Datafication: from the ecological issue with data centres to contemporary art
DS.WRITER:
Sophia Throuvala
Central Image: Yuri Pattison, dust scraper fan 3.4 world 2, 2017 (detail) | dust scraper fan 3.3 world 1, 2017 (detail) Courtesy: the artist | mother’s tankstation limited, Dublin | Labor, Mexico City | Photo: Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Gunnar Meier
On the occasion of the establishment and upcoming opening of the Lamda Helix data centres in Greece, a conversation can start concerning datafication’s impact on both life and art. Data Centres are buildings that house large computer structures and telecommunication and storage infrastructure. These structures, private or public, ensure the storage, processing and distribution of a large amount of data to their customers and users. Continuous and high-speed internet connectivity is required for the proper function of these structures.
Image source: bbc.com
The corporate benefits resulting from the existence of data centres are significant, but there are some issues that jeopardize the reliability of the advanced digital world. Data centres not only consume huge loads of energy and “eliminate” large amounts of terrain, altering the urban and natural ecosystem, but they also contribute to global warming in a way that will affect the data centre industry itself in the future. The rapid temperature fluctuations on the planet dictate the urgent need to change our way of thinking.
Image source: analyticsindiamag.com
The internet connectivity that is necessary for the existence of data centres results, 90% of the time, from undersea infrastructure, meaning cable systems. Specifically, global internet traffic cables are placed on the seabed to transport volumes of data around the world. The problem arising from the use of water as a "safe" site for the construction of cables is mainly ecological, and as much as data centres are a rapidly growing industry, they operate in risky conditions.
“And alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise, and our weather will become more extreme.” | Submarine Cable | Map Source: cbinsights.com
But what happens with water? The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) cites that there is a 93% chance that our planet will reach its highest temperature ever sometime between 2022 and 2026. Data centres use non-representative data as a reference for regulating the temperatures -through cooling systems- of the cables within the water. Taking into consideration the average temperature data recorded, which do not, however, include predictions of future years’ temperatures, they risk the acceleration of temperature increase within and around the cables.
Hito Steyerl ExtraSpaceCraft (2016) (Installation view from Kunstmuseum Basel). Photo: Marc Asekhame, courtesy of the Artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York and Esther Schipper, Berlin | Image source: news.artnet.com
Companies take the future into account but their main goal is short-term profit, which clouds the whole ecological approach. However, some companies, attempting to face the new challenges, are already trying to implement alternative ways of building and operating the centres, while it is also important to note that there is the thought of "colonizing" the North with data centres as it appears that the lower temperatures help maintain the temperature inside and outside the infrastructure. Of course, all of this raises new questions about the political and ecological implications of such a strategy.
Many artists, in an attempt to understand and criticise the concept of connectivity and the issues that derive from it, create new, groundbreaking works, distinguished by contemporary interpretations of both art and reality.
In this context, the term “gamification”* is used to clarify how easy it is to access a “space” (digital) that can generate unequal power relations, using, however, common language and databases. How easy is it to resist this advanced world? How does resistance translate into the indication of the system’s “obstacles”, which offers, in addition to other things, “safety”?
Hito Steyerl: Factory of the Sun by MOCA Assistant Curator Lanka Tattersall | Image Source: moca.org
For instance, Hito Steyerl has been dealing with the concept of the “non-invisible” in datafication since 2013. In her video “How Not to be Seen: A fucking didactical educational Mov File” she mentions the difficulty of being invisible in a world that collects data. The use of the so-called "camouflage" can "break the algorithm", which cannot process the convention of disguise. She expresses the desire to go unnoticed by the data check. In her recent and first retrospective exhibition titled "A Sea of Data", twenty-three of her works are presented, which deal precisely with the issue of data and public information as something - let's say - artificial as in the case of art.
Image source: curamagazine.com
Accordingly, Yuri Pattison's work explores the multiple relationships between visual culture, space, communication technologies and information circulation. Taking advantage of the physical space, he explores the concepts of open communication and boundaries in the modern workplace. He constructs complex narratives through data, archival sources and historical excerpts-testimonies. He focuses on advanced synchronization technologies and the relationship between digital economies and colonial tendencies. In 2017's Trusted Traveler he deals with non-existent borders and boundaries. In a network of cable ducts that hangs above the heads of visitors, the artist guides the viewer's gaze, through the controlled use of light, with great precision, raising the question of special vision and data invisibility based on tourist settlements. He too deals with camouflage and specially devised passports, in which personal identity meets defined political borders.
Other works, appropriating the language of the "problem" itself, are entirely digital, such as AdNauseam (2014) by Daniel C. Howe and Mushon Zer Aviv in collaboration with Helen Nissenbaum. This work is a browser extension that "clicks" on all the ads that appear on the user's screen, making his profile useless since the surveillance of such a seemingly active buyer produces an unmanageable, and possibly unmonitorable, amount of information.
With the weapon of "overidentification", artists try to give what the algorithm asks for in order to gain from it. commodify.us (2013) is a case in point. It is a project -online platform- created by Walter Langelaar and Birgit Barchelor, clearly and deliberately copying the aesthetics of start-up companies. On the home page they state the iconic “They make money from your data. Why shouldn’t you?", thus suggesting that you sell your data yourself, offering what the "system" asks for, while at the same time you earn what you deserve. The platform generously shows users the steps that, if followed blindly, will earn them money in return(!). The project raises the question of trust in each piece of information and the question of the ownership of this information.
Image source: cloudindx.com
Finally, in 2018, the artist James Bridle released his brilliant book “New Dark Age”, which is a work on the basic issues surrounding artificial intelligence and its dangerous feedback that arise today. In his work for Serpentine, he developed a platform called The Cloud Index, which feeds a neural network with satellite images of UK weather patterns and Brexit poll results. What the cloud index did was produce software that can be used to generate different weather forecasts, based on different political outcomes. In his book, Bridle makes an indirect reference to the promises of "Big Data" and the ecological approach of Silicon Valley, concluding the ideal solution for the company: "If we want to change the future, we must change the weather."
*“gamification”: when contemporary art acquires the characteristics of games and public-user interaction, simulating and/or employing social media platforms. It evokes a contemporary form of an experiment that appropriates the widespread internet lingo in order to reach certain conclusions as an artistic practice.
Di Raddo, E., From the artwork to the museum: Gamification as an instrument of Art, in Massi, M., Vecco, M., Li, Y. (ed.), Digital transformation in the cultural and creative industries. Production, Consumption and Entrepreneurship in the Digital and Sharing Economy., Routledge, Λονδίνο, 2020, σσ. 53- 83
Δραγώνα Δάφνη, The game of data: the asymmetries of power and the possibilities of resistance in the playful web, Δ.Δ Τμήμα Επικοινωνίας και Μέσων Μαζικής Ενημέρωσης, ΕΚΠΑ, 2016, σσ. 207-249
More Info:
https://jamesbridle.com/works/under-the-cloud
