- What artists can do is help
us look at data differently
and find alternative ways
of thinking about it.
Weather data is this
endless box of lego pieces
that arise every day.
It's always a different box.
And it allows me to again
and again build things
out of this information
and try to understand it
in a three-dimensional way.
My name is Nathalie Miebach.
I am a sculptor.
I translate science data
into woven sculpture.
I start by gathering data,
either from my own instruments
or from the internet.
It's not just temperatures,
wind, and barometric pressure;
it's all these tentacles,
all these human stories
that are connected that
really make this information
so rich.
(simple guitar music)
The method that I use is basket-weaving,
because basket-weaving is a
very simple three-dimensional
grid that I can use to
translate data with.
Everything in the sculpture,
whether it's a colorful bead
whether it's a string,
whether it's a dowel,
or whether it's a reed,
represents some sort of data point.
So nothing is point on there
for purely aesthetic reasons.
So this is the band of Hurricane Grace.
Again, these are all time bands,
so you can see at 6:00 p.m.
we had a southwesterly wind.
It's important to me that these pieces
are actually very accurate
because I want them to
live in the science world
as much as in the sculpture
or in the craft world.
I still want you to be
able to read the weather
off of these sculptures.
Like, 8:00 a.m., we had 28-foot high waves,
and the storm was coming
from the southeast.
Weather is this invisible complexity
that we walk through every day.
We can't see weather.
We can feel it.
We can smell it.
We can taste it.
But you can't see temperature.
You can't even see wind.
Alright, I think it's so
important in helping us
understand data better.
(simple piano music)
