The Tempestry Project is a collaborative fiber arts project that presents

global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in a broader sense also includes ...

data in visual form through

knitted Knitting is a method by which yarn is manipulated to create a textile, or fabric. It is used to create many types of garments. Knitting may be done by hand or by machine. Knitting creates stitches: loops of yarn in a row, either flat o ...

crochet Crochet (; ) is a process of creating textiles by using a crochet hook to interlock loops of yarn, thread, or strands of other materials. The name is derived from the French term ''crochet'', meaning 'hook'. Hooks can be made from a variety of m ...

ed artwork. The project is part of a larger "

data art Information art, which is also known as informatism or data art, is an emerging art form that is inspired by and principally incorporates data, computer science, information technology, artificial intelligence, and related data-driven fields. The ...

" movement and the developing field of climate change art, which seeks to exploit the human tendency to value personal experience over data by creating accessible experiential representations of the data. Tempestries are made by knitting or crocheting rows in specified colors that represent respective high temperatures each day for a year. Multiple works are typically displayed together to show change over time. The project began in 2017 in

History

The first tempestry was created using 2016 data from the Naval Air Station on

Whidbey Island, Washington Whidbey Island (historical spellings Whidby, Whitbey, or Whitby) is the largest of the islands composing Island County, Washington, in the United States, and the largest island in Washington State. (The other large island is Camano Island, ...

. Emily McNeil, Marissa Connelly, and Justin Connelly, having read about

climatologists Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "place, zone"; and , ''-logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. This modern field of study ...

trying to preserve climate research data in preparation for anticipated removal of such data from US government websites by the

Trump administration Donald Trump's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 45th president of the United States began with Inauguration of Donald Trump, his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican Party ...

, were "joking" that "we should return to more concrete forms of data storage." In January 2017 McNeil, Marissa Connelly and Justin Connelly founded the project in

Anacortes, Washington Anacortes ( ) is a city in Skagit County, Washington, United States. The name "Anacortes" is an adaptation of the name of Anne Curtis Bowman, who was the wife of early Fidalgo Island settler Amos Bowman. to encourage other fiber artists to produce "striking visuals that communicate changes at an intimate, local scale." According to Justin Connelly, "The science articles talk about what's happening at the poles. For many people, that's not their experience and so they don't relate to it in a powerful way...but even here utside Seattle">Seattle.html" ;"title="utside Seattle">utside Seattle in a Temperate climate">temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout t ...

place, you can see stark change over the last 40 years or so. It puts it in their backyard." The project name is a portmanteau of the words "temperature" and "tapestry." The organization offers kits including yarn, instructions, and a data sheet of daily temperatures in a given location. In 2017 they sold 40 kits and in 2018, 500. The 2018–19 United States federal government shutdown temporarily affected production for the US, as the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditi ...

(NOAA) restricted access to the databases used to provide historical weather data for the United States. The concept was inspired by a similar fiberwork concept called a "temperature blanket", an

afghan Afghan may refer to: *Something of or related to Afghanistan, a country in Southern-Central Asia *Afghans, people or citizens of Afghanistan, typically of any ethnicity ** Afghan (ethnonym), the historic term applied strictly to people of the Pa ...

- or bedspread-sized project commemorating a particular year by working stripes or bands of colors representing each day's high or low temperature for a year. As of December 2018 projects had been created by fiber artists in nearly every U.S. state and in 20 other countries.

Production

Each tempestry is knitted or crocheted, one row each day, in the specified color for each date's high temperature starting on January 1 and ending on December 31 for a given year in a single location to form a banner the size of a scarf that graphically represents a year of daily high temperatures in a single location. Colors for each five-degree temperature range are standardized and temperature data is collected from the NOAA so that collected displays of work by different artists working in different locations and on different years can be interpreted as direct comparisons. Because

gauge Gauge ( or ) may refer to: Measurement * Gauge (instrument), any of a variety of measuring instruments * Gauge (firearms) * Wire gauge, a measure of the size of a wire ** American wire gauge, a common measure of nonferrous wire diameter, es ...

is different between crochet vs. knitting, for different knit stitches, and among different crafters, finished tempestries will vary in length and width depending on whether they're created by the same crafter using the same stitch or are created by different crafters using a variety of stitches. Some crafters' gauge varies, and two works created even by a crafter with a very stable gauge using the same stitch will inevitably vary slightly.

Display

Tempestry banners are typically hung vertically, the first row (representing January 1) at the bottom and the final row (December 31) at the top, in groupings of two or more to show how daily high temperatures have changed year-to-year in a given location. Project pieces were first publicly displayed in

Anacortes, Washington Anacortes ( ) is a city in Skagit County, Washington, United States. The name "Anacortes" is an adaptation of the name of Anne Curtis Bowman, who was the wife of early Fidalgo Island settler Amos Bowman. In 2018 projects were displayed at the Museum of Northwest Art and at the Creative Climate Awards in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

. In May 2019 a project consisting of 27 tempestries representing 100 years on

Orcas Island Orcas Island () is the largest of the San Juan Islands of the Pacific Northwest, which are in the northwestern corner of San Juan County, Washington. History and naming of the island The name "Orcas" is a shortened form of ''Horcasitas,'' fro ...

in 4-year increments was displayed at the Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiberarts Museum. In 2020 pieces were displayed at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art and at

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptists, Baptist minister Russell Conwell an ...

