‘The Prediction Machine’, a piece of artwork created by Dr Rachel Jacobs, will be exhibited at Nottingham Contemporary.

The Prediction Machine is an interactive artwork that marks “moments of climate change” in our everyday lives and is based on end-of-the pier fortune telling machines. The machine tracks the local temperature, rainfall and wind speed, captured live from a weather station at Nottingham University. This is then combined with projected temperatures for the year 2045 to create the predictions that visitors can take away with them.

The Prediction Machine has been made in dialogue with local people, engineers, computer scientists and climate scientists. The predictions have been written by people who live in the East Midlands and took part in public workshops with the artist.

Visit the Prediction Machine set up against the large window on the stairs between Level 2 and 3 of our building during normal gallery hours. The machine will be installed on Level One (outside the cafe) and accessible to people with limited mobility from Tuesday 10 – Sunday 15 March.

The Prediction Machine artwork has been developed alongside the ‘Performing Data’ research project at the Mixed Reality Lab and Horizon Digital Economy Research, University of Nottingham.With financial support from the Arts Council of England, University of Nottingham, EPSRC, RCUK and Radar LU Arts. The original concept for this artwork was developed by the artist during a residency on a farm in the Mata Atlantica (Atlantic Forest), Brazil.

The machine has been developed in parallel to the Mixed Reality Lab and Horizon Institute’s ‘Performing Data Platform’ research project, which will power it alongside a weather station fitted on the roof of the Computer Science building.