Philipp Gasser
Clouds of the Second Kind

With the help of current computer programs, Philipp Gasser created a cloud that is completely digitally generated. Clouds of the Second Kind (2016) is based on general types of cloud formations such as stratus, cumulus, cirrus, cirrostratus and cirrocumulus. Against a blue background, it moves incessantly, changes its consistency and appears to advance towards the viewer. The nature of the cloud that appears so lifelike to us is exposed by the extraction of the color of the sky on the opposite wall. Immediately, we associate the uniform blue with a typical desktop background, so that the cloud also appears as a man-made sculpture. Gasser creates his approximation of nature through purely mathematical calculations and illustrates how the human need to classify natural phenomena has expanded through digital means.