Homes of the Internet: Difference between revisions
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Description/Exhibition history subheadings — kept simple as requested). --> | Description/Exhibition history subheadings — kept simple as requested). --> | ||
[[File:HomesOfInternet-Lead.jpg|thumb|500px|California nr. 1, c-print, 2015]] | [[File:HomesOfInternet-Lead.jpg|thumb|500px|California nr. 1, c-print, 2015]] | ||
A clone of modernist Californian architecture: subdivided into multiple sandy volumes, decorated with large and long white studio windows, a pergola, palm trees, banana plants and the American flag, the building is a suburban home of the Internet: a cable landing point in technical terminology. It houses 'critical infrastructure,' those fibre optic cables of which Google has already quietly purchased 102.362 km to build up and out its very own internet of tomorrow. As one of many dispersed 'fibre huts' this house embodies above ground what actually sits below: 1.126.540 km of submarine cables networked into a contemporary version of the Roman road system (Lovink, 2019). While Google concentrates on South America with the cables, it aims at Africa with its balloons. | A clone of modernist Californian architecture: subdivided into multiple sandy volumes, decorated with large and long white studio windows, a pergola, palm trees, banana plants and the American flag, the building is a suburban home of the Internet: a cable landing point in technical terminology. It houses 'critical infrastructure,' those fibre optic cables of which Google has already quietly purchased 102.362 km to build up and out its very own internet of tomorrow. As one of many dispersed 'fibre huts' this house embodies above ground what actually sits below: 1.126.540 km of submarine cables networked into a contemporary version of the Roman road system (Lovink, 2019). While Google concentrates on South America with the cables, it aims at Africa with its balloons.<br> | ||
The expansion of this matrix of infrastructures is not only gaining outer but also inner territory as 'Google is focused. On everything' (Levie, 2012). We all know of its other acquisitions that colonise private backyards, garages, homes, and bodies, such as drones, cars, thermostats, smoke detectors, domestic robots, surveillance cameras, and glasses, standardised and placed 'quasi-everywhere,' designed to allow for and gain overall access to an integrated global data network. While this network's future will be made by artificial intelligence and life extension, its operations and interventions will remain extractive.<br> | The expansion of this matrix of infrastructures is not only gaining outer but also inner territory as 'Google is focused. On everything' (Levie, 2012). We all know of its other acquisitions that colonise private backyards, garages, homes, and bodies, such as drones, cars, thermostats, smoke detectors, domestic robots, surveillance cameras, and glasses, standardised and placed 'quasi-everywhere,' designed to allow for and gain overall access to an integrated global data network. While this network's future will be made by artificial intelligence and life extension, its operations and interventions will remain extractive.<br> | ||
[[Homes of the Internet (text)|read the full text]]<br> | [[Homes of the Internet (text)|read the full text]]<br> | ||
Revision as of 08:29, 30 August 2026
A clone of modernist Californian architecture: subdivided into multiple sandy volumes, decorated with large and long white studio windows, a pergola, palm trees, banana plants and the American flag, the building is a suburban home of the Internet: a cable landing point in technical terminology. It houses 'critical infrastructure,' those fibre optic cables of which Google has already quietly purchased 102.362 km to build up and out its very own internet of tomorrow. As one of many dispersed 'fibre huts' this house embodies above ground what actually sits below: 1.126.540 km of submarine cables networked into a contemporary version of the Roman road system (Lovink, 2019). While Google concentrates on South America with the cables, it aims at Africa with its balloons.
The expansion of this matrix of infrastructures is not only gaining outer but also inner territory as 'Google is focused. On everything' (Levie, 2012). We all know of its other acquisitions that colonise private backyards, garages, homes, and bodies, such as drones, cars, thermostats, smoke detectors, domestic robots, surveillance cameras, and glasses, standardised and placed 'quasi-everywhere,' designed to allow for and gain overall access to an integrated global data network. While this network's future will be made by artificial intelligence and life extension, its operations and interventions will remain extractive.
read the full text
Series of c-prints, research, text, 2015/2021
Commissioned by the Austrian Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia 2021, curated by Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer.
Art Center Los Angeles, 2015
With the support of Art Center Los Angeles / MDP.
Team: Nick Meehan, Selwa Sweidan, Erika Katrina Barbosa, Zhihan Ying
