States of Entanglement: Data in the Irish Landscape
ANNEX
ACTAR Publishers
English
ANNEX includes Sven Anderson, Alan Butler, David Capener, Donal Lally, Clare Lyster and Fiona McDermott.
Contributions by Patrick Bresnihan, Patrick Brodie, Catherine Ince, Merlo Kelly, Chris Morash, Paul O’Neill, and Nicole Starosielski.
Softcover
324 pages
160 x 230 mm
2021
ISBN 9781948765596
As our everyday lives become increasingly entangled with data technologies, the book addresses the utopian fantasy that surrounds the Cloud, as transcending physical presence or resourcing. By bringing the physical infrastructure around data, and its impact on the environment under the spotlight, it hopes to reframe how we understand data production and highlight the myth that information technologies are hidden and without major material manifestations on the landscape. The context for the book is Ireland which has a significant historical role in the evolution of global communications and data infrastructure. In 1866, the world’s first transatlantic telegraph cable landed on the West coast of Ireland. In 1901, the inventor of the radio Guglielmo Marconi transmitted some of the world’s first wireless radio messages from Ireland across the Atlantic Ocean to Newfoundland. Today, Dublin has overtaken London as the data centre hub of Europe, hosting 25% of all available European server space. And by the year 2027, data centres are forecast to consume a third of Ireland’s total electricity demand. The book aims to raise awareness around the hardware of the global internet and Cloud services, which is interwoven with the Irish landscape—made manifest through the vast constellation of data centres, fibre optic cable networks, and energy grids that have come to populate its cities and suburbs over recent decades.
The publication accompanies and supports Entanglement, the Irish Pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale by archiving the production of the pavilion filtered through a series of poetic excerpts that describe the form, components, content and furniture that make up the installation. At the same time the book is conceived as more than just a catalog by positioning some of the cultural and spatial implications of data technologies in Ireland within a more universal context through contributions by ANNEX, the team selected to produce the pavilion, as well as invited contributors from the disciplines of Media Theory; Journalism; Computer Science, Geography; History and Arch
About the Artists
ANNEX is a collaboration of artists, architects, and urban researchers born and/or based in Ireland who came together to curate the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021. ANNEX explores the material and cultural implications of large technical systems for the built environment with reference to architecture, art, computer science, and gaming platforms.
Members include Sven Anderson, Alan Butler, David Capener, Donal Lally, Clare Lyster and Fiona McDermott.
entanglement.annex.ie
(source https://entanglement.annex.ie/Team)
About the Publisher
The publishing house ACTAR was founded in 1994 in Barcelona with the objective of publishing titles that are a representative demonstration of the most influential practice and theory of established and emerging architects, designers and thinkers of contemporary culture. Consequently, ACTAR’S publishing program has become known internationally for disseminating the most innovative and risky works in the ambit of architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism.
actar.com
(source https://actar.com/about/)
