Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the ways artists and scientists are apprehending weather and climate in new ways using anti-skyscapes and anti-soundscapes. It also provides new modes of public engagement with environmental threats and possibilities.

Paper long abstract:

Skyscapes —views of the sky or artistic depictions of it — are often strikingly beautiful, evanescent, and colorful, but anti-skyscapes can be gloomy, menacing, and increasingly, in the case of climate change, invisible. Soundscapes — melodious or noisy - occur in the realm of weather and climate, exclusively within the thin shell of atmosphere, ocean, and land surface surrounding the planet. Are there also weather and climate anti-soundscapes? How are they changing and how can they be made audible? How can the public engage with them? This paper examines the concepts of anti-skyscapes and anti-soundscapes and how recent collaborations between artists and environmental scientists are making previously invisible and inaudible aerial threats perceptible.