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A Planetary Order

Artist & Writer in Residence Exhibition June 2009

Richard Hamblyn, writer in residence, and Martin John Callanan, artist-in-residence, held a joint launch for a new book and work of art linked by the theme of clouds.

Martin John Callanan created A Planetary Order, a terrestrial globe showing clouds around the planet from one single moment in time. Callanan’s A Planetary Order examines the fragility and interdependence of the Earth’s environmental systems.

A Planetary Order


The data to make the globe came from satellites overseen by NASA and the European Space Agency. Callanan then turned the raw data into a 3D computer model with the help of the UCL Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art. It was printed at the Digital Manufacturing Centre at the UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment.

Data Soliloquies is a book about the extraordinary cultural fluidity of scientific data. A wide array of graphs, charts, computer models and other forms of visual advocacy have become inescapable fixtures of public science presentations, though they are often treated as if they were neutral ‘found objects’ rather than elaborate narrative constructions containing high levels of statistical uncertainty. Through a mix of essays and artworks, this witty and engaging book — the result of a collaboration between Richard Hamblyn and Martin John Callanan during their terms as writer and artist in residence at the UCL Environment Institute — examines the theatricality of scientific data display, while critiquing some of the poorly designed statistical wallpaper that surrounds so much public science debate.

Hardcover: 112 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0903305044
£7.99 (with free UK postage)

You can now order copies from here.

For distribution, wholesale and quantity orders please contact Slade Press on +44 (0)207 679 2336 or books@sladepress.com

Data Soliloquies


Writer in Residence Book Launch

Richard Hamblyn’s book Extraordinary Clouds is a celebration of unusual cloud formations and atmospheric phenomena. Some of the most spectacular images in Hamblyn’s book came from The Cloud Appreciation Society, a 17,000-strong group of cloudspotters.

Extraordinary Clouds


Extraordinary Clouds is available from all good bookshops and A Planetary Order will go on display at UCL’s Pearson Building later this summer. Discover the amazing and unexpected world of clouds with this inspiring collection of images. Richard Hamblyn offers a selection of some of the most startling and unusual cloud formations, from the uniform streaks of 'cloud streets' to the odd bulbous 'lenticularis' that are commonly mistaken for UFOs. Each amazing photograph will be accompanied by Hamblyn's entertaining and informative explanation of how the cloud was formed and the conditions in which a similar one might occur. The images chosen use satellite photography of clouds from above as well as ground-based pictures and the collection demonstrates the most unexpected and seemingly impossible patterns that can be created by the natural cycles of the weather. Hamblyn has already written several books on the subject, including The Invention of Clouds, which won the LA Times Book Prize, and a pictorial guide to cloud formations called The Cloud Book. Extraordinary Clouds grew out of his research for the latter as he amassed a collection of images that did not fit into any standard category, such as the uniform streaks of ‘street clouds’ and the bulbous ‘lenticularis’ sometimes mistaken for UFOs.