
asked a friend's sister, but she objected on the
grounds that "it was silly"!)

> In what sense is this art? What is its purpose and
> why are you doing it?

I struggle with this definition thing too. I tend to
think of Art as being all the leftover stuff that
doesn't usefully fall into other categories. Ho hum.

I left metallurgy (in the technical sense, you
understand - in the practical sense my welding has
improved shedloads over the last two years!) because
it didn't involve me enough. It didn't make a
connection. I didn't care about it. Life's too short
so I tried something else... and loved it!

In orchestrating the whole weatherproject mullarky I
have extended this idea of making connections to
include other people too. The weather aspect is as
near as damn it irrelevant. I could equally have got
people to send me potatoes (but I think the customs
arrangements are somewhat more strict). Everyone in
the group was set a project brief related to the
weather over the Christmas vacation. Most people gave
up after about a fortnight but I struck on a few
interesting phenomena, ran with it and
theweatherproject evolved out of it. The weather came
before the project. Air may well be more technically
'correct', but weather is more emotive.

I am intrigued by the fact that people will give a
little bit of themselves and contribute to a project
such as this, even though at first glance it seems
pretty daft. I don't know, maybe that's the
attraction?

As an added bonus, it has also captured people's
imaginations: people I have never spoken to before
watched the various bits of sculpture developing and
have come up to me to find out more. When I explain
the basic concept to them they usually react by
suggesting "oh, and you could also do this..." or by
frowning for a few seconds and then reeling off a list
of people abroad that they will approach for me.

Sometimes when I ask people to collect for me their
first reaction is "but they could lie" or, "but the
jars are empty". I'm happy because I've got a reaction
- IT GETS PEOPLE THINKING. (Oh, and I usually find
that half an hour is the time it takes for these
people to mull it over and then come back to me saying
"I've got an Aunt who lives in...")

> The only 'explanation' seems buried in the
> kids section of the web-site under advice to
> parents! How can it be conceptual art without the
concept being articulated?

Ah, the website - you've spotted the weak link in the
chain! I don't like it because its flat, boring, badly
structured and passive. Other people love it because
they can watch it developing and its different every
time they come back to look at it.

I use it as a means to let the contributors find out
the scale of the project that they are involved in and
how it is progressing. This is especially useful to
people who are based abroad and would otherwise be out
of the communication loop.

It also helps explain to contributors-in-waiting what
sort of thing is expected by showing them examples of
what I have already received. It is not a means of
recruitment in itself. By the time most people get to
it I have already spent some time discussing issues
such as you have raised with them face-to-face.

You, m'dear, were awkward in being abroad when I asked
for your assistance so the website got to you before I
did!

From a more technical point of view, Geocities is
crap. (But free!) Uploading files is a chore since
they did away with allowing FTP access, the pop-up
adverts get in the way and this morning I had a
message from them saying that my site was getting too
much traffic so they were temporarilty shutting it
down. I am going to look into getting some space on
the UCE server which should do away with these
problems. What with this and the amount of time spent
in the studio during the final throes of the course
the website has inevitably become somewhat neglected.

I am reluctant to do too much work on it whilst there
is still the glimmer of hope that I may be moving it
soon. However, now that I have more time to spend on
both the appearance and content, I hope to produce a
compromise document that a) addresses some of the
frequently asked questions b) explores some of the
interesting things to have come out of the project
(but how to do this without making people feel they
are being experimented on?) and c) presents work
submitted for the show.

Hopefully I will be able to restructure the whole lot
in 2003 once I know what it is I have to work with. In
the meantime its kind of organic!

> To say that the 'weather' samples are
> sufficient articulation seems a bit of a 'cop-out'!

Indeed. And a trifle dull, don't you think? Rows of
identical jars presented against a white background,
safely behind a glass wall... how dry and non-engaging
can you get? Minimalism (or peoples' typical reaction
towards it) has been my Nemesis for the last 6 months.
Unfortunately, as the number of samples increases, so
does the problem of finding a way of presenting them.

Again, I suggest that the weather in the jars is not
important (Andy T - amongst others - is most
concerned that there may no longer be weather in the
jars due to diffusive processes). So what? I've got a
jar upstairs that has been in a cave in an island off
the coast of Croatia. Somewhere I'm never likely to
ever go. The little buggers are more well-travelled
than I am! Thanks to Martina's description I
can picture it in my mind's eye though.

Sample number 209 was collected from Porthmadog in
North Wales by someone I have only ever met twice. My
Grandparents moved to a house across the estuary from
here some 20 or so years ago. It takes about 6 hours
to drive up from Southampton, longer if you have to
keep stopping for three children to attend to the call
of nature...

From Talsarnau you drive across two toll bridges to
get to Porthmadog which is the nearest place of any
size in which to do the food shopping etc. (The Co-Op,
formerly Leo's, is clad in slate and overlooks the the
estuary upstream of the Cob and, in turn, is
overlooked by the slate mines.) Just further on from
the town itself is Black Rock Sands. A fantasticly
long and sandy beach that you are allowed to drive
your cars onto. Most people (except for a few
boy-racers who immediatley head for the water) park by
the gate, though, and wander along the beach by foot.

During the summer at the end of the second year myself
and about 7 other friends from uni rented a cottage in
Porthmadog and we came to Black Rock every evening
because the sunset was nothing short of spectacular.

Grandpa died when I was in the first year and Gran
died February before last. I'm not sure if I've any
more chance of being back in Porthmadog than I have of
getting to that Croatian island.

The jars mean different things to different people.

If you get a chance, and you're feeling receptive,
come along and have a look. You've probably been to
some of the collection locations but failing that
either of the contributions from Fingers Talbot or
Derek-measure-twice-cut-once-Boole should raise a
smile...

