The Banks Peninsula Musician Who Does Weather Data Visualisations

Tuesday, 9 July 2024, 5:50 pm
Article: RNZ

From Music 101

Lyttelton creative TG Shand is not a "city person", and instead loves to watch the weather change over Banks Peninsula.

As an accompaniment to her new single 'Scenes', the dream-pop musician captures the harbour's many moods in a sweet animation based on real-time weather data.

The Banks Peninsula musician who does weather data visualisations duration8:55

Climate change can feel like a really overwhelming subject to contemplate, Shand tells Charlotte Ryan, and friendly-looking animations are a way to gently engage people with its effects.

"I would love to get to the point where people feel comfortable enough to look at another sort of visualisation based on, say, sea ice levels or changing temperatures in different parts of the world. They can see the data straight away without it being too emotional."

The weather activity in Shand's 'Scenes' animation, which was created by her art studio Cusp, is based on real-time data from the MetService interface Point Forecast API.

The height of its animated waves and the transparency of its animated clouds are based on what is really happening in Lyttelton at any given moment, while the current wind speed and direction dictate the movements of a flock of birds.

At the local sunset time every day - about 5pm at the moment - the music video for 'Scenes' will pop up and play.

Shand first started thinking about the track on a summer evening a couple of years ago, hanging out with some Lyttelton friends after a swim.

The group felt connected by their shared distance from more traditional evening rituals, she says.

"A lot of us don't necessarily have nuclear families and things like that and sometimes we feel a bit removed from those really ordinary routines like socialising with people at the end of the day.

"It's kind of a routine for humans to go and have drinks together in different places, and sometimes you can feel a bit removed from that, but it still is really nice to watch and be a part of."

Self-trust in a new relationship that seems almost too good to be true is the theme of another recently released single 'The Cheese'.

"All I can think of is like this sparkly piece of cheese that's in a mouse trap and you can't really tell whether the mousetrap is set or not. Sometimes you don't know whether situations have the mousetrap set or it's not set and it's just in your head.

"This is a conversation I have with myself every day. I'm like 'Is my gut just all off? Am I just letting my anxiety overcome every single part of my brain or is it actually founded in something? I find it so difficult to navigate."

Shand, who was previously a member of Melbourne shoegaze band Miniatures, recently supported American band Blonde Redhead at the Lyttelton venue Loons.

"I had bought my ticket an hour after it went on sale because I was so excited to see them. And a week or so later we heard that we might be opening for them so it was pretty wild.

"It was amazing to see them play live and putting everything into the performance even though it was the last night of a massive tour for them. It was quite inspiring, really. Very, very cool. They sounded amazing."

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