When was the last time you looked up at the clouds? Cloud is everywhere: in classical landscape painting, in modern photography, in satellite weather images, and in the album of your smart phone.

As an essential object of observation, clouds have never been absent from the development of meteorology and the process of modernisation more broadly. This exhibition uses cloud as a clue to contemporary life and its contradictions, tracking it as we move, with the rapid development of science and technology, from cloud (formation) as object of research to cloud (computing). Promising clarity but bringing, at the same time, information overload and chaos, dwelling on the cloud may help us find a way forward.

Chapter 1 Dwelling Poetically

When you gaze up at the clouds, your eyes drawing you in to a moment of silent contemplation, have you ever found the freedom to let yourself wander around the sky? The poet Friedrich Hölderlin once said, "full of merit, yet poetically, man dwells on this earth". When we gaze at the clouds, we get a chance to fly away from worldly affairs. It becomes possible to poetically dwell on, in, or through the cloud.

Chapter 2 The Arrival of Rationality

The observation of clouds has advanced meteorology and greatly improved the convenience of life in contemporary society. The technological innovations brought about by the development of society have further allowed human to continually enhance the depth of observation of clouds

In 1803, English pharmacist Luke Howard classified and named clouds for the first time on his essay on the modification of clouds, thus opening an era of rational understanding of clouds, leading to the development of meteorology.

The Crimean War in 1850s, in which the French fleet was engulfed by a storm in the Black Sea, led to the birth of the world's first modern weather observation system based on weather stations.

English mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson (1881-1953) tried to predict the weather by means of differential equations, and proposed the principle of weather map calculation. His inventions of meteorological instruments were later used by the British Air Force for the delivery of poison gas in wars.

In order to solve the complex mathematical calculations in weather forecasting, German mathematician John von Neumann (1903-1957), the “Father of Modern Computers”, proposed and solved the problems in computer programming, bringing the capability of computers to a new level and paving the foundation for the realisation of cloud computing nowadays.

Human activities also lead to the creations of different artificial clouds, such as the mushroom clouds from explosions, clouds from heat emitted by factories, and clouds from aircraft contrail…etc.

Climate change brought by social development has also made extreme weather more frequent and the observation of clouds more difficult to implement. The technological progress of modern society does not seem to lead people to a brighter world, but rather to a new dark age covered by heavy fog.

Chapter 3 The Expulsion of the Other

Nowadays, the term cloud has further constituted a central metaphor in the internet world — a global system that possesses and stores all kinds of information resources, an all-encompassing and borderless domain.

While the social networking in the cloud gradually takes over every moment of our lives, the hustle and bustle makes us experience a deeper sense of loneliness. As the intimacy of the physical world gradually gives way to the virtual exchange of information in the internet world, what disappears is the genuine sense of sight, sound, and touch. People can virtually link up without boundary, yet they can no longer truly connect with each other.

On the other hand, the closed space constructed by the cloud gradually makes other people disappear from us. Information cocoons, echo chambers... people gradually enter a world where there are only similarities but no differences, only subordination but not dissent. In the cloud, the virtual social networking over expands and becomes extremely transparent. We seem to eliminate distances, but we fail to create closeness. We continuously connect with the world, yet no relationships are built. In a world full of what philosopher Byung-Chul Han described as “the Violence of the Same”, we fall into a state of deep loneliness after the loss of the Other. We connect in the cloud, but are isolated from the other.

When can we step out from the clouds, return to the earth, and dwell poetically again?