Vanessa Graf (she/her) is a writer and researcher in critical data studies. From 2020-25, she was a junior researcher at the Critical Media Lab Basel, where she conducted her PhD project Head in the Cloud on the material-semiotic construction of the data center industry in the Alps (SNF grant no.207142). She holds a Bachelor in Political Science from SciencesPo Paris and a Master in Media and Culture Studies from the University of Art and Design Linz. As a side quest, she is completing a BSc. in Biology at the University of Salzburg.
In her research, she is interested in the sociotechnical imaginaries inherent in information systems, and likes to examine the technologization and datafication of nature. In both her research and literary work, she uses language as a method of analysis.
contact
e-mail: hallo [at] vanessagraf [dot] at
instagram: @grfvaness
Head in the Cloud
The Material-Semiotic Construction of the Data Center Industry in the Alps, or: Materializations of the Imaginary
Head in the Cloud is a PhD project studying the data center industry in the Alps. It is a hyper-local study of the global technology, examining its infrastructures and the rhetoric, narratives, and sociotechnical imaginaries that shape them.
Firmly based in interviews and field visits conducted over the course of four years, the project takes a narrative- and language-based approach to network infrastructure. The interplay of material conditions and cultural logics in the construction, management, and development of data centers is at the center of the investigation.
In this reading, the cloud and its network infrastructures emerge as neither merely conceptual nor merely material, but fundamentally both: material-semiotic. Network infrastructures, in this sense, are materializations of imaginaries, their cultural, conceptual, and imagined components – their poetics – as essential to their construction and upkeep as their material ones.
Head in the Cloud is an ethnography of infrastructure, an anthropological account of data centers in the Alps, and a media-scientific study of the cloud and its local manifestations. At the same time, it is an inquiry into language-based (artistic) research methods and their potential in anthropological research.
This PhD project was supervised by Prof Dr Karin Harrasser at the University of Art and Design Linz, Austria, and Prof Dr Dorothée King at the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW, Switzerland.
The project was funded by the SNSF DOC.CH research grant for the period 2022–2025 (grant no.207142).
Key words: infrastructure – data center industry – cloud computing – Alps – sociotechnical imaginaries – infrastructural poetics – anthropology – media studies - language-based artistic research
material internet field kits: warszawa (2022) and linz (2020)
The material internet field kits are counter-mythologies to the lore of the disembodied Cloud. They are repositories of images, doodles, stories, photographs, maps, and field notes, adding to a growing imaginary of digital technology beyond the idea of an ever-present, ubiquitous, immaterial Cloud. Always rooted in specific places, they are tours of local infrastructures as well as fantastic(al) collections of cables, landing sites, antennas, and data centers.
The material internet field kit: linz was created as part of the research project Building the Symbiotic Net and exhibited at BESTOFF 2020, BESTOFF sommerfrische 2020, and the 2021 Ars Electronica Festival.
The material internet field kit: warszawa was commissioned by and exhibited at the 2022 Biennale Warszawa. It is the result of a two-week residency in and around Poland's internet infrastructures.
Building the Symbiotic Net: Moving Towards a Non-Extractive Internet in Linz, Austria (2020)
The Symbiotic Net argues that by approaching the internet through its local, physical instances, it becomes possible to address its environmental impacts and find ways to design a more regenerative, careful, and responsive medium.
The town of Linz, Austria, serves as an entry point to a reflection on the global internet and shows how regional initiatives, projects, and activists are working to create and impact a more ecologically and socially just Internet. The book is based on a variety of interviews and field visits, and presents a look at local infrastructures, people, and environments who are working towards a more response-able Internet, one small server at a time.
This project was a master thesis supervised by Prof Dr Karin Harrasser at the University of Art and Design Linz, Austria.
Key words: infrastructure – data center industry – cloud computing – Alps – natureculture - infrastructural poetics - media anthropology – media studies
Literature
In German only
seismographen kaufen wo, Auszug nachzulesen im Salz Dezember 2024 (gefördert durch das 2024 Jahresstipendium Literatur des Salzburger Landes)
Bad Verhaun, nachzulesen in der Rampe 2022/1 zum Anlass der Talentförderungspremie Literatur des Landes Oberösterreich
mare nostrum, ausgezeichnet mit dem Förderpreis der Literaturbiennale FLORIANA 2020, nachzulesen in der Rampe 2021/1
genauso schwarz wie hier, ausgezeichnet mit dem Förderpreis der Rauriser Literaturtage 2020, nachzulesen im Salz Oktober 2020
