In the Clouds

This radically interdisciplinary project explores the cultural conditions for one of the central metaphors of contemporary IT practice: The Cloud. "In the Clouds" brings together scholars and artists to investigate "clouds" as a technological and cultural phenomenon, including their most recent manifestation in digital environments. The array of disciplines involved includes humanities (environmental history, history of science, art history, literature, religion), social sciences (media studies), natural sciences (physics and meteorology), and technology (information technology). Together, we explore the multi-valent meanings of clouds over time and space and how they relate to the ever-growing digital cloud. A three-day Artscience workshop was organised together with the Stavanger Art Museum in January 2019 to create a space for presentations, facilitated discussion, and encounters with other disciplinary approaches. The results of the workshop will be linked to a forthcoming exhibit in 2020 on the theme of clouds at Stavanger Art Museum. An edited volume of art and science contributions will be published by Museumsforlaget in March 2020 in conjunction with the exhibition. Through the workshop we developed new knowledge and new insights about interdisciplinary collaboration and about clouds as phenomena. The interdisciplinary collaboration demonstrated how to develop constructive conversations across artistic and academic research that opens up for new ways to think about existing knowledge. Both artists and scientists have studied clouds from vantage points on the ground and in the sky, over long time periods. The understandings that they have developed have pervaded the cultural use of clouds as a metaphor in literature, religion, business development, and technology.

From a Proof-of-Concept level, this project demonstrated the value of ArtScience collaborative workshops to bring artists and scientists in the same room to share their approaches and facilitate understanding and cross-fertilisation of ideas. Measuring this kind of understanding is difficult, but the feedback from the participants was extremely positive and they all expressed profound satisfaction with being able to share and share in results from different disciplines. The resulting edited volume, Silver Linings: Clouds in Art and Science (Museumsforlaget 2020) will create a tangible outcome of the conversations held during the workshop and take the interdisciplinary approach to a wider public.

This radically interdisciplinary project will explore the cultural conditions for one of the central metaphors of contemporary IT practice: The Cloud. "In the Clouds" brings together scholars and artists to investigate "clouds" as a technological and cultural phenomenon, including their most recent manifestation in digital environments. The array of disciplines involved includes humanities (environmental history, history of science, art history, literature, religion), social sciences (media studies), natural sciences (physics and meteorology), and technology (information technology). Together, we will explore the multi-valent meanings of clouds over time and space and how they relate to the ever-growing digital cloud. A three-day Artscience workshop will be organised together with the Stavanger Art Museum to create a space for presentations, facilitated discussion, and encounters with other disciplinary approaches. The outputs (a scholarly collection and bespoke art pieces) will be linked to a forthcoming exhibit on the theme of clouds at Stavanger Art Museum.