Atlas of the Cloud

Everyone is kept under the illusion of living in the centre of a huge cloud, from which information, products, ready-made meals, drivers, potential relationships fall as if by magic... All information, all things, all people are accessible in a click. Every desire is fulfilled, every action optimized.

However, in reality, what seems immaterial is based on infrastructures, heavy, immense, expensive and polluting;

What seems to be volatile is in reality heavy;

What seems algorithmic is actually based on click workers and/or ubiquitous workers

What seems fluid is actually perennial and hegemonic;

What seems practical is actually extractivist

What seems innovative is actually toxic;

What seems free is actually expensive;

The Atlas of the Cloud provides a visual panorama of this system.

We collect images of online uses (home deliveries, video-conferences, dating apps...), and the infrastructures they require (data centers, delivery warehouses, automated factories...) Each plate of the Atlas shows a fragment of our living environment. How does the « cloud-society » appear ?

« The internet is what Dickens would call "the best and worst of times." It is almost human in all its flaws, yet we see it as an objective, technological system. The variation of this phenomenon is at the center of Stéphane Degoutin and Gwenola Wagon's work Atlas of the Cloud. A collection of photographs presented as if it were a Google search. Almost every conceivable element of Internet use is reflected here. If you walk up, you'll see package photos, happy faces, tourist destinations and artwork. But take a step back and you'll notice the magnitude of the work. The collection of small photos, so easy to peruse up close, takes up almost two entire walls and the further away you get, the more cluttered it gets. », Ayrton van Noort, De geur van het internet: kilometers kabels en grote bedragen, MisterMotley, 3 janvier 2023