Harvested clay from data center locations, ulexite, rock samples, feather, soil, xerox prints, telephone pole insulator glass, creosote, single channel video, graphite on paper, raw borax, refined borax, electronic waste

Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California, Davis
June 2022
Winner of the LeShelle and Gary May Purchase Prize

During the summer of 2021, I took a road trip for the duration of four weeks to visit twelve data center locations, camping at or near each for a number of nights. I drove to Oregon, Nevada through the deserts of California, Utah and Arizona. Curious to experience and chronicle the emerging condition that the data center embodies, I traveled to these zones and inhabited the machine landscapes that invisibly run the modern world. I was interested in exploring these massive and energy-consuming buildings and the surrounding landscape as more than just computational infrastructure, but monuments to human knowledge in an increasingly disconnected society.

For most of us, “The Cloud” is an intangible, mystical, infinite place. Most of us don't see the underbelly or experience the internet as objects. These different objects are described in a bunch of mixed abstract metaphors that reference the landscape and yet deny any relation the physical relationship between the earth and the internet. The gap between the physical reality of the Cloud, and what we can see of it, between the idea of the cloud and the name that we give it was both disturbing and intriguing. At the data centers, I’ve found cement, metal gates, water tanks, stone, grasshoppers, sagebrush and sunburns. Inside smashed electronics I’ve found a complex assemblage of conductive materials, silicon, rare-earth minerals and sharpied handwriting from the factory. 

It was at the very edge of the continent that the internet emerged, the edge of westward expansion. The insatiable hunger for space extended into cyberspace. But that cyberspace requires physical space all around the world. This pattern of land use, on such a massive scale, adheres to the American West's signature mythology; endless horizons, unlimited opportunity and boundless freedom. 
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I collected data at these sites and along fiber optic pathways in the form of soil, clay, native, non-native plants and rocks. The information inside the giant secured warehouses seemed oblivious to the knowledge of the earth and stone they were built upon.


You can read more about the project from an artist feature with on.off-site




from Clouds of the American West

Transcending Physicality
San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery
2023





Sites visited:

1. National Security Agency Data Center
40.4257796598849, -111.93419625915199

2. Facebook Data Center
44.29512284907158, -120.88501868367571

3. Apple Data Center
44.28855126056528, -120.87613851490943

4. Apple Data Center
39.56667605261107, -119.54850721164398

5. Google Data Center
36.056316005111185, -115.00905600154655

6. Switch Data Center
39.512824, -119.472852

7. Google Data Center
39.500887, -119.429850

8. Digital Realty Data Center
33.276752, -111.889563

9. Edgecore Data Center
33.70950919626336, -111.43315270068169

10. Facebook Data Center
33.35120432169686, -111.66429198242842

11. Apple Data Center
33.347625816491856, -111.60433051904087

12. Tonaquint Data Center
37.08157099060394, -113.6071193573538