Geoscience Australia developed DEA as a “data cube” which stacks 40 years of Australian satellite data into a database form that is accessible using a range of GIS applications and programming environments.

Scientists at DEA use satellite data to track environmental change over time, assessing vegetation health and the presence of water on the land. In order to track these changes however, they must filter clouds and cloud shadow from the data in order to obtain a clear picture of the land, and they employ complex algorithms to identify and excise this atmospheric noise. The result of this filtering is a huge and constantly growing archive of “invalid data” – which is in fact a multi-year record of the incredible cloud formations that daily spread across the continent.

Production of these images involved working creatively with the structures and capacities of the DEA platform, and in particular, with the Fmask and ACCA algorithms used in DEA to mask clouds and cloud shadow. These images invert normal geoscientific process, filtering out the land and focusing on the cloud data that is usually filtered from the archive. In choosing to focus on the clouds and algorithmically filter everything else, this project inverts the figure/ground relationship employed in satellite imaging, bringing what is normally deemed redundant into focus.

Invalid Data W.E.S.T.

One of the off-shoots of this project is a moving image project, produced in collaboration with improvising trip W.E.S.T. made up of three incredible musicians - Felicity Wilcox on piano, John Encarnacao on guitar, and Lloyd Swanton on bass. Envisaged as a multi-channel installation, the trailer for this project is below.

The project features multi-camera recordings of the trio in performance, set against images from Cooke's "invalid data" project, which uses cloud-filtering algorithms from Geoscience Australia to produce stunning satellite images of clouds. This project received development funding from the UTS FASS School of Communications Incentive Grant Program, and support from the SCU School of Arts and Social Sciences. This project was recorded in Southern Cross University's Studio One29 facility, by staff and students at SCU. Many thanks to our incredible crew: Ian Slade, Steve Law, Brendan Waters, Jeremy Austin, Amadeus Bell-Todd, Rose Edmondson-Kordas, Nick Chard, Aneira Elwyn, Alexander Thompson and Troy Schmidt.