Rainfall beats: When data hits like music

Artist Yandell Walton has been turning more than a century of rainfall records into a sensory experience you can see and hear as part of Re:cultivate - a three-month creative partnership with Australian Network for Art & Technology (ANAT) and South East Water . 

Using historical data from the Bureau of Meteorology, Yandell mapped rainfall patterns stretching back to 1904 into Touch Designer, animating dense constellations of particles and weaving soundscapes that rise and fall with the weather. The result? A hypnotic storm of sight and sound, where climate history unfolds like a living archive.

It’s not just beautiful, it’s a proof of concept for future environments where water, plants, and climate data actively shape virtual worlds. Imagine a forest whose growth and decay is driven by real-time weather feeds, or an installation where you can walk inside a century of shifting rainfall.

Yandell’s work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally in non-traditional and public spaces including Rising Festival Melbourne (2021), Dark Mofo Tasmania (2018), Light City Festival Baltimore (2016), Digital Graffiti Florida (2015), Experimenta Speak to Me (Melbourne & Brisbane 2012-14), PUBLIC Festival Perth (2014), Melbourne Festival (2012), VIVID Festival Sydney (2013), ISEA / International Symposium of Electronic Art (2013) and White Night Festival Melbourne (2015). She was the recipient of the Australian Network for Art and Technology IDEATE grant (2020) and the Philip Hunter Fellowship (2020).

This project is the kind of collision we live for at FB IDEAs: art, ecology, and technology clashing to spark something new.