This image is from the "Invalid Data" series, derived  from a critical engagement with the cloud-filtering algorithms employed by  Geoscience Australia’s “Digital Earth Australia” (DEA) satellite-imaging  platform.

For the past 40 years, NASA Landsat satellites have been circling the  Earth, capturing high-resolution multi-spectral images of the surface of the  planet from 700km into space. Scientists at DEA use satellite data to track  environmental change over time, and they employ complex algorithms to filter  clouds from the data and obtain a clear picture of the Earth. The result of  this filtering is a vast archive of “invalid data” – a 40-year record of the  incredible cloud formations that daily spread across the continent.

Inverting normal scientific process, the images in this series are derived  solely from this invalid data, showing the clouds, cloud shadow and fragments  of gauzy land that are deemed unusable for the purposes of scientific earth  observation.

Simultaneously algorithmic, computational and photographic, the images are  rendered using Near Infrared and Shortwave Infrared light, enabling a  dramatic colour space that separates cloud layers and types and foregrounds  atmospheric textures and phenomena invisible to the human eye.