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CHANGE AND CHAOS

: A SHOWER OF CLOUDS

When was the last time you stopped to stare at the clouds? Could they hold the answers in these strange times, where change and chaos torment each other? Why is it so important to stare at the clouds – to find a way out of the chaos or to better understand it?

‘These are the first clouds I remember seeing in weeks or maybe months. I just haven’t been paying attention. When did I stop?... I am watching clouds and trying to figure out what they mean to my life. We all play a role in history. Mine are clouds.’ *

TEXT BY E. ŞEVVAL YÜRÜTEN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY LYOUDMILA MILANOVA

 

    Chaos Theory was proposed by meteorologist Edward N. Lorenz in 1961. During his studies, Lorenz compiled a set of statistics in collaboration with programmers Ellen Fetter and Margaret Hamilton. The meteorological the simulation, created using a simple computer system, revealed that small diversions from calculations created very significant fluctuations. According to Lorenz, even the flapping wing of a seagull (better known as the butterfly effect) can have a profound effect on meteorological conditions. Chaos Theory came about while trying to remedy our inability to provide accurate weather forecasts, whether it be in ten minutes’ time or ten years’ time. What role do clouds play in this chaotic equation? Clouds, mother nature’s mystical element, determine weather conditions, based on their unpredictable movements. Please allow us to re- introduce you to the true heroes of Chaos Theory.

    The cloud classification and nomenclature system, presented by British pharmacist Luke Howard in 1802, is considered to mark the beginning of modern meteorology. Howard’s cloud classification system made it possible to make weather forecasts, based on the changing shapes of the clouds. In the footsteps of Howard’s work, metorology developed further with the improvement of imaging technology, allowing scientists to study the various stages of clouds in much more detail. Thanks to Howard’s nomenclature and imaging technology, the study of clouds became an independent scientific discipline: Nephology. Science lent valuable clarity to the quest to explore our hitherto uncharted skies. 

    We will return to the vital role of clouds further on, but before that, let us take some time to look at the role of clouds in human thought, which seem to preoccupy a broad spectrum of disciplines from science to art, philosophy to astronomy. Philosophers and thinkers have traditionally preferred to keep their distance from clouds. Dehlia Hannah, a professor of philosophy at Columbia University says, ‘Just as clouds obstruct the astronomer’s view of the stars, a troubled mind is the inner manifestation of bad weather for thought.’ According to structuralist thinker Luce Irigaray, the deceptive lucidity of the weather has been either forgotten or overlooked by the most important thinkers in the history of philosophy. So much so, that clouds have always been seen as a problem, since the early days of philosophy. In Aristophanes’ famous comedy, The Clouds, Socrates describes them as ‘great goddesses for the lazy’ and added, ‘we owe them all, thoughts, speeches, trickery, roguery, boasting, lies, sagacity.’ This is why Plato censored poets and possibly their clouds in his work, The Republic, for this precise reason. Clouds contradict philosophers’ trains of thought, such as the quests for logic and continuity – however, clouds also embody the dreams of poets. This resonates even in modern meditation apps, where dark clouds of thought are considered bad and a clear sky points to a lucid and peaceful state of mind.

    Clouds are prone to change discreetly at any moment. So, am I wrong to think that they represent the chaos of our inner world as much as the one outside? Why do poets adore erratic clouds of thought, while philosophers despise them? ‘I love the clouds the clouds that pass yonder the marvelous clouds.’ says Baudelaire in his poem, The Stranger. Chaos and change often come across as worrying concepts, but are they not the keywords of creativity? According to Bachelard’s theory of [dynamic] imagination, clouds are the laziest and easiest element for daydreaming, because they symbolise the flight of imagination. Bachelard argued that dreaming of clouds was a journey and he portrayed cloud daydreaming as ‘reverie without responsibility’. Day- dreamers’ clouds actually mirror a psychological character – that of a dreamer, free from responsibility – just like Socrates’ role in Aristophanes’ play. Clouds are the laziest and possibly easiest way of daydreaming. Clouds are shape-shifters which help us imagine change. Clouds are also the best thing we have to improve our understanding of the creative role of dynamic imagination.

    For some, cloud-gazing is laziness. Clouds might be affection to otherworldliness; an escape from the burdens of this world... Is it wrong to think that clouds are images of the imagined, of lives never lived? Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s cloud symbolised the natural cycle of birth and death. Clouds are more than a simple metaphor, used only by romantic poets to describe their fluctuating moods. The chaotic existence of clouds reminds us of change and ephemerality. Shelley’s verse in his poem, The Cloud, eloquently sums up the existence of clouds: ‘I change, but I cannot die.’

