They didn’t design the accompanying clouds you see here, but what if they could have?

by Theater of Inclusion

Fellow IMA blogger Ed Bachta recently told me about a new film called Owning the Weather.  Premiering last week at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the film tells the story of weather modification science.  The film features “seeders,” scientists who inject clouds with substances that hasten condensation, thereby making rain.  The doc also gives voice to philosophers on both sides of the debate about whether weather interventions are a handy solution to the global warming blues…or a sacrilegious crossing of the line between human and god.We can’t help but ask how long it will take some meteorologically-inclined contemporary artist to whip up a blizzard at the next Venice Biennale.  It could happen…

How about designer plants and animals?  It’s being done.  As physicist Freeman Dyson writes, every orchid, rose and lizard is the work of a skilled breeder.  The designers whose work is on view in the IMA’s current European Design: Shaping the New Century exhibition offer mind-blowing conceptions of chairs, lamps, etc.  Future design exhibitions may include the latest microbe, engineered to feed on plastic: an innovative design solution to the problem of reducing that gargantuan mass of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean.

Or, Dyson notes, Open Source biology may allow artists (or even third graders) to design their own genomes.  This is the premise of video games like Spore (whose designer we’ve been trying to invite to the IMA to give a talk).

As designer Bruce Mau asked in the exhibition Massive Change: “Now that we can do anything, what will we do?”

For now, I am going to keep it simple and join the international Cloud Appreciation Society.  I’m no sculptor but know how to savor a fine cumulonimbus, authored by no one that I know of.