Étude de nuage is currently on display in Arles for the Octobre Numérique à Arles festival!
See the festival website here
OS(ON)S
Arles - Salle Henri Comte
Water, a universal and infinite subject, is a source of inspiration for many artists, from the most classical to the most experimental. The exhibition features a series of works exploring questions of fluid, liquid and plasticity. Over and above its symbolic significance, water is sometimes used in these works as a narrative activator, and at other times it is used for its visual impact, or even as an element in its own right.
Digital technology will explore its turbulence and evaporation, its flows and stagnation, and will aim to heighten emotion and generate new perceptions of these heritage sites, veritable Arles jewels.
Cloud study7 drops per inch
An image of a cloud based on the painting «Paysage sous un ciel mouvementé», which Vincent van Gogh painted in Arles in April 1889. The image is made up of drops of dew water harvested from a field like the one in the painting, in the summer of 2020. The water is viscosified so that it does not evaporate.
Photos
Harvesting dew in the early morning near the city of Arles, using one of the methods recommended by alchemists. When atmospheric conditions were right to allow dew to collect overnight, the artist Dominique Peysson slid a cotton sheet over the grass and leaves to soak it up with this water coming directly from the clouds.
Alchemists have always preferred dew to spring water. For them, this water has special properties: like storm water, it is said to contain natural «nitrates», which result from lightning discharges. These compounds recovered from the Sel de Rosée behave in a way that is not the case with conventional chemicals. They are supposed to be more soluble and less permanent. The alchemists fortify them by exposing them to the light of several successive rising moons, while protecting them from sunlight. After collecting the dew with the help of a sheet, they filter it several times in the dark. It is then stored in earthenware urns, protected from light in cellars. This dew water is used to collect the philosophical salt, after several successive stages of evaporation and dissolution. It is a silvery-white salt with small refractive crystals that can dissolve glass.
Dew sensor
The sheet and containers were used by Dominique Peysson to collect dew water in the fields at dawn.
