October 13, 2021 ZINE: Entanglement Author(s): Fiona McDermott Image of 'Entanglement' Ireland at the 17th International Venice Architectural Biennale, 2021. Photo: Alan Butler © ANNEX This provocation to consider the cost of convenience of data technologies, comes in the form of a physical exhibition entitled Entanglement, as curated by the interdisciplinary design, art and research group, ANNEX. The exhibition sets out to dispel the myth of the internet as an ethereal or abstract entity and instead provokes visceral understandings of how data production and consumption territorialise the physical environment. The exhibition argues that the digital is material – the cloud is a complex, spatio-temporal reality that has distinct material and environmental consequences. In particular, Entanglement examines the position of Ireland in the evolution of global data infrastructures, both historically and into the present day. “Entanglement questions if any single discipline can understand and meaningfully respond to the environmental challenges brought about by the exponential growth of data technologies.” Today, the materiality of the data economy reveals itself locally across the Irish landscapes as a vast network of data centres, energy grids and subsea cable landing sites. in 2019, Dublin overtook London as the data centre capital of Europe. By the year 2027, data centres are forecast to consume thirty-one percent of Ireland’s total electricity demand. The exhibition uses the prism of heat, to foreground the thermodynamic processes necessary for data production, storage and distribution. Foremostly, the pavilion asserts that from the burning of campfires to the management of waste heat generated by contemporary data processes, the production and dissemination of information is intrinsically connected to the production and dissemination of heat. Entanglement questions if any single discipline can understand and meaningfully respond to the environmental challenges brought about by the exponential growth of data technologies. The complexities of these new territories require interdisciplinary connections between the humanities and engineering, as well as the bringing together of those from industry, activism and academia. Fiona McDermott, Trinity College Dublin This provocation is from the new zine from the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, exploring the ‘cost of convenience’ and the opaque impact that digital technology has on the environment. Read the Cost of Convenience Zine