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'Cloud' Turns Surveillance Data Into Art

The Korean structure whispers ominous phrases to bystanders and changes color with the weather.

SsD Architects' sound and light sculpture, Cloud, is at once comforting and disturbing—it reacts not only to weather, but to human movement. In the cold, its LED geometry turns orange and crackles like a fire. When it rains, Cloud mimics droplets with alternating patches of blue light. But in the presence of people, the Cloud follows and whispers to them, almost an eerie take on human-nature interaction.

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The lights and sounds react differently to groups and individuals. In their video explaining the project, SsD suggest that the sculpture's whispers seem to have an environmental skewing; words including ‘stratosphere,’ ‘cycles,’ and ‘compost,’ can be heard emanating from its hidden speakers.

The ambient whispering “invites the public to participate in what is now a public ‘secret,’” says SsD. Perhaps it’s more soothing in person—on video, it feels like an oncoming tempest of subliminal messaging.

SsD, who aim to "bridge the utopian and pragmatic," include recent projects such as micro houses in, Seoul and the recreation of an inland sea around a formerly-defunct island, installed Cloud's dynamic LED-rod canopies in the Heyri Art Valley of South Korea, where the sculptures formed a path connecting the street to the nearby waterfront.

If you asked us, we’d like to see a timelapse of Cloud changing with the seasons on the High Line, or whispering sweet nothings above the garden paths in Hyde Park. Hey, maybe every green space needs its own futuristic cloud to bring us closer to our atmosphere.