The Boggy Gassy Cloud is a drawing/sculpture and performance in progress. It is a continuous thin strip of tangled paper, which, when finished, will form a large amorphous ‘data cloud’. Hundreds of thousands of pin-pricks in hundreds of meters of cut paper reference the accumulation of data from datasets reading methane (CH4), Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels gathered from chambers on 32 treatment plots (20m x 20m each) installed from 2023 – 2024 on the ‘cinderella’ degraded peatland in the Cambrian Mountains, West Wales.
At first glance, the cloud resembles a pile of discarded off-cuts, referencing data degradation, misinterpretation, and the inherent instability of information. Formed via a paradoxical process of accumulation and erasure, the empty holes both represent datapoints and render them void, illegible and therefore useless, critiquing the often inaccessible and impenetrable nature of unprocessed environmental data. By materialising and performing the data, the work transforms abstract information into active, lively matter that takes shape when handled, thrown, or suspended in the air.
The work visibilises raw environmental data as a cloud: an amorphous, delicate accumulation of holes. This is a critique of the digital “cloud,” a metaphor that suggests something light, transient, and ethereal, while the actual infrastructure of the digital cloud is heavy, static, and environmentally damaging.
In the Assembly Room…Spring 2026
In the studio… summer 2025
Photos by Ash Calvert, 2025 – 26