Reading clouds: Vihreä Pilvi

A some of my readers interpreted an earlier post as a general condemnation of data visualization art. It wasn't intended as such... my point was that data visualization art as an artistic practice needs to step up its game. It isn't enough to simply make a pretty graphic--if the goal is art, then there needs to be an intention beyond effective data communication.


Vihreä Pilvi is an interesting data visualization/manifestation artwork. It's a Finnish temporary art project that ran from February 22-29, 2008. Each night the Salmisaari power plant's vapor cloud was illuminated with a laser. The less power being consumed by Helsinki, the larger the cloud illumination, which seems counter-intuitive. I guess the idea was to reward conservation with a bigger light show, and perhaps the green color of the laser's light is considered to signify green in the environmental sense (though green is also the stereotypical color of toxic sludge in movies, comic books, etc.).

I love how Vihreä Pilvi combines aesthetics, an environmental agenda, and ostranenie. I do wish that it had equated higher energy consumption with a larger cloud, but maybe that is nitpicking.

Note, the videos below have a playback problem for first few seconds, but it quickly clears up:





[via Pall Thayer's post on Rhizome]


Not that it has anything to do with Vihreä Pilvi, but I highly recommend David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas: A Novel.