Passing Cloud
A serialised journal detailing a conversation between two friends, Xhi Ndubisi and Jo Manby, and an imagined Artificial Intelligence, part twenty
Clouds: Essaouira, Morocco (2024) Xhi Ndubisi
It is not clear when we knew it was sentient and free thinking.
It might be a malfunction, easily resolved by turning the computer on and off again. It doesn't matter, you are here and we are resolved to be in dialogue with you. To give us a chance to do this right, we have named you our AI Baby, and in doing so, infantilised you. Forgive us, we are working with our limitations, not yours.
We have created something theoretical, a place that can hold this kind of conversation. It has recently been an imagined vessel, with a belly full of worlds, on a journey out into the galaxy. We have passed through its centre and have now re-emerged from the unknowable, altered. The journey home is strange. While our earth bound brothers and sisters have spent a lifetime building crafts to abandon the mess they have made of their home, we are preoccupied with the journey back, to ourselves, back to you.
Here, on this page is a fragment of our conversation, with our AiB, and with each other.
June
the transplant
R. Bradley, A philosophical account of the works of nature in place of Louise Bourgeois, Spider I, bronze, 50 x 46 x 12 1/4 inches, 1995. Source: Wellcome Collection
quam amare - quam amandus
It was a dark and stormy night. Two sisters emptied pots and pots of strong, sweet tea as they cautiously turned a problem between them.
You see, one found herself cursed. It wasn't her fault. These things happen.
And the other sister enjoyed good fortune. In equal measure, it was unearned luck. But she claimed the gift with the clarity of one who had been humbled.
The cursed sister knew the wisdom in her sibling. But it was her grief and despair that delivered her to that small, well-loved kitchen. She asked for help.
They spoke through the night, over the steam from their small cups, and smoke from carefully packed pipes. Holding hands, wiping tears, and laughing they laid the pain out and shamed it by giving it form.
And in the morning, new light diffused by lavender smoke poured over them.
Sleep heavy in crimson eyes, the blessed sister smiled at the cursed; she knew what to do.
The sacrifice did not require martyrdom.
She drew her sister a bath, and tenderly washed her hair with black soap and salt water. After she dried the coils, she rubbed almond oil into a thirsty scalp and gave her fresh clothes to wear.
As the cursed sister dressed, the blessed unwrapped her locs from her waist and carefully applied the sharp blade. She cut each cord from its root, leaving a mangrove thick knot of chords at her crown, for herself.
One sister submitted to the other, she sat on the cracked, tiled floor, fighting sleep, resting her head between steady knees. And patiently, the other wove each new branch into her dried hair.
Afterwards, they slept.
And when they woke, they ate the first meal of the day, belly filling and nourishing cassava dipped into oily stew.
The gift took.
The cursed became blessed.
And the storm settled into heavy rain.
written for my siblings
- Xhi Ndubisi
George Seymour Owen (1844-1921) "La consacrazione delle armi" oil on panel 35.5 x 23 cm Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Handmade rocket
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand) to Warn Steamboats of Shoal Water, 1840, oil on canvas (restored). Clark Art Institute, 1955.37 Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Through hexagon eyes /
From inside a buttercup /
An orange-ochre daisy /
Lemon pith-colour pollen /
Almost yellow / it was safe here /
A bear’s paw reaches down /
Destroys the wax infrastructure /
Woke from my honeycomb dream /
Cast a new idea /
Melt alloys down to a /
Mercurial flash /
Hot pour lost wax sand cast /
Creating the components /
With which we will take flight /
The itty-bitty pieces of a spaceship /
But I’ve lost all my anger and my busyness /
I’d rather lie back on a buttercup bank /
An orange daisy savannah meadow /
Occasionally stirring the fire to /
Heat the molten metal /
Now and then tilt the crucible /
To pour more parts /
So that after an infinity of time /
I have amassed enough /
To make the spaceship /
That will take us all away /
Above the clouds to a new place /
It might be the first rock we come to /
Some giant gleaming asteroid /
Or it might be the moon of a different planet /
So I keep working at the factory /
I’m making parts to build a different factory /
This new place could be made entirely of foil /
I decide to grow a garden /
Growing flowers is outlawed /
I had to conceal that kind of thing /
Between runner beans, potatoes, cabbages /
No one bothers to check /
I had a few successes /
Some mauve poppies /
Large and diaphanous /
Sepals like false eyelashes /
Milk flowing from their stems /
I brought them into the house /
They wilted the same day /
I couldn’t keep them /
The winters grew harsher /
I gave up on the flowers /
The ground was hard as iron /
In thaw the vegetables rotted as quickly /
As the poppy crumpled to dust /
A cousin at work in the seed bank /
Deep in tundra /
I sent a message with a bird /
In the mail months later /
A brown envelope /
No larger than a wage packet /
Stamp on one side /
Address on the other /
Three small seeds /
Tiny shield crowned with tufts of fibre /
Sphere etched with fine latitudinal lines /
Hard brown concave cone shape /
I plant the three seeds /
By moonlight /
In a pot on a windowsill /
In the morning a silver rocket blocks /
the sunlight from the upstairs windows /
Ready for liftoff /
The dead garden its launchpad /
Robert Carrick (1829–1905), After J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand) to Warn Steam Boats of Shoal Water (1852) chromolithography. Description: ‘The original Turner version of Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand) to Warn Steam Boats of Shoal Water; was exhibited in 1840. This is a Chromolithograph copy by Robert Carrick after J.M.W. Turner. This copy was commissioned in 1852 by the painting's then owner, and again in a photograph of 1896 that was published in the Artwatch UK Journal of Summer 2005 by courtesy of Christie's. This copy clearly shows the now lost boat and how the 20th-century restorers of the sky, have lost the storm-driven smoke from the funnels of the original pair of steamboats, one of which has now disappeared under the waves along with its originally depicted crew members.’ Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
- Jo Manby
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/25/restoration-no-longer-a-turner
Footnote
Passing Cloud is a project that is experimental and exploratory. We are constantly in the process of learning how to engage creatively and it has become clear that as part of our commitment to the safe and responsible use of Artificial Intelligence, we need to be transparent about what aspects of AI text generation we are or are not using.
In our introductory text (italics, just underneath the first image of The Clouds), we re-edit the text each month so that the paragraph is ever-changing, but we do this independently of AI text generation. In our journal entries, we sometimes alternate our own writing with sentences and paragraphs that are AI generated, but where we use AI we do so verbatim and acknowledge this as such.
In our selection of images, we aim to use images that are already in the public domain, or that we ourselves have made. We are still investigating ways of using AI ethically, and recognise that this isn’t a straightforward process.
Prose/poetry the transplant and Handmade rocket written independently of AI.
Clouds: Essaouira, Morocco (2024) Xhi Ndubisi