Cat Kramer and Zoe Papadopoulou are artists who know some scientists, and with that combined powerhouse of knowledge they say they’ve come up with a way to make clouds snow down ice cream amongst the people. Ice cream. Like, mint chocolate chip snowmen and Neapolitan snow angels. Impossible, right? The explanation on their website has a lot to do with cloud seeding, though not with orgone, had us imagining the launch of a delicious rocket and a weatherman forecasting flurries of Cherry Garcia. Even with our limited scientific background, that seemed a bit implausible. We called them to figure out if they
were bullshitting.

Vice. Hi. What is the Cloud Project?
Cat Kramer: We made the project together as our final piece for our MAs at Royal College of Art, in the design interaction department.

So the idea is that we could launch flavor into a cloud and it would snow ice cream?
I believe so, yes. And I think that’s one of the points that the project wants to make, is that there’s a lot of research happening at the moment and once it’s out in the world it’s up to whoever to do something with it.

Is the science behind this project sound?
Yeah, I mean, the main feature on the van was the rocket launchers on top. And we would rig them to a customized snow-making machine, so in the wintertime it would produce flavored snow. But in the summer, because of the ambient temperature, we basically made a refreshing, flavored mist. A cloud. Which people would then try to grasp with their mouths. So that’s sort of the practical way we solved it on a small scale. We also figured out the theory behind it which is, you know, not proven, of how we could do it on a large
scale which would involve modifying bacteria in plants like because–yeah, it’s kind of a long process. Basically we discovered that certain bacteria are also active ice nucleators and play a large role in rain and snow … OK, I’ll explain from the beginning. [Lots of scientific gobbledygook ensues.]

I have to admit you lost me at “nucleators”–and it’s fine, I’m more interested in if this is possible, given the technology we have.
Yeah, it is. I think obviously there needs to be more research into it.

Where did you get the idea to create something like this?
This is a two-year MA and it started in the first year when we had a brief about nanotechnology. We were–well, Zoe started by thinking, “How can you communicate the finer issues of nanotechnology to a wider audience, when it’s kind of hard to grasp?” So then we looked into that and came across something called geoengineering, which is basically a planetary-scale engineering proposal over the entire earth’s climate. And one of these proposals began with nanotechnology, so we thought we’d come up with our own proposal in which we would like to make clouds snow ice cream.

Are you scientists at all?
No, we’re not, but we collaborated with several scientists during the project and one of the aims of the projects was to engage a wider audience with these scientific issues, because I think they’re very important. You know, when new technologies emerge it’s important for not just the scientists to be aware of them but also the general public so everybody can have a voice in where we’re headed.

How about a root beer float precipitation? Like, If you were trying to make soda fountain rain, could you?
I don’t actually know what a soda fountain is…

Soda. Pop. Soft drinks. Could you make it rain Grape Crush?
Potentially. I think it’d be quite difficult to have the kind of bubbly fizz that you would have in a soda.

Fair enough. How about a juice?
Yeah, you could definitely create juice. Although I don’t know how organic it would be. It would probably be quite artificial.

Like Kool-Aid? You could make Kool-Aid rain, maybe, right? I bet Lil Wayne would buy that idea off you.
Yeah, I mean, that’s basically how our snow gun works. It mixes flavour with water and bursts out and that’s what is then consumed.

That’s a gun I wouldn’t mind being shot with.