A Pataphysics of Data Centre Aesthetics

In: Acid Clouds. Mapping Data Centre Topologies, edited by Niels Schrader and Jorinde Seijdel. Rotterdam: nai010 publishers, 2024:78-93

The very nature of data centres makes it difficult to penetrate their content, which is why they are often compared to black boxes. By analysing the workings of the black box from a ‘pataphysical’ perspective – in the vein of late nineteenth-century Alfred Jarry and his science of imaginary solutions – such as Caleb Larsen’s Internet-connected artwork A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter, media theorist and curator Annet Dekker explores the socio-technical complications and ethical implications of the often invisible elements and numerous actors in and around data centres. She argues that data centre aesthetics is located in the encounters, arrangements and combinations through which it is constructed and generates information, or in the fragments and layers that may soon be excavated.

 

 

Image credit: Caleb Larsen, A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter, 2009