Modelling Waves and Swerves

Before its most recent iteration as a site of Artistic Research, Bidston Observatory housed the National Oceanography Centre (NOC). A large part of the work which took place in the building was related to tidal prediction – speculating on what height the tide would be in any given place, at a given moment, depending on different natural and human influenced factors.

In the second half of the 19th century tidal prediction was done through harmonic analysis, studying the graphical output of tidal prediction machines. Those early analog computers produced a wave-like form that, when output in a jagged way, had to be rubbed out and drawn in again by hand. There was even a name for this human job in assistance to the computation process: the ‘smoother’.

A series of workshops for marine data modellers, tired oceanographers, software critics, and people concerned with the politics of predictive visualizations.

More: http://www.bidstonobservatory.org/?modelling_waves_swerves