Weather Prediction By Numerical Process is a performance where the weather is forecast through human labour, thus turning the act of calculating the computation into a social action. It is a tribute to the heroic effort of Lewis Fry Richardson, a pacifist quaker who spent his time as a medic during World War I, calculating the first numerical weather forecast by hand. Working before the days of electronic computers, he had the utopian dream that the nations of the world would come together to create a vast “human computer” consisting of many thousands of “calculators” who would work around the clock to calculate the weather for the good of all humankind.

In a post-climate-change world in need of explanatory myths and rituals, Richardson’s epic calculation deserves to be mythologised as one of the founding moments of a new science. For this installation, the artists have ritualistically re-enacted a small part of this calculation by hand. The installation forms part of a larger work in which the artists hope to produce a large-scale participatory performance which will realise Lewis Fry Richardson’s original vision.