Demystification of the Cloud as Invisible Technology: Aesthetic, Spatial and Affective Aspects in Art and Critical Infrastructure Studies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18778/0208-6107.2024.08Keywords:
The Cloud, critical infrastructure studies, invisible technologyAbstract
The article examines the topic of the technological Cloud as one of the features of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It focuses on the Cloud’s ambivalences, discussing its various aesthetic, spatial and affective aspects. The methods for approaching the phenomenon of the Cloud are developed both in theory, in the disciplines of critical infrastructure (CI) studies and art studies as well as in visual arts practice. The main theoretical stances, from which the article draws on, are developed by Benjamin H. Bratton, James Bridle and Tung-Hui Hu. The article also briefly outlines the history of CI studies with its main areas of research (e.g data centre studies) and examples from the field of art. The issues addressed in the article include: the invisibility and inaccessibility of the Cloud (as a networked hyperobject and as a technological infrastructure), the architecture of data centres and the ambiguous relation that Cloud establishes with its users, as well as ecological concerns. The Cloud as invisible technology is discussed from many perspectives, from the one that supports its development straightforwardly, to those which attempt to demystify its seemingly immaterial image and indicate critically its relations with extractivism as well as suggest proposals of resistance.
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