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Deck the halls with clouds
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Photo: Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk
Deck the halls with clouds
Nimbus D’ Aspremont by Berndnaut Smilde, part of ManifestlyPresent at Aspremont-Lynden Castle, Lanaken, Belgium, from 3 June to 30 September Reviewed by Christine Ottery
FORGET about planetary-scale geoengineering: seeding clouds indoors is taking the world by storm. To achieve this feat of ephemeral sculpture, Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde mists water in the air with a plant spray bottle, releases a burst of “fog” – actually a vaporised glycolbased compound – from a smoke machine, and employs backlighting
seconds. Why go to all that trouble to show off the resulting cloud to produce a sculpture that just to perfection. vanishes in thin air? “The moisture sticks to the smoke “I was curious if it was possible and makes the smoke heavier, to exhibit a raincloud,” Smilde says, otherwise it would just rise and fall apart,” Smilde says. The effect works ”and I really like the impermanent best in a cold, damp room. “When the aspect of it. Also, if you put a natural situation in an unnatural space, it floor and walls are a bit wet, [the moisture] gets in the air of the whole feels a bit threatening, a bit confrontational.” space and it helps.” For me, it is the very temporary Making clouds indoors is an imprecise art. “It takes a lot of practice and there’s a lot of coincidence “It is the temporary nature involved,” Smilde says. “You have of the indoor cloud that to test it and see whether it works.” makes it tantalising and Each cloud only lasts for a few somehow endearing”
nature of the indoor cloud that makes it enchanting, tantalising and somehow endearing. In online videos of Smilde at work, the onlookers appear rapt with joy, as if watching a fireworks display for the first time. Created in castles and gallery spaces, the clouds are photographed for posterity. One example is the image above, being shown at the ManifestlyPresent exhibition in a castle in Belgium. “It’s about this very short moment in time, a specific location,” Smilde says. “It’s almost like a memory of this cloud that happened there.” n 9 June 2012 | NewScientist | 49
Photo: Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk
Deck the halls with clouds
Nimbus D’ Aspremont by Berndnaut Smilde, part of ManifestlyPresent at Aspremont-Lynden Castle, Lanaken, Belgium, from 3 June to 30 September Reviewed by Christine Ottery
FORGET about planetary-scale geoengineering: seeding clouds indoors is taking the world by storm. To achieve this feat of ephemeral sculpture, Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde mists water in the air with a plant spray bottle, releases a burst of “fog” – actually a vaporised glycolbased compound – from a smoke machine, and employs backlighting
seconds. Why go to all that trouble to show off the resulting cloud to produce a sculpture that just to perfection. vanishes in thin air? “The moisture sticks to the smoke “I was curious if it was possible and makes the smoke heavier, to exhibit a raincloud,” Smilde says, otherwise it would just rise and fall apart,” Smilde says. The effect works ”and I really like the impermanent best in a cold, damp room. “When the aspect of it. Also, if you put a natural situation in an unnatural space, it floor and walls are a bit wet, [the moisture] gets in the air of the whole feels a bit threatening, a bit confrontational.” space and it helps.” For me, it is the very temporary Making clouds indoors is an imprecise art. “It takes a lot of practice and there’s a lot of coincidence “It is the temporary nature involved,” Smilde says. “You have of the indoor cloud that to test it and see whether it works.” makes it tantalising and Each cloud only lasts for a few somehow endearing”
nature of the indoor cloud that makes it enchanting, tantalising and somehow endearing. In online videos of Smilde at work, the onlookers appear rapt with joy, as if watching a fireworks display for the first time. Created in castles and gallery spaces, the clouds are photographed for posterity. One example is the image above, being shown at the ManifestlyPresent exhibition in a castle in Belgium. “It’s about this very short moment in time, a specific location,” Smilde says. “It’s almost like a memory of this cloud that happened there.” n 9 June 2012 | NewScientist | 49