Soft Index

2026 • affichage en espace public et page web interactive

Soft Index is a research project that continuously observes the sky. Through a weather webcam, a computer vision system attempts to recognise figures in the clouds and, from these observations, formulates omens. The project unfolds online and has also been presented in public space in Noci, Puglia, Italy.

As children, we looked at the sky to find shapes in the clouds. Today, this same sky is a space increasingly under surveillance and being colonised. In some parts of the world, people look up with anxiety, waiting for a missile or a drone to appear. Elsewhere, only fragments of it are visible between buildings. And even when it seems empty, the sky is crossed, monitored and divided into zones with restricted access.

I became interested in this tension between the sky as a space for dreaming and contemplation, and the sky as a space of surveillance and control. I wanted to explore what would happen if technologies used to monitor and classify the world were redirected towards a form of contemplation. What might they recognise in shapes that constantly change and dissolve?

It was through discovering La Veille du ciel. Aquarelles météorologiques d’André des Gachons that I began to draw a parallel between meteorological observation and the ancient practice of Roman augurs. Augurs marked out a portion of the sky and observed, among other signs, the flight of birds, interpreting their movements as expressions of the gods’ will. These signs could indicate whether a proposed action had their approval.

In Soft Index, ce champ d’observation est celui d’une webcam météorologique tournée vers le ciel de Noci. Jour et nuit, le système analyse les images et tente de reconnaître des figures dans les nuages.

This search echoes the phenomenon of pareidolia, our tendency to recognise familiar figures in clouds, waves or reflections. What we see in these shapes is influenced by our memories, expectations and visual culture. But what does a machine “see” when it looks at those same clouds?

In Soft Indexit thinks it recognises a mother, a widow, a witch. A mouth, a breast, a hand. It draws boxes around areas of the image, assigning each a name and a confidence score. Fleeting shapes become figures that are named, located and accompanied by a number that gives this reading the appearance of a measurement.

From these observations, it begins to formulate omens. It becomes a kind of contemporary augur, trying to read signs of the future through images inherited from the past.