's Ginsberg Health Sciences Library.

Projects

In 2019 a group of US knitters organized a National Park Tempestry Project, inviting crafters to create a tempestry for 2016 – the year of the National Park Service Centennial – and one for the earliest year for which data was available for each US National Park. In 2019 the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education near Philadelphia organized a project using data provided by the

Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and the center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memor ...

to create tempestries for the city, one for every fifth year from 1875 through 2018. Crafters in Mexico City organized a similar project.

Similar artworks

According to data journalist David McCandless, tempestries and similar creations are part of a larger data art movement in which data is represented in novel ways. Grace Ebert, writing for Colossal, calls such projects "part of a larger movement to document micro weather changes that may serve as indicators of broader climate issues." Electronic literature writer and scholar, Anastasia Salter, uses Tempestry scarves to illustrate the fusion of craft and computation in procedural electronic literature.

Works inspired by The Tempestry Project

Faculty at

North Central Michigan College North Central Michigan College (NCMC) is a public community college in Petoskey, Michigan. It was established in 1959 and is Michigan's 12th community college. NCMC has two additional learning centers, one in Gaylord, Michigan and one in Che ...

produced a similar exhibit in 2018 inspired by The Tempestry Project.

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a public state-related land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvania. Founded in 1855 as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania, Penn State becam ...

professor Laura Guertin contributed a poster to the

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people (not members). AGU's ...

's 2017 Fall meeting displaying similar works for January through April 1917, 1967, and 2017. Some fiber artists have created banners similar to tempestries, but using daily low temperatures.

Other climate change art

Other artists and scientists are experimenting with climate change art as a way to overcome humans' hardwired tendency to value personal experience over data and to disengage from data-based representations by making the data "vivid and accessible". In 2018, artist Xavier Cortada's project ''Underwater Home Owner's Association'' placed signs in front yards throughout

Miami, Florida Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at th ...

indicating each property's height above sea level to illustrate what sea level rise would flood that property. In 2016, Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the

National Centre for Atmospheric Science The National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) is research centre dedicated to the advancement of atmospheric science, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). NCAS is one of the NERC's six research centres, and was formed i ...

and the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...

, created "Climate Spirals," a series of data art representations of climate change, and followed in 2018 with "

warming stripes Warming stripes (sometimes referred to as climate stripes, climate timelines or stripe graphics) are data visualization graphics that use a series of coloured stripes chronologically ordered to visually portray long-term temperature trends. Wa ...

," a series of color stripes representing chronologically ordered average annual temperature anomalies for a given location. In 2015,

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marine scientist Joan Sheldon produced a scarf illustrating average yearly temperature from the 1600s to the present using one row per year. In 2012, filmmaker

Jeff Orlowski Jeff Orlowski-Yang is an American filmmaker. He is best known for both directing and producing the Emmy Award-winning documentary '' Chasing Ice'' (2012) and '' Chasing Coral'' (2017) and for directing '' The Social Dilemma'' about the damaging s ...

made ''

Chasing Ice ''Chasing Ice'' is a 2012 documentary film about the efforts of nature photographer James Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) to publicize the effects of climate change. The film was directed by Jeff Orlowski. It was released in the United St ...

'', documenting photographer

James Balog James Balog (pronounced ''BAY-log''; born July 15, 1952) sometimes referred to as Jim Balog, is an American photographer whose work explores the relationship between humans and nature. Since the early 1980s, Balog has photographed such subjects ...

Extreme Ice Survey The Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), based in Boulder, Colorado, uses time-lapse photography, conventional photography and video to document the effects of global warming on glacial ice. It is the most wide-ranging glacier study ever conducted using gro ...

, which uses

time-lapse photography Time-lapse photography is a technique in which the frequency at which film frames are captured (the frame rate) is much lower than the frequency used to view the sequence. When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thu ...

to show the disappearance of glaciers over time. In 2007, artist Eve Mosher used a sports-field chalk marker to draw a blue "high-water" line around Manhattan and Brooklyn, showing the areas that would be underwater if climate change predictions are realized. Her ''HighWaterLine Project'' has since drawn high-water lines around

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city i ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, and two coastal cities in Florida.

Other fiber data art

In 2005, the Knitting Map, a European Capital of Culture project in Cork, Ireland, recorded the city's daily temperatures and citizen walking patterns to create a "fiber representation of the city."

Sarah-marie belcastro Sarah-Marie Belcastro (''aka'' sarah-marie belcastro, born 1970 in San Diego) is an American mathematician and book author. She is an instructor at the Art of Problem Solving Online School and is the director of Bryn Mawr's residential summer prog ...

uses knitting to explore mathematics, such as knitting a " non-orientable surface of genus 5". Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer call these types of data artists " mathekniticians".

References

External links

*
The Tempestry Project on Facebook

The Tempestry Project on Ravelry
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tempestry Project, The Climate change in art Crochet Data visualization Knitting