Taking a page out of a popular children’s-book-turned-movie, the Cloud Project is taking aim at the sky to bring strawberry-flavored joy to the world. The project is the brainchild of Zoe Papadopoulou and Cathrine Kramer, students at the Royal College of Art in London. Using advances in nanotechnology and cloud seeding technology, the duo propose shooting ingredients into the sky using cannons mounted on the roof of an ice cream van…to make the clouds snow ice cream.

The project is all about bending the environment to continue supporting us, even when our conventional resources run dangerously low. Papadopoulou and Kramer want to use the idea of artillery-dispersed ice cream ingredients can start a dialogue about real-world scientific solutions to global challenges. The team invite viewers into the van to learn about nanotechnology and cloud-seeding techniques, and to imagine the possibilities of using these methods to manipulate the world’s environment for our benefit.

Whether you agree with the idea of changing the global environment or not, the idea of catching strawberry-flavored ice cream on your tongue is definitely an intriguing one. At this point it’s little more than an exercise in imagination, but when showing off their ideas at events the team offers visitors a sweet treat: ice cream made via molecular gastronomy.