[spectre] clouds of clouds

[Andreas Broeckmann]

hey miguel,

this project should cooperate with this:

http://cloudy.halo.gen.nz/

regards,
-a



>Dear all
>
>Our new web project is already on-line. Please 
>report any bug. Comments are also welcome.
>
>Txs
>
>ml
>
>
>===========================
>CLOUDS OF CLOUDS
>by Miguel Leal and Luis Sarmento
>===========================
>
>http://www.virose.pt/clouds_of_clouds
>
>Clouds of clouds is a random generator of cloud 
>images. Each new cloud is unique and indexed to 
>a particular time (GMT) on a particular day.
>
>Clouds of Clouds was developed in Perl + MySQL. 
>It works over a database of more than 1.000.000 
>photos of clouds.
>Photo information was gathered from Flickr 
>between September 10-13 2008, using Flickr API.
>The database will be regularly updated.
>
>Clouds of clouds is a web-based project 
>comissioned for Interact 15 
>[http://www.interact.com.pt/].
>The project was produced between July and September 2008.
>
>hosted by virose.pt
>
>
>
>______________________
>
>"This is randomness, and that is altogether 
>different. If absolutely necessary, you can 
>count the stars. A catalogue has been kept of 
>them since Antiquity. But if you ask for a 
>catalogue of the clouds, people laugh at you. 
>There is no such term as cloud, defined as 
>permanent, defined by its borders, by its terms 
>or its terminations. [Š] Clouds, whirlwinds, 
>flows, noises, all primary masses without 
>qualities."
>
>  (M. Serres)
>
>
>
>Chaos theories, as they have emerged in strength 
>since the 1960s, with their focus on complexity, 
>were in fact an answer to the monstrous and 
>misshapen nature of certain phenomena that were 
>revealed to be resistant to determinist 
>equations or to the laws of causality. 
>Atmospheric phenomena such as clouds have always 
>been seen as an image of the inability to submit 
>certain realities to precise measurement. To all 
>intents and purposes, clouds appeared to be a 
>perfect example of irreducibility, instability 
>and unpredictability. Clouds, in their apparent 
>causal disjunction, like a whirlwind or vortex, 
>represented the principles of error, exception 
>and monstrosity.
>
>Perhaps this is why there have never been dreams 
>of an individual cloud catalogue, since it would 
>be so absurd. If we ask anybody for something 
>similar, we risk being ridiculed, as Michel 
>Serres recalls. Clouds are instantly fleeting 
>and have no number or stable form. They exist 
>now and no longer exist a moment later. We can 
>classify the clouds approximately, order them by 
>type or try to understand their signs but we 
>have no way of archiving them.
>
>The exponential growth of Web files, 
>particularly with the participative forms that 
>Web 2.0 has made common, has finally brought us 
>an embryo for these absurd archives, and not 
>only for clouds. Everything that has always been 
>firmly uncataloguable seems to have found its 
>place in the distributed digital archives.
>
>At the same time, curiously, we have an 
>increasing popularity in recent years for terms 
>such as Cloud Computing, Cloud Architecture, 
>Data Clouds, Text Clouds or Tag Clouds, in what 
>represents the attribution of a new semantic 
>power to our idea of a cloud. Particularly on 
>the web, with the explosion of social networks, 
>it has become common to use similar devices to 
>organise meta-information generated by users.
>
>
>Clouds of clouds is a random generator of cloud 
>images. Each new cloud is unique and indexed to 
>a particular time (GMT) on a particular day. Its 
>clouds were made on similar dates and at similar 
>times, not necessarily the same year, and are 
>linked to the original web pages.
>
>The basis of the archives are all images indexed 
>with the tags <cloud> or <clouds> on Flickr.
>
>These are not clouds in the atmospheric meaning 
>of the word, but instead entities with which 
>they share a complexity that can be confused 
>with instability, unpredictability and 
>irreducibility. That this is based on a 
>relatively simple visualisation arrangement is 
>another way of indicating that this complexity 
>depends less on what we see on the surface than 
>on the networks of relationships established 
>from it.
>
>The clouds generated by the users are kept in 
>searchable archives. These archives will grow 
>with the project and are intended to become, 
>over time, veritable daily, monthly, yearly 
>archives of clouds. Clouds of clouds also works 
>as a type of infinite nesting doll: clouds 
>within clouds, archives within archives.
>
>Clouds of clouds is a project by Miguel Leal and Luís Sarmento
>
>
>__________________________
>
>
>........................................................................
>
>*Virose Organization*
>*Porto.Portugal*
>*http://www.virose.pt | http://arch.virose.pt*
>e-zine vector: http://www.virose.pt/vector
>........................................................................
>
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