24/7
‘Server systems are made to run continuously 365 days a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours each day…there is an up and down, depending on which tasks are being completed and which tasks are about to get started. So we could say there is music on the systems. You can hear it. You can feel it…..’
- Carsten Thiede, Server Room Technician, The Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing, TU Dresden
24/7 is an audiovisual installation of four large cuboids which combine moving lights and field recordings of the TU Dresden University data centres with the human voice. Inspired by the growing world of high performance computing the work explores the sound of whirring ventilation systems as well as the isolated microtonal sounds emitted from different racks of supercomputers. These evolve into a human/machine choir of 200 voices which hum and vibrate viscerally, replicating the intensity of the working data centre environment.
The work walks us through a sequence of six intense moods through its use of colour and sound, creating space for individual associations and deliberations. The physical experience of the installation brings visibility to an invisible system, amplifying the inaudible changes of becoming a digital society as it illuminates how individual use connects to large scale infrastructures and noise. The only words clearly audible are emails, recited as part of the artworks soundscape, creating an immediate connection to the visitors. It was these specific online activities that caused the noise, the reading of them points to the obscure connection between remote communication and the technological forces that we set in motion by so doing.
There are around 50,000 data centres in Germany alone, many of which are in the region which provides the field recordings featured in 24/7. The reality of how AI’s infrastructure exists in the physical world and its negative environmental impact alongside the beauty and possibilities of the potential of AI are all reflected in 24/7. The artwork creates space for different perspectives on how we approach uncertainty as we enter this new age of technological advancement.
Project partners: Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden, Prof. Dr. Orit Halpern, Chair of Digital Cultures and Societal Change, TUD; Jun.-Prof. Miriam Akkermann, Chair of Empirical Musicology, TUD; Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ercan Altinsoy, Chair of Acoustics and Haptics, TUD; Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, Dr Matthew McGinity and Bürgerchor am Kulti Dresden.
16 channel audio installation, 4 subwoofers, 32 cameo lights, 4 site-specific cubes (2m x 2m), wood and CYC fabric
Photography: Frank Kleinbach (Sindelfingen)