The Cloud Cycle is an educational and interactive banner that illuminates the material relationship between one’s digital footprint and natural resource consumption. This immersive photograph references the digital “cloud,” a global network of remote servers that allow us to store data and run software on the Internet, rather than on our home computers. While the name “cloud” suggests a weightless, ephermal, and atmospheric form, it has a terrestrial home in large data centers that require massive amounts of water and energy to run. In Utah’s own arid landscape, my research shows that National Security Agency data centers operate on 65 megawatts of power and use approximately 1.7-6 million gallons of water to cool servers every day. The Cloud Cycle gives presence to these material realities, rendering visible what is often concealed by marketing language and imagery.
This installation takes inspiration from the Water Cycle, a hydraulic cycle that circulates our planet’s water through processes of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. Displayed as a cluttered desktop, or a “complicated web-of-sites,” The Cloud Cycle follows the Internet’s “cloud” cycle and the network of water bodies that support it.
Images courtesy of Kimball Art Center.