A Variability Quantifier

Liam Gillick’s process in building a functioning weather station for Fogo Island, Newfoundland.

A Variability Quantifier is an artwork intended to function as an operational weather station. Located on Fogo Island to the north of Newfoundland, it gathers local weather data and is a place for education, reflection, and discussion. A year after the installation of the work Liam Gillick returned to Fogo to make a documentary film about his work. This resulted in two separate films that make use of the same footage. In Variability Quantified we hear Nobel Prize winning climatologist Syukuro Manabe explaining the science of global heating and his pioneering work modeling earth’s climate in the 1960s. In Quantified Variability the artist dramatically altered the natural colors in the footage and set it to a layered soundtrack of automated industrial production. This book is a record of the two films alongside a discussion with art historian Tom McDonough. With earlier projects in Paris, Japan and Australia, Gillick engaged in representing the science of the climate crisis. A Variability Quantifier collects data to feed into the global system extending his artistic elevation of the maths and science of our shared climate emergency.

Foreword by Josée Drouin-Brisebois, Andria Hickey
Conversation with Liam Gillick and Tom McDonough
Copublished by Fogo Island Arts in collaboration with the National Gallery of Canada