Weather as Brushstrokes: Aaron Alden’s Data-Driven Art in TouchDesigner

Weatherbrush is Aaron Alden’s TouchDesigner-driven system that paints a week of Hudson Valley weather as a single expressive brushstroke, mapping meteorological variables to painterly behaviors. The pipeline fetches and scales API data, then animates layered noise-based brushes to emulate real paint, with exports for social sharing. The work demonstrates how abstract art can clearly convey complex data and anchors Alden’s broader practice in audio-reactive light installations and building-scale generative projects.

Key Points

• Weatherbrush turns 8,400+ hourly forecast data points into a single painterly stroke where temperature, wind, precipitation, pressure, and snow map to color, motion, density, smudging, and lift-out effects.
• TouchDesigner is crucial for achieving realistic, layered “wet paint” behavior and for orchestrating the data-to-visual pipeline, despite acknowledged performance and architectural tradeoffs.
• The project originated from a community API tutorial and is designed to prove that abstract art can communicate complex information as clearly as traditional charts.
• Pipeline: Visual Crossing API → JSON parsing and range scaling → per-location tables → timer-driven, noise-based virtual brushes → compositing, feedback, and automated exports.
• Alden’s broader practice bridges painting, music, and light sculpture (e.g., Parallel Tones with TDAbleton), and is expanding to architectural-scale generative lighting.