Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts

Welcome to this workshop during BEKs symposium The Only Lasting Truth is Change: Voice, Seed, Brutality. 

Over one day, we will learn how to ‘see’ cyclones in the sky and in satellite images. 

Informed by Bergen’s wet location at the end of the Jet Stream and its special significance in meteorology as home of the so-called ‘Norwegian cyclone model’, we will spend the day assembling different knowledges of how to sense and interpret storm systems.

Workshop
Friday
November 21 10:00-16:30
BEK – Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts
C. Sundts gate 55
5004 Bergen
Free and open for all
Sign up here by November 16

Presentations and conversation on satellite imagery by Open-weather & the Bjerknes Centre
Saturday
November 22. 14.15
Bergen Assembly
Halfdan Kjerulfs gate 4
Free and open to all
vimeo.com/bekdotno

Sophie Dyer from the feminist collective open-weather will introduce their unique Public Archive of more than 3,000 satellite images and share the basics of DIY satellite imagery reception. In the afternoon, guided by the expertise of climate scientist Camille Li (University of Bergen and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research) and meteorologist Ellen Viste, as well as our own experiences of weather, we will attempt to recognise, read, and model cyclones.

This workshop is framed by the larger, speculative question of how our different relationships to weather are and must change with the climate. 

This workshop is free and open to all. No prior knowledge is required to participate.

Please bring a laptop and charging cable. If using a laptop with only USB-C ports, please also bring a USB-A to USB-C adapter. We will be installing software defined radio on some laptops, and working with satellite images and copper wire.

When you register, please state if your laptop’s operating system is Mac, Windows or another type. Alternatively, let us know if you do not have access to a laptop.

The group size is limited to 12–15 people, so please let us know if you can no longer come!

open-weather

Open-weather is a feminist experiment in imaging and imagining the earth and its weather systems using DIY community tools. Co-led by designer Sophie ‘Soph’ Dyer and creative geographer Sasha Engelmann, open-weather makes public tools, artworks, and workshops on the reception of satellite images using free or inexpensive amateur radio technologies. In the tradition of intersectional feminism, open-weather investigates the politics of location and interlocking oppressions that shape our capacities to observe, negotiate, and respond to the climate crisis. In doing so, open-weather challenges dominant representations of earth and environment while complicating ideas of the weather beyond the meteorological.

This workshop will be led by Sophie (she/they). Their practice combines participatory and investigative methods to create digital tools and archives, evidentiary models and maps, and speculative fiction. Until 2023, Sophie worked in Amnesty International’s Evidence Lab where they led the organisation’s crowdsourcing initiative to create the first city-wide map of surveillance cameras in New York city, which then was used to sue the NYPD. Currently, Sophie is an Advisor to Forensic Architecture and teaches at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and Design Academy Eindhoven.

Ellen Viste

Ellen Viste is a meteorologist, former climate researcher and non-fiction author working with climate science communication. She has a PhD in meteorology from the University of Bergen. In 2023 she published the book Vindens historier (Tales of the wind; in Norwegian).

Camille Li

Camille Lis research is concerned with the large scale dynamics of the atmosphere and how its interactions with other components of the climate system (ocean, sea ice, land ice) drive climate variability over a wide range of time scales.

Accessibility

BEK’s space unfortunately is not wheelchair accessible. Please send us an email at bek@bek.no if you’re using a wheelchair, and we’ll do our best to facilitate your needs. Our space has all gender toilet facilities. Service dogs are welcome. We also provide the option of a quiet room.

Please let us know in the sign-up form of any access needs or concerns that you would like us to be aware of.

Return to the detailed symposium programme.

BEK symposium
The Only Lasting Truth is Change: Voice, Seed, Brutality
21–23 November
Bergen, Norway

Image: NOAA-18 received on 3 June 2025 at 12:36 by an Automatic Ground Station operated by artist Alison Scott at Hospitalfield in Arbroath, Scotland