I find that the jars by themselves are not sufficient
to engage me much. You get the interesting thing of
having multiples of an object, but why have 50 when 10
would do the job?

In my exhibition space I have presented copies of the
record slips alongside the wall bearing the jars. On
Wednesday I watched someone spend about a quarter of
an hour reading every single one - about 52 if I
remember correctly - I don't think she knew any of the
people involved, but she was laughing and exclaiming
out loud throughout.

Also on Wednesday Ingrid bought her daughters to see
the jars. They bought me a sample they had collected
in Germany over half term (visiting their grandfather,
I think) and spent a few minutes looking for the
sample their au pair had collected in Istanbul when
she went back to visit *her* family.

Doris frogmarched her daughter (in her late thirties?)
up to the slips and pointed out all the boxes she had
disgracefully left blank! She has been working in
Japan teaching English. It took her a while to send
the jar back because she thought she had to wait for
it to rain so that there would be something to show
for it.

Anyway, I digress, if I related all the little stories
to you I'd be here all night. And I don't even know
what all the stories are. Wish I did.

In addition to the record slips I also have a growing
collection of white padded envelopes with stamps from
all over the place. (I could have done pre-printed
labels, but its nice to have the different
handwriting.) The best are the ones from outside the
EU because they have to have customs declarations on
them! Contents: erm... And all the different stamps
(Air Mail? Oh the irony!)

Oh, and people also send me postcards, used tickets
and photos of themselves collecting the weather.

At first the postman was pissed off 'cos the jars
don't fit through the letterbox and he has to keep
stoppping to fill in those "we could not deliver a
package" postcards. When one arrived addressed to "the
weather project" he asked me what it was all about. It
was ten to seven in the morning and I was stood on the
doorstep in the cold wearing my pyjamas trying to
explain. Even when I opened up the parcel (St
Germaine-en-Laye) he was not convinced and sulkily
grumbled "so, its a joke then." (statement, not
question!) Earlier this week I got a piece of Portugese
weather from him.

Now I know the staff at the collection desk by name
and they make me guess where its come from before they
hand it over. They don't let me leave without opening
it and telling them what/where/who etc.

> (If we can all take from it what we like then we
could all do anything and say that it was 'art' or
that it was up to the observer to decide what it
meant!)

The thing about people who whinge about how they could
do better themselves is that they invariably don't
even try...

The thing about people who tell the observer what the
work definitively means is that they invariably talk a
load of pretentious wank...

> What do you expect your viewing or
> particpating public to get from it?
>

No expectations; lots of possibilities; different for
everyone; each as valid as the next. To my way of
thinking its more interesting than trainspotting.

> On linguistic grounds then I question whether it is
> 'weather' and not mere gas samples. Surely weather
> is a system and a pattern of behaviour rather than
> particular gases?

I think I touched on this in the response to Martha,
Mim and Naomi's dad. Where is the line? Where does one
become the other? I don't have the answer to that one.

Ooh! Hang on! I haven't even talked about the
importance of the process yet! (In for a penny, in for
a pound...)

The letter accompanying your jar is deliberately vague
and the instructions, such as they are, are kept to a
minimum. I've tried to provide a framework of common
elements: identical letters, intructions, jars,
envelopes, record slips, in order that there is enough
of a visual link to tie the results together into a
coherent body of work. Beyond that each one is
different in a way that I cannot predict or control. I
like that! (Probably wouldn't have been much truck as
an engineer, let's face it!...)

If you think its a complete bloody waste of your time
doing something pointless such as collecting a jar
full of nothing, think what its like for me. Once the
specimens arrive I then have to go through the process
of sealing the lids with wax (effective against
weather leakage? I don't know, but it breaks the
monotony of the visual repetition), taking them into
college where I scan them and their record slips,
saving the images onto CD, taking these home and
transfering them onto my PC, collating information
such as map references and images for the collection
locations beofre finally encoding the webpage.

Too much time invested for so little return? Perhaps.
Seems to be a recurring theme in my recent work.
Should I be worried?

> If you like then I can print out these thoughts,
> roll them up and put them in the jar as my
>contribution - otherise the jar is available for
>collection!

Go on then, what font size will you have to use?
Have you seen Martin Creed's work constituting of a
screwed up peice of white A4 paper? [Gasp!] What if
you're both approaching art from the same direction?

> Hope I don't sound too aggressive but as one of the
>muttering public who questions Turner prizes and
>bricks in the Tate then I feel I should stand up for
>pragmatism - or more particularly for articulation,
>verbalisation and rationalisation!

Well, somebody's got to. Have you ever been to an
exhibition of work by Turner Prize shortlisted
artists? I haven't, so I couldn't possibly pass
judgement...

How about Anthony Gormley's Iron Man in Victoria
Square. That's quite contoversial. I didn't like it as
much as his other stuff (Sound II in the crypt of
Winchester Cathedral has long been a favourite), but
then I found out that all the rusty wonkyness is
intended as a big v's up to the stuffy civic pride in
the rest of the square. I quite like it now!

Anyway, thanks for getting involved by voicing your
feelings - I now have a good starting point for that
compromise document. If you don't want to post the jar
back to me you can internal mail it to me at work or just pop it in to the counter. Do you want to be removed from the
mailing list?

Thanks again for the feedback - hope you have a
productive time in Massachusetts serving the greater
good of Mankind!

Nikki

Weather #331 :Miller's Falls, USA

Weather #462 :New Orleans, USA

Weather #463 :Wendell State Forest, USA

Weather #464 :Longwood Gardens, USA