Castles in the Cloud offers the experience of approaching a city, capturing the moment of anticipation as the glittering lights of a skyline rise up to meet you. Squares of light and colour pepper the cityscape, emulating the pockets of different lives and realities held within. On careful examination, the artificial and constructed nature of the city is what enables its halo. Organic shapes are drawn with the curved brush of metal honeycombs, while lustrous vinyl winks at the towering metal and acrylic facades. Waves of colour and motion weave through the cityscape painted from projections of AI-generated and data-based artwork, emulating the dynamic swells and vibrant expectancy of its inhabitants renewing their commitment to their urban rituals. Like moths to a flame, we have long been enticed by the allure of bright city lights and the glimmer of possibility they hold. On approach, we are initially drawn in by the looming silhouette behind the skyline itself. This is a portrait of a modern city and the duality it represents: a place formed from layer upon layer of transparency and reflection, whose sparkling promises are as much in the eye of the beholder as in the explicit reality of our surroundings. Crafted out of mesh and uniform squares emulating pixels, Castles in the Cloud contemplates this tension between fantasy and physical amid a growing blending of realities between digital and physical, cloud and steel, abstract and actual. It invites us to examine our relationship with the halo of promise and the filter of expectation. There is no closer contact, no denser population than the urban environment, yet what do we know about the seemingly sparkling lives that own the shoulders we brush by everyday? How much of our impressions are grounded, and how much are projections? How much of the allure that we experience is real, or our own castles in the air? Music: By This River, by Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto Collection of projected artworks by Team Lab, Refik Anadol, Sofia Crespo, Daniel Canogar and Entangled Others