A fine day in 1913

“A fine day in 1913” is a sound installation project. It reacts musically to certain weather conditions, in real time, in a given place. More specifically, the installation only sounds when the meteorological data set (wind, humidity, temperature, atmospheric pressure, etc.) corresponds to ordinary people call “a fine day”. The idea of this installation is inspired by the first paragraph of Volume 1 of “The man without qualities, Robert Musil”:

“A barometric low hung over the Atlantic. It moved eastward toward a high-pressure area over Russia without as yet showing any inclination to bypass this high in a northerly direction. The isotherms and isotheres were functioning as they should. The air temperature was appropriate relative to the annual mean temperature and to the aperiodic monthly fluctuations of the temperature. The rising and setting of the sun, the moon, the phases of the moon, of Venus, of the rings of Saturn, and many other significant phenomena were all in accordance with the forecasts in the astronomical yearbooks. The water vapor in the air was at its maximal state of tension, while the humidity was minimal. In a word that characterizes the facts fairly accurately, even if it is a bit old-fashioned: It was a fine day in August 1913.” (Robert Musil,The Man Without Qualities, I,3)