    Tracking down the traces of clouds in art was not so simple. Hubert Damisch was

an art historian who studied the cloud issue within the context of the history of painting. In his book, Theory of /Cloud/: Toward History of Painting, Damisch described clouds as infinite linear surfaces that lack any kind of geometric discipline, leading to the conceptualisation, ‘bodies without surface’. Clouds were a thorn in the backside for photographers as well: the limitations of primitive techniques meant that they were confined to making a choice between landscape and skyscape. Desperately scanning the skies for a photo that would make it into international cloud atlases, scientific cloud photographers were repeatedly thwarted by clouds. As mentioned by Damisch, regarding the art of painting, abstraction was also the problem in cloud photography. Mainly due to a lack of definable surfaces, cloud photographs did not add up to much until the 1920s. Alfred Stieglitz’s Equivalents series is a compilation of numerous black-and-white skyscape photographs. Clouds were not only a problem on the Earth’s surface – they managed to be a problem in space, too. The enfants terribles of the atmosphere invariably caused mischief for the NASA mission collecting aerial images of our planet. Art critic Robin Kelsey argued that the presence of clouds effectively sabotaged attempts at satellite map-making, their swirling presence obscuring certain geographical features at any given time. From art to science, the the unpredictable nature of clouds caused by clouds was not taken kindly at all.

    Then, let me ask you this: when did the clouds over our heads surrender their power of free movement to digital clouds? Furthermore, what effect did the dynamic clouds of imagination have on the culture of technology? Technology has transformed the word ‘cloud’ one of the most popular technical terms, in the digital age. Nowadays, the word has multiple connotations – data cloud, cloud technology, cloud computing, radioactive cloud, cloud media and so forth... Technology’s favourite word, cloud, ‘represents the unknown of the known; the eternity that we cannot follow with all the secret information it contains.’ It seems we have disconnected ourselves from clouds – first, with clouds in the sense of poets’ lovers and scientists’ children and more recently, in the age of technology, the fluffy clouds above us. Whether visible or invisible, clouds maintained a degree of mystery in our digital world. Quite divinely, clouds became laden with infinite amounts of information, yet, the most visible cloud in our lives was reduced to Apple’s simplified cloud symbol. Like never before, the word ‘cloud’ is everywhere however, we have been never this far from [real] clouds.

    In her book, Cloud Behavior, published in March 2020, photographer Nanna Debois Buhl studied the scientific, aesthetic and speculative models of clouds, based on cloud movement photography, accompanied by essays and interviews. The photographs taken in Copenhagen, during early summer in 2018, made Buhl realise something – the most striking aspect of the images was the absence of clouds, rather than the clouds themselves. Cloud Behavior is an interdisciplinary study, containing different approaches to cloud speculation, whilst also questioning digital clouds from an ecological point of view. Besides the cooling needs of server farms, can you imagine the power consumption and carbon footprint involved in uploading and storing every one of your phone photos on data clouds? The unpleasant truth is that storing your photos on the [digital] cloud could harm real clouds. Despite all this, cloud photographs remind us of the clouds in the sky and the infinity of imagination in the age of digital culture.

    Time to return to the question of what clouds mean in today’s chaotic reality. We study clouds to understand global warming, in the context of the current climate crisis. Despite humanity’s traditional ambivalence towards them, clouds have always played an important role on our planet. By partly absorbing and cooling solar radiation that reaches our planet, clouds have a significant role in regulating temperature and thus the climate. As the planet’s temperature controllers, clouds effectively save us from sizzling up under the sun. Yet, after another 50 years of climate change, the future of the clouds in the sky looks bleak – partly because of man-made digital clouds. The electricity used by our virtual clouds – and the resulting carbon footprint – harm the atmosphere and the clouds within it. However, as mentioned in climate change debates, our future relies on cloud movements. The tensions between virtual and real clouds have given rise to a dystopian paradox. At the crossroads of humanity, technology and nature, we will undoubtedly keep on talking about clouds as the new hot topic in climate debates.

    They were always there, but never really present. Invariably adept at swiftly vanishing before we set our gaze on them... up until humanity caught up with them. We never took a liking to clouds. To our dismay, we were unable to confine them to the standards we were accustomed to. We could not chop them down, like trees, to build shopping malls or squander them, like water, and cause drought. Maybe because of their otherness, which reminds us of our mortality, we attack them in the most devious, unknown and vicious of ways. But, how did everything change so much again? We are confined to our houses and clouds became the only way we could mark the passage of time. We were estranged from the sun and moon, even nature; yet clouds always remained in sight. They sporadically appeared and disappeared. We waited at the windows for their arrival and, given the chance, followed their erratic movements. As eloquently articulated by Walter Benjamin, ‘Nothing remains unchanged but clouds.’