Glow Clouds

About

A glow cloud refers to a mobile lighting fixture featuring a lampshade made out of cotton in the shape of a cloud. On Tumblr, the novelty lamp is primarily associated with fan art tributes to the character with the same name featured in the popular podcast series Welcome to Night Vale.

Origin

On July 1st, 2012, the science fiction podcast Welcome to Night Vale released its second episode titled “Glow Cloud”^[4] In the episode, a mysterious glowing cloud descends on the fictional city, and because of its ability to execute mind control over those around it, the citizens of the town repeats “All hail the mighty Glow Cloud.” The earliest known D.I.Y assembly instructions for a glow cloud was featured on 3 Chic Geeks^[10] on September 20th, 2013.

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Richard Clarkson’s Cloud

On October 16th, 2013, Design Taxi^[7] published a post titled “A Fluffy Cloud Lamp That Plays Music,” which featured a cloud lamp created by artist Richard Clarkson which doubled as a speaker and featured motion sensors that allowed the lamp to produce thunder and lightning effects when activated. In 2014, the artist continued to work on the lamp and added numerous additional features, including an audio-responsive LED-bulb and a bluetooth-enabled subwoofer speaker that can be activated via remote control. On February 14th, 2014, Clarkson uploaded a demo video for the product to Vimeo,^[2] which has been covered by Fast Company^[6] and The Daily Dot.^[1] Although Clarkson has never explicitly stated whether his project was inspired by the mysterious character in Welcome to Night Vale, The Cloud has been often described as a real life “glow cloud” from the podcast.

Welcome to Night Vale Fan Art

On January 29th, 2014, YouTuber WishinOnKristyn^[8] uploaded a video titled “DIY Cloud Light! (Recycled Christmas Lights Idea # 2).” On February 9th, YouTuber ThreadBanger^[9] uploaded a video titled “DIY Glow Cloud.” As of June 2014, the video has gained over 110,000 views.

On June 24th, Tumblr user wifightclub^[12] published a post that featured pictures of her Glow Cloud art project. In less than two weeks the post gained over 270,000 notes. As of July 2014, there are over 18,000 pieces of fan art tagged Glow Cloud on DeviantArt.^[5]