Launch: Acid Clouds. Mapping Data Centre Topologies (Nieuwe Instituut)

Acid Clouds: Mapping Data Centre Topologies explores the hidden infrastructures of our digital lives, exposing the political, ecological, and social dynamics embodied by data centres. Moving beyond the sanitized image of the “cloud,” it unpacks the material and ethical complexities of these often-overlooked data storage structures. During this event we will dive deeper into the themes explored in the publication with authors Niels Schrader and Ramon Amaro and guest speakers Marina Otero Verzier and Loïs Hutubessy.

About the speakers

Niels Schrader is a concept-driven information designer with a fascination for numbers and data. He is founder of the Amsterdam-based design studio Mind Design and member of the AGI – Alliance Graphique Internationale. Next to his design practice Schrader writes regularly for Grafikmagazin and Open! Platform for Art, Culture & the Public Domain. In his role as an educator Schrader focusses on social, political and environmental processes driven and influenced by digital technologies. In this context, he has initiated a number of large-scale research projects with partners from outside the academic environment. These institutions include governmental and non-governmental organizations like the Dutch Parliament, National Archives, Free Press Unlimited, Greenpeace, Hivos and Amnesty International. 

Ramon Amaro is Senior Researcher in Digital Culture at Het Nieuwe Instituut, the national institute for architecture, design and digital culture in The Netherlands. An engineer and sociologist by training, Ramon’s writings, research and artistic practice emerge at the intersections of Black Study, digital culture, psychosocial study, and the critique of computational reason. Before joining Het Nieuwe Instituut, Ramon worked as Lecturer in Art and Visual Cultures of the Global South at UCL (London), Engineering Program Manager for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and Quality Design Engineer for General Motors. His recently published book, The Black Technical Object: On Machine Learning and the Aspiration of Black Being (Sternberg, 2023) contemplates the abstruse nature of programming and mathematics, and the deep incursion of racial hierarchy, to inspire alternative approaches to contemporary algorithmic practice.

Marina Otero Verzier is an architect and researcher. She is a Dean’s Visiting Assistant Professor at GSAPP, Columbia University, New York, where she leads the ‘Data Mourning’ clinic, an educational initiative focused on the intersection between digital infrastructures and climate catastrophe, by invitation of Dean Jaque. She also teaches at Harvard GSD where she is a Lecturer in Architecture. In 2022, Otero received Harvard’s Wheelwright Prize for a project on the future of data storage. She collaborated with the Supercomputing Center of the DIPC to develop alternative models for storing data, such as the project Computational Compost, first presented at Tabakalera. Otero was also invited by the Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge, and Innovation to participate as an expert in the development of Chile’s first National Data Centers Plan, together with “Resistencia SocioAmbiental – Quilicura” and other local communities on the front lines of extractivism.

With an academic background in Information Systems (MSc, University of Amsterdam) Loïs Hutubessy works as a Collection System Manager at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. In the realm of Linked Open Data, she is particularly interested in how to provide access to data in the domain of cultural heritage, in a human-oriented way.

The publication of Acid Clouds was possible with support from Fonds 21, BPD Cultuurfonds, J.E. Jurriaanse Stichting.