Data Tactics
Information and Colonization Strategies in the Data Center *Technocene*
Image> Data Tactics, Model (12"x12"x12")
Eduardo Teran.
Authors:
Eduardo Cilleruelo Teran
Awards:
Institution:
Cornell University
College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP)
Dates:
Spring 2024
Research collaborators:
Valeria Villanova
Veronica Paulon
Frank LaPuma
Juan Agustin Rivera
Ipek Temizkan
Concrete models> Data Tactics, Eduardo Teran.
The exhibition "Data Tactics, Information Control and Colonization Strategies in the Data Center Technocene” as part of the Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) Freedom of Expression at Cornell AAP, invites contemplation on data centers as relics of our technological time. In this era, data centers have ascended as modern-day temples, shaping our digital identities and exerting a profound influence on societal structures. As one of the award recipients, Eduardo Cilleruelo Teran presents the exhibition as a relationship between architecture, power, and surveillance within these infrastructural behemoths. Through nine operating strategies, the exhibition exposes the hidden dimensions of data centers, highlighting their role in reshaping our understanding of space, labor, and control. As part of the CCA's commitment to free expression, the exhibition invites the community to engage with these critical dialogues and explore the intersections of technology, architecture, and freedom in the digital age.
Data centers have emerged as contemporary hubs, where communication technology assumes a ubiquitous ‘deity’ role in our Technocene world
Data centers drawings> Data Tactics, Eduardo Teran.
Research video> Data Tactics, Eduardo Teran.
Concrete models> Data Tactics, Eduardo Teran.
Concrete models> Data Tactics, Eduardo Teran.
While, since their historical origins, human settlements have been designed around resource and goods-sharing, data centers force a reconsideration of the traditional understandings of land, energy, and labor. In previous eras, user-centricity was a common vision in manufactured processes, industrial implementations, and the early digital age.
Concrete models> Data Tactics, Eduardo Teran.
However, in the era of information control, data centers are now the custodians of our digital twins, administering the boundaries of our expression, and orchestrating a global surveillance system with an escalating reliance on non-human entities. Popular culture perceives them as technological vessels with limited accessibility, operating as zones of exclusion, emphasizing security and common interests with no public disclosure
Catalog of data centers> Data Tactics, Eduardo Teran.
Concrete models> Data Tactics, Eduardo Teran.
Concrete models> Data Tactics, Eduardo Teran.
Data Tactics, Information Control and Colonization Strategies in the Data Center Technocene explores actions and protocols shaping the crucial infrastructure of our time. Through the matching of nine operating strategies (camouflage, extract, infiltrate, occupy, hide, inhabit, fortify, parasite, switch) with architectural models, the exhibition prompts reflection on the architectural scales and protocols, defining colonial implementations where the building leaves its definition to: acquire a radical infrastructural meaning, operate as a political subject, acquire resources and administrate territory.
Image> Data Monumentality, 3D Model, Hyun Jun Cho, Eduardo Teran.
The exhibit questions nine existing case studies where the capacity of the data center is hidden through a larger infrastructural development. As part of the Cornell Council for the Arts Freedom of Expression Exhibition at Cornell AAP, the exhibit invites our community to step in and breakthrough into the relics of information-control infrastructure.
Concrete models> Data Tactics, Eduardo Teran.
Catalog> Data Tactics, Eduardo Teran.
Catalog> Data Tactics, Eduardo Teran.
Catalog> Data Tactics, Eduardo Teran.