To throw the cloud is to activate the data. The thousands of pin-pricks, once a disciplined exercise in endurance and patience, now become, for a few seconds “lively matter”, embodying the precarious and drifting nature of the digital ‘data cloud’ and the semi- decomposed nature of peat – because of the waterlogged, anaerobic (oxygen-free) conditions, the organic matter doesn’t fully decompose, it doesn’t turn back into soil, and it doesn’t fully disappear. It is “suspended” in ‘limbo’ in a halfway point between life and death, and between a plant and a mineral. In science, this is called incomplete decomposition.
The archived data is released, momentarily to become a cloud: amorphous, drifting, and ephemeral. This gesture is a transition from recording the bog to performing it, a brief moment where the human and the data collide and coexist.
In the Assembly Rooms, Spring 2016
On the peatbog, Summer, 2025
I took the Boggy Cloud (in progress) to throw in the air above the degraded peatland adjacent to the GGR- Peat research site at Pwllpeiran Upland Research Centre, Cambrian Mountains. A male Cuckoo’s call resounding over the peatland made the experience even more special. The cloud needs to be at least 4 times bigger, so 4 months of data to have the impact I want. This cloud as it is contains approx. 249,984 data points (pin pricks) so to get to 999,936 I have my work cut out..
Another step closer to the definitive image – We carried a trampoline up to the high bog so I could fly with the boggy data cloud. The data critter and I both became airborne — hovering over the ancient wet boggy land, our bodies entangled, becoming kin.
It was very windy, so I didn’t dare let go of the cloud. Its form collapsed, more squashed than cloud-like. But I love the shapes my body made – my limbs stretched, and bare toes appearing to skim the peaty pools below.
I need a much bigger data cloud (a few more months of pricking still to go), a clear blue sky dotted with small, fluffy cumulus humilis, no wind, and the strength and skill to leap higher.
And for my amazing Ash to catch the perfect moment – when the cloud looks like a cloud, freed from my grasp but still in relation to me. Maybe one of its tentacular strips just grazing my fingertip.
All Photo’s by Ash Calvert, 2025