The Gathering Cloud

“…a poetic media meteorology: it shows the multiplicity of ways of writing about the sky, the digital cloud, and the climate changes that we are living through…”

The Gathering Cloud collates research into the history and language of meteorology with current thinking about data storage and climate change. Archival material from the Met Office Archive and Library in Exeter has been studied and sifted, along with classical, medieval, and Victorian sources, including, in particular, Luke Howard’s classic essay On the Modifications of Clouds, first published in 1803.

This research material is presented as a sequence of texts and images, acting both as a primer to the ideas behind the project and as a document of its movement between formats, from the data centre to the illuminated screen, from the live performance to the printed page. In his foreword media theorist Jussi Parikka describes the work as “a series of material transformations made visible through a media history executed as digital collage and print publication, hendecasyllabic verse, and critical essay”.

With a foreword by Jussi Parikka and an afterword by Lisa Robertson.
Thirty-two photographic illustrations, and seven digital collages.