"Types of Rain
1. Outside the range of normal atmospheric conditions:
(a) recently discovered caves
(b) anti-cyclones on Mars
(c) water columns, three kilometres deep…"
We have just come off the hottest year on record with extreme weather events dominating the news cycles. The scientists tell us that we are close to climate tipping points, where there will be disproportionate consequences of small additional changes in global temperatures. Already we are seeing prolonged droughts, unprecedented hot spells, widespread floods, and more. Meanwhile, the polar ice caps and alpine glaciers are melting at increasing rates. Underlying all these changes is water as it cycles between the atmosphere and the oceans via ever changing patterns of rainfall.
As these weather patterns fracture and distort in the face of accelerating climate change, how do we define the types of rain than have come and gone, maybe never to return? How do we understand a future when we have failed to comprehend the past?
This video was assembled from footage obtained mostly around Adelaide, its hills, and the coastal regions of South Australia, supplemented with some sequences from coastal regions of Victoria and New South Wales. Unlike many of my videos, all the scenes here are natural: there has been no compositing or animation.
The soundscape is constructed from a single sample of the spoken word: “parch”. The sample has been variously time-shifted, pitch-shifted, filtered and sequenced to generate the audio.
A different version of the text was originally published in my first book of poetry, Urban Biology (2012).
The video was part of my Critical Point exhibition at FELTspace Gallery in Adelaide in 2023.