Supersaturation
Interactive cloud experience, 2020-
Clouds are wondrous and mysterious – merging different elements, metaphors and information, and questioning the experience of the invisible. A formless form, a shifting event space, open to many projections and possibilities, yet real, active and current. Sometimes the cloud touches the surface of the Earth, sometimes it reaches into the future – and for a fleeting moment the cloud is before us.
Supersaturation takes the viewer towards the possibilities of a cloud – both real and virtual. The critical, yet invisible, intersections between atmosphere, ecosystem and society create an immersive installation when atmospheric motion transforms into a continuous digital cloud formation. Through interactive climate data and real-time video and sound, the project explores the contingency of the cloud in the changing environment.
Clouds are the visible phenomena of those invisible interactions in the sky and important part of life on Earth. 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.
Multiple data streams mix, intersect and overlap. 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 sounds, captured and interpreted from the clouds. These different modes of invisible information, one influencing the other, are combined to provide a sensuous experience for the viewer. Every stream of data is defined separately to uniquely modify the audio-visual information moment-by-moment. Blurring the boundaries between the local and global, the un/known that defines the cloud shifts into multisensory experientality.
* Clouds are held by currents of air yet without atmospheric aerosols, there would be no clouds. These tiny invisible particles initiate cloud formation and influence cloud properties. The data processed in Supersaturation investigates the complex relationship between atmospheric aerosols and clouds and their wide-ranging effects on Earth’s climate sensitivity due to the increasing anthropogenic emissions. Clouds and aerosols continue to contribute the largest uncertainty to the impacts of climate change (IPCC 2023).
Scientific data in collaboration with the Department of Environmental Science and Analytical Chemistry (ACES) - Stockholm University, Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR) - University of Helsinki and Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU).
Sound in collaboration with Tapio Viitasaari.