Nephoscope is named after a series of nineteenth century instruments used for monitoring the velocity and direction of overhead clouds. Originally employing a dark circular viewing mirror with a built-in compass, the digital nephoscope developed for this project conducts visual analyses of cloud movements using a video camera tied to a simple optical flow algorithm. The derived vectors are then used to interface with a spatial model of textual word embeddings generated using material drawn from A. Lawrence Rotch’s Sounding the Ocean of Air (1900), as well as other early meteorological texts. These spatial queries then cue the generation and placement of a lexical poem, that flows across the visual scene. 

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Dr. Richard A Carter is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Culture at the University of York.