Nephophile
“Nephophile” are machines that observe clouds.
They are protagonists from Yuguang Zhang and Tong Wu’s world-building project Bureau of Cloud Management — an imagined alternate reality where human and AI cloud observers (codename “Nephophile”) are both tasked with observing and documenting clouds under systematized workflow.
Cloud Observing Machines
In the wild field of Maajaam, Estonia, three Nephophile devices — each a camera, a phone booth, and an AI agent connected between them — are scattered across the lawn. They are positioned to study clouds differently: one sees through trees, one watches the pond, one views the open sky.
Each day, the three devices capture photos of clouds in their respective environments. Inside each device, an AI agent — a VLM and an LLM with knowledge of “cloud” suppressed — is tasked to digest these captures and develop new understanding of clouds. The scenes accumulate over time and become their primary source for learning what clouds could be.
The paired phone booth is the outlet for visitors to catch a snippet of this ongoing observation. Visitors lift the telephone to hear how situated experiences gradually shape divergent yet intimate definitions of “clouds.”
Exhibition View
Wild Bits 2025 · Maajaam, Ojaveere, Estonia
