Gap between houses along Friedhofstraße and Schulstraße Alt-Urfahr Ost
daily from 4 - 10 p. m.
The "Wettergebäude" is a building that doesn't shelter from wind and weather, but that consists of wind and weather, air, water, heat, turbulences, and in which you can hear the thunder rolling.
The "Wettergebäude" is an installation, a "weatherworks" powered by machines and devices like snow-producing machines, electric fans, glowing coal-filled metal cages, a heat reservoir made of bricks, waterpipes and heaters. The mist sprays, water fountains, heat waves, air jets, rising vapours, produced in such a way form the architecture made of weather. The weatherplant can be walked on by the public. The spectator should be able to feel the different climates in a very realistic way. Weather is pure energy, weather is power. The locality for this happening is the open square (Piazetta) in front of the "Stadtwerkstatt" building, Friedhofstr. 6 in the old part of Urfahr. Every day at night the "Wettergebäude" does its foul work (during the period in which the ARS ELECTRONICA takes place). The plant is looked after by the weather station mechanic on duty, whose task is to adjust the weathermachinery according to the general weather situation, i. e. in terms of fact to set the snow-producing machines in accordance with the winds, to watch over the furnace of the glowing cages and to charge the steamplant with water at the proper time.
Even if it does not occur very often that people read such catalogues, we don't want to miss the opportunity to demonstrate the reader how this "Wettergebäude" is conceived. Thus he might be stimulated (within these 4 days) to fire 10 tons of coke, spray and make vaporize 100 m3 water and make the electric motors and petrol engines run, so they can set in motion air and water.
The energy is released into nothingness, into pure being. A self-acting installation on a place covered with gravel in the old part of the town. Engines are rushing and droning and a spitting, sprinkling and rippling equipment is working. The weather for the sake of weather - the weather for the sake of architecture to create a building that has no concrete form, but is a man-made concoction of changing shape, vigorously driven and controlled by machines. Precision disappears in the free interplay of forces. The unbroken omnipotence of gravitation. The gushes of water are eroding the place with gravel, the water is gathering in huge puddles, the street next to it is covered by a landslip.
