2026 | Robotic + Textile Installation
How did one of the most ephemeral phenomena in nature—the cloud—come to symbolize our data, documents, digital-selves, and intimate memories? When did clouds begin to stand in for physical data centres and undersea fiber optic cable networks? Per theorist John Durham Peters, “the cloud is a huge PR achievement for the IT industry, but it is profoundly deceptive.” Hard Cloud Soft Cloud investigates the misnomer that digital clouds are just as ethereal as the ones floating in the sky, when in reality, they are materially dense and environmentally extractive.
To investigate this contradiction, four artists from differing backgrounds in textiles, video, fabrication, and new media came together to visualize the cloud’s supposed immateriality through decidedly material means: a kinetic sculpture. Delicate fabric panels float in mid-air, fixed from the gallery walls to a central, pulley motor system made of scaffolding. White and gauzy, the textiles undergo cycles of tension and release. Atmospheric projections cast shadows across the sculpture, revealing translucent FDM 3D-printed patterns fused to the textile that reference undersea fibre-optic cables which move our data across continents.
This mix of materials and fabrication techniques is purposely precarious. In particular, the motor slowly pulls the textiles tighter and tighter, almost ripping the fabric, until the machine must be manually unspooled and started again. In our daily lives we imbue trust onto machines and data centres with the expectation that these systems will remain dependable; yet in reality the digital cloud is just as physical and fragile with the ability to fracture our information. As Susan Leigh Star suggests, infrastructure tends to be invisible until it breaks down.
Hard Cloud Soft Cloud is collaboration between Christina Dovolis, Amelia June Ferguson, Asucena Di Giovanni, and Lauren Warrington.
Exhibitions
2026 – Solo Exhibition – InterAccess Gallery – Toronto, Canada
Projects 