Cloud Canyons is one of many bubble-machine pieces made by the Filipino avant-gardist David Medalla in the mid-1960s. An interesting marriage of mechanical and organic forms, Cloud Canyons uses a special bubble-generating machine to methodically produce random, meandering sculptural wedges of bubble which glisten like rainbows in staunch gallery lighting. I am a great supporter of art which is never the same twice.
Moments after I snapped this picture in the minimalist/conceptual wing of London's Tate Modern, a museum employee appeared out of nowhere, as if summoned, and stared me down, even though my camera was well put-away and there was no way she could have seen me. Could they have a remote sensing mechanism? Would they be protecting such an ephemeral sculpture from documentation, precisely our of a fear of making it definite?
If you like, I shall grow irreproachably gentle, not a man, but a cloud in trousers.
-- Vladimir Mayakovsky