Arts at CERN

The installation is a poetic reflection on weather through literature, visual art, and CERN’s climate research

Based on Nanna Debois Buhl’s residency at CERN, the installation Atmospheric Omens draws on the CLOUD experiment, where scientists study how cosmic rays might affect cloud formation, and thus the Earth’s climate. Debois Buhl weaves this scientific inquiry with Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley near Lake Geneva during the climate-disrupted ‘Year Without a Summer’ of 1816. The volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia the previous year darkened skies globally, led to extreme global cold temperatures, caused widespread crop failure, and affected human psyche.

In Atmospheric Omens, a series of large digital weavings based on CLOUD’s chamber imagery is paired with a generative algorithm. The algorithm produces an ever-evolving video that layers weather-inflected passages from Frankenstein over historical and contemporary images of Lake Geneva. The work traces a journey across space and time: from 19th-century climate unease towards speculative atmospheric futures.