Image: CLOUD Collaboration, CERN	Copenhagen Contemporary. Photo: David Stjernholm

Atmospheric Omens

Installation
Generative algorithm, infinite duration
4 digital Jacquard weavings, 400×150 cm
Produced in collaboration with VEVFT, Kvadrat/Innvik
Design consultants: Nakworks and Alexis Mark
(2025)

Atmospheric Omens is an artistic reflection on weather and climate. Based on Nanna Debois Buhl’s residency at CERN in Geneva, the work draws on the CLOUD experiment, where scientists investigate how cosmic rays and atmospheric conditions affect cloud formation—and thus the Earth’s climate. It also connects to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, begun in Geneva during the eerie “Year Without a Summer” in 1816, when a volcanic eruption had caused extreme weather worldwide.

The installation combines large digital weavings based on CERN’s cloud chamber imagery with a generative algorithm which continuously creates new sequences, merging weather-related excerpts from Frankenstein with historical landscape images and the artist’s own photographs of Lake Geneva, where the novel was written. Atmospheric Omens is thus an invitation to travel across time and scale—from particles to clouds, from 19th-century climate anxieties to future weather scenarios.