Art-Sci Currents — Slow Data
Podcast + interdisciplinary dialogue · 2026
Slow Data: Weather Artist Michelle Atkinson Makes the Case for Simplicity is a featured conversation on Art-Sci Currents, a podcast exploring the intersections of art, science and technology.
In conversation with host Nicia John, I discuss my use of weather and climate data as source material, and the evolving role of data within my practice—not as information to be explained, but as a starting point for curiosity. The conversation explores abstraction as a way of slowing our encounter with complex information, creating space for emotion, beauty and material experience before understanding.
The episode also reflects a broader shift in my practice toward experimentation and interdisciplinary research. Increasingly, I am interested not only in translating scientific information into visual form, but in borrowing from scientific ways of observing the world: isolating variables, testing material processes, documenting change and allowing unexpected results to inform what happens next.
This conversation helped give language to an idea that has been developing through the work for years: weather is the doorway, not the destination. The larger investigation is into how art can change our relationship with information—asking us to pause, become curious and look again.
Featured on: Art-Sci Currents, Season 2
Episode (Spotify): Slow Data: Weather Artist Michelle Atkinson Makes the Case for Simplicity