Eryk Salvaggio, in his video piece A Butterfly in the Cloud (2021), explores the relationship between nature and technology. Salvaggio employs artificial intelligence to generate lyrics using the prompt “a butterfly in the cloud.” The lyrics and subsequent melancholy soundscape are punctuated with written text, which feels both natural and mechanical. By comparing butterflies and nature to data centers and USB drives, we are left to make sense of this mysterious metaphor, as well as question our own relationship to technology.
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Read a response to A Butterfly in the Cloud here.
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Eryk Salvaggio is an interdisciplinary researcher and artist. His focus is on
intersections of technology, society, and the environment, examining gaps that
emerge between datasets and the world they reflect. He graduated with a
masters in Applied Cybernetics from the 3A Institute at the Australian National
University in 2021.
