Collapse: Clouds of affective dust

This paper aims to look well beyond the metaphor of ‘the cloud’ as simply a way of describing a mode of data storage, which we see as just one of many systems and activities that are pertinent to the metaphor. While the cloud might at first seem indicative of a collapse of materiality, our argument insists on the cloud’s inextricability from both very concrete matters and from collapses inherent to the concrete. These collapses throw up what we call a ‘cloud of affective dust’. Along these lines, the materiality of the cloud lies in its capacity to shift and alter the course of events through affective impact – or, more abstractly, in its potentiality. The paper explores various forms of collapse, where a fall-out throws up this cloud of ‘dust’, offering access to future potential. A series of examples are employed to demonstrate how collapse might operate as a specific technique inside creative practice. In particular, the paper focuses on Arakawa and Gin’s Bioscleave House, proposing that this environment attempts to incorporate in its design a perpetual collapse that resituates domestic habitation in a cloud of affective dust.