Empire of Clouds is the culmination of six years of doctoral research along the ancient Silk Road. It offers a colorful invitation to a cosmic journey that moves from the secret archives of the Vatican to the architectures of machine learning. In the personal library of the Ottoman sultan in Constantinople, we encounter the prototypes of our own algorithmic future.

The voyage traces how the fantastical atmospheres of miniature paintings open toward the unknown depths of the cosmos. Within the mineral waves of marble-clad temples, we rediscover the turbulent birth of galaxies. The pixel becomes the cosmos, the pigment becomes the algorithm. Once expressed through myths and prophecy, the cloud returns today as the governing principle of our societies: a planetary technological infrastructure that reshapes how we think and create.

The compass for cultural evolution is no longer the Italian Renaissance of Florence but the Turkish Renaissance which took place in Herat, Afghanistan. This was a model of civilization where algorithms and cosmology entangled within an iridescent vision of the world.