Cloud and Molecular Aesthetics is a volume that situates a critical discourse on the molecular data–cloud and aesthetics within contemporary experiences of art and society. It reflects varied perceptions and current thinking by artists, curators, scientists, and theorists in comprehending the appropriation and colonization of the cloud. The cloud can be seen as a veiling of information, where it becomes clouded, foggy, fuzzy, obscure, or secretive as well as a (re)distribution of data when it condenses, blooms, and accretes into aesthetic, socio-political, technological, and scientific atmospheric contexts.

The book emerged from a conversation between Lanfranco Aceti, Director of Operational and Curatorial Research (OCR) and Editor in Chief of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (MIT Press), and Paul Thomas, the director of the Transcultural Imaging Conference.

Cloud and Molecular Aesthetics is an open access book by Leonardo Electronic Almanac edited by Lanfranco Aceti, Paul Thomas, and Edward Colless. It is published by MIT Press with the support of Operational and Curatorial Research (OCR) and Goldsmiths, University of London.

ISSN: 1071-4391
ISBN: 978-1-906897-62-8

 

Volume contributors: Lanfranco Aceti, Birgitte Aga, Edward Colless, Chris Cottrell, David Eastwood, Jane Grant and John Matthias, Jacquelene Drinkall, Darren Tofts and Lisa Gye, Patricia Flanagan, Jens Hauser, Michael Goddard and Grace Kingston,  Lindsay Kelley, Luke Hespanhol, Leon Marvell, Troy Innocent, Eugen Petcu and Rodica Ileana Miroiu, Pia Ednie-Brown and Jondi Keane, Simone Mandl and Petra Gemeinboeck, Paul Thomas, Mike Phillips, Mark Titmarsh, Tami Spector, Darren Tofts, Chris Speed, and Debra Swack.

 
With thanks to the team of editorial assistants at Leonardo Electronic Almanac: Candice Bancheri, Ashley Daugherty, and Michael Spicher.
 

Leonardo Electronic Almanac uses the new publishing platform Contemporary Art and Cultures (CAC), a collaborative effort between OCR, Media LAB @ MIT, and MIT Press. Contemporary Art and Cultures (CAC) is a “publication for undisciplined artists, scholars, theoreticians, and critics with no boundaries.”