Flogo

Geoff Manaugh at BLDGBLOG posts about the nascent ability to print clouds – using a buoyant "mixture of soap-based foams and lighter-than-air gases such as helium" to create logos and messages that float like clouds across the sky until they disintegrate up to an hour later. Geoff, creative optimist that he is, writes:

there is an obvious (and, frankly, rather uninteresting) reaction to all this – i.e. please save us from yet another form of corporate advertising, we don't need logos in the sky – but there are also artistic, and even literary, implications here that go beyond mere outrage

before proceeding to riff on the glorious possibilities.

Me, I'm down there with the obvious and frankly uninteresting, trying to console myself that there will be parts of the sky unflogoed so long as there are parts of the world insufficiently inhabited and/or rich and/or influential. There are times when I even resent vapour trails. Don't get me wrong, I love the built environment, but I am cynical about what money does.

Actually, BLDGBLOG is one of my favourites, and I love Geoff's thought experiments. Many of his commenters take him to task on practicalities while ignoring the principle he's exploring. I'm guilty of this myself, here.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.