The critical, yet invisible, intersections between atmosphere, ecosystem and society become an immersive ‘real reality’ when atmospheric motion transforms into a digital cloud formation with many possible futures. Through the interactive use of climate data and real-time video and sound, the work explores the contingency of the cloud in the changing ecosystems and living environments. Supersaturation takes the viewer closer to the complexity of atmospheric phenomena and the hidden processes related to climate sensitivity. Clouds are the visible phenomena of those invisible interactions in the sky and important part of life on Earth. The expanded use of climate data investigates the aesthetic power in climate change action. Yet when the clouds are brought into the exhibition space, they move from the factual into the sensorial realm and the cloud emerges as a possibility for imagined futures.
Supersaturation is powered by scientific aerosol* data measured above the Nordics. The process is unpredictable and totally unique because every stream of data is defined separately to continuously modify the audio-visual information. The interactive programming determines and reconfigures the shifting appearance of the work. What you see and hear is the result of ‘cloud-to-cloud’ communication between the vast amount of scientific data measured from the atmosphere and extensive variations of digital video and sound signals, captured and interpreted from the clouds. These two different modes of invisible information, one influencing the other, are combined to provide a sensuous experience for the viewer at Jönköping City Library. The unseen events in the atmosphere are revealed yet simultaneously vanishing – eventually becoming ‘supersaturated’.