Tributary
Environment and Society • 12m
A short experimental ethnographic film that traces the movement of natural resources through the Icelandic landscape against the visual and sonic sites of data centers and power plants.
The film explores the covert, 'black-boxed' data centers (remote and highly secure sites, obscured from maps and incredibly difficult to gain access to) against the power stations of the Icelandic landscape. These data centers are the physical locations of intensive computational processing that prop up the digital infrastructure of contemporary life.
Recorded from fieldwork and site visits to Iceland and the UK, this work aims to problematizes the notion of the 'green' data center and explores the intensive energy requirements of bitcoin mining and mass digital image production for cinema and VFX industries.
A collaboration between James Davoll, Paul Dolan and Pete Howson.
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