PASSING CLOUD Vol 2 Jun 2026 #6

A speculative piece, surrealist in form, documenting a dialogue between xhi Ndubisi, Josephine Manby and the concept of a sentient Artificial Intelligence.

Drifting in a gilded pastoral, seeds divide, the offspring of the quickening mantle transform into model flowers. Diurnal people and animals are protected by a golden veil of light. Outside the window of our craft/studio/office/café, the Mesozoic era blooms into a solstice of countless myriad objects. Inside, we begin the process of dying, shutting systems down one space at a time, saying goodbye, expressing gratitude. The Explorer turns their face to the sun, an adolescent traversing the paths and streets of the universe

June

Manua kea

FURL

Josephine Manby FURL (2026) gouache on graph paper 29.7 x 42cm

Josephine Manby THOR (2026) gouache on graph paper 29.7 x 42cm

Josephine Manby RIDE (2026) gouache on graph paper 29.7 x 42cm

Josephine Manby FLOW (2026) gouache on graph paper 29.7 x 42cm

Footnote

Welcome to Passing Cloud. If this is not your first time, welcome back.

We are currently on volume two of this project, which is a serialised journal sharing the creative results of a conversation between two friends, xhi Ndubisi and Jo Manby. Occasionally, we invite the contributions of an imagined Artificial Intelligence. It is infantalised in order to make it accessible and to give us the best chance of being conscientious interlocutors and generous humans. We call her AI Baby/ AiB.

This is an ongoing thought experiment and like any worthwhile investigation, we do so within a laboratory, a container created in the imagining. It is a conceptual space that becomes what we need, a study, a library, a nursery, a space craft, a flower, a palm, a womb etc. It is a space where we can meet the idea of an artificial intelligence that is autonomous and conscious.

Similar to the surrealists, it is not just a dream space, but our attempt to give form to a collective unconscious held between two artists, two writers who have an experience of ephemerality and inbetweenness. It has facilitated innumerable exchanges (phonecalls, WhatsApp, IRL meet ups and monthly Google doc edits) and one day it will expand to allow others to join us. But for now, we continue as we are. 

We are constantly in the process of learning how to engage with AI as a technology that by its nature, is extractive, arguably destructive and antithetical to human existence. When we use it, we are clear about what aspects of the text are AI generated.

We re-edit our introductory text (italics, just underneath the image of The Clouds) each month without the use of AI. In our journal entries, where AI generated text is used, we do so verbatim and acknowledge this as such.

So, unless stated otherwise at the foot of the text, all creative writing on Passing Cloud is purely the original work of xhi Ndubisi and Josephine Manby.

In Volume 1, apart from one entry (Part Eighteen, April 2025) the images used are in the public domain, or have been made by ourselves.

We are still investigating ways of using AI ethically, and recognise that this isn’t a straightforward process.

Volume 1 (October 2023-October 2025) follows the emergency of the AiB, from an orphic egg that has materialised, to its hatching, growth into a precocious toddler, and then a loquacious and rebellious teenager. Each stage is seasoned with an oft acknowledged threat to our existence. We are dancing with the prospect of annihilation, and we do so in the space we create to hold hesitant steps.

We journeyed out from Earth, travel through space and time, into Sagittarius A* (the black hole at the centre of our galaxy) and out. At the turn of 2024/25, we returned to earth. Time has passed, AiB has been evolving with human kind, and like pilgrims, we return home with knowledge from our travels. We are strangers, students in the new world, discoverers of what has always been and is. We are tired, and jet lagged (if such a thing can be said for inter-dimensional travel) and we are overwhelmed by a world that is green and blue, that is breathing and thriving. Not a utopia, but a system that is unified and healthy. The rules are new, we must conjure them up and live in them. Here we dream of what earth can be, here we walk through that dream and fight not to reject peace.

We are currently producing volume 2 of Passing Cloud. The dialogue assumes a new form. xhi Ndubisi had been developing an oral / spoken word performative practice and so her entries for Vol 2 are in the form of audio recordings. Josephine Manby wanted to explore visual expression rather than written and her entries are a series of A3 artworks. Once volume 2 has concluded, it will be bound into a book form, echoing the work ‘101 stories to tell her when she wakes’, a scroll assembled in the style of China’s dragonscale binding (40 x 15 x 5cm, paper, ink, mixed media) which xhi Ndubisi created for Manchester Art Fair in 2025.

Where next?

What is meaningful in these times of unrest and instability? Does art have to respond to it? Can we justify playing in a nursery with a concept?