PJ Dick Innovation Fund Project Grant: Weather Dreams: Colonial Fantasies and Atmospheric Fictions

Weather Dreams: Colonial Fantasies and Atmospheric Fictions
Project Lead: Stephanie Kyuyoung Lee, Ann Kalla Visiting Professor, Carnegie Mellon Architecture

This interdisciplinary and speculative design research project investigates how historical and contemporary weather control technologies are shaped by colonial power structures. Building on earlier work in rural land politics in the Hudson Valley, the project shifts from the cultivation of land to the cultivation of atmosphere, tracing how human attempts to engineer weather emerge from fantasies of domination. Through fieldwork, archival research, and documentation of cloud seeding stations, fog dispersal systems, and climate laboratories, the project uncovers the material and ideological legacies of atmospheric manipulation, from Indigenous rainmaking practices to General Electric’s 1946 cloud seeding tests and Project Cirrus.

The project addresses climate change, social justice, and artificial intelligence by revealing how geoengineering often mirrors extractive colonial practices that disproportionately affect Indigenous nations, rural communities, and farmers of color. By examining contemporary bans and resistance movements, the project highlights how communities assert atmospheric sovereignty and challenge unconsented intervention.

At the same time, “Weather Dreams” uses speculative design, mythmaking, and alternative modes of sensing weather as tools for imagining futures beyond technocratic control. Drawing from Indigenous cosmologies, agricultural ceremonies, and embodied atmospheric knowledge, the project proposes that new myths and sensory practices can help reimagine how we cultivate land, agriculture, and desire in an era of climate instability. These speculative narratives refuse the inevitability of geoengineering and instead explore forms of atmospheric relationship grounded in care, reciprocity, and relational environmental ethics.

The resulting work, culminating in a major outdoor installation planned for fall 2026, creates immersive experiences that unsettle dominant climatic narratives and open pathways toward more just, imaginative, and community-centered futures of weather and ecological stewardship.

Image: Anson Wigner.