Under the Cloud: Port, Material Flow, Data Valleys

云下贵州：端口，物质流，数据山脉

"Under the Cloud" is the first stop of PORT, a long-term project focusing on the narratives of technological infrastructures in China. It aims to delve into the dwelling of humans within the mosaics of nature and technology, discussing the solid, unchanging, mundane, dull, enormous and invisible/neglected infra-layers of digital life and the lifespan of such facilities in deep-time. The project began in 2021 and over the course of two years, has invited over twenty researchers, writers and creatives from the fields of humanities, social sciences and arts. We explored infrastructural spaces including data centres, smart factories, environmental monitoring stations, and radio telescopes, viewing each as a distinct port within the vast technological landscape. Through situated methods, we have sparked discussions and initiated public activities, gradually engaging in different types of knowledge production ranging from observational report to video and fiction. The project has received kind support from the Contemporary Visual Arts Research Centre of Guizhou Normal University, and Assembly, an independent institution in Beijing focusing on art/tech and science and technology studies.

In 2017,  iCloud users in China received new terms of service on their phones, indicating that their nationwide iCloud services on Apple devices would henceforth be operated by the "Guizhou-Cloud Big Data" company. In addition, the user data would be stored in the first data centre iCloud ever founded in Asia, the newly built facilities in Guizhou's Gui'an New District, where machines relentlessly hummed through the night. Ever since, the "Guizhou-Cloud Big Data" logo has been deeply associated with iCloud services, thrusting Guizhou's data industry into the broader public view.

Meanwhile, Guiyang, the provincial capital neighboring Gui’an, also claims the title of "digital" city. It proudly hosts the world's first big data-themed expo, and is home to China's inaugural big data trading exchange. The cityscape is marked by the tightly knit, newly-constructed roads and tunnels, which have stretched out an intricate network that binds adjacent cities. With these connections established, a variety of digital industrial estates has bloomed across the province. This unstoppable pulse of progress, fueled by both policies and industrial development, beats within a landscape once known for its multidimensional poverty and ecological fragility – a scenario further complicated by the top-down "Third Front Movement." Guizhou, renowned for its policies for the big data industry, the "Big Data Expo," and the "Guizhou-Cloud Big Data" company, has witnessed numerous changes driven by the data industry. This shift encompasses not just its economic development, but also the cultural landscape.

Terms laden with sci-fi nuances such as "big data," "cloud," and "the ark" have entered the everyday vernacular of local citizens within just a few years — irrespective of whether their understanding on this subject is limited or razor-sharp. In 2020, the colossal FAST ("The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope,") nestled in a karst sinkhole, launched its quest for cosmic secrets as the world’s largest single-aperture radio telescope. At the end of that same year, the Arecibo single-dish radio telescope collapsed in the soundless valley of Puerto Rico. Somewhere invisible to us, infrastructures are running the course of their lives on a timeline parallel to ours. Geological landforms, infrastructures, cities, and human beings are all compressed into a miniscule slit within the vast scale of the cosmos. As a rhetorical device, narratives about humans and nonhumans within these infrastructures often gravitate more towards sensory perception than concrete experience and fact. Our project, however, attempts to find an answer to the question: how can the obsession with infrastructure move beyond the fictitious, schematic imaginations but make field experiences and first sites more potent in research. The focus of the "Under the Cloud" project begins with how the poetic and abstract status of being "upon the cloud" weaves into the everydayness that is "under the cloud." Perhaps, we can occasionally come down "under the cloud" from "upon the cloud." Concurrently, the project concentrates on data centres, mapping infrastructure, and a suite of automated systems capable of self-control, self-tuning, and precise decision-making. This exploration aims to delve into how the power of these technological advancements reflects the reconfiguration of culture, technopolitics, and relations of production in our imagination. 

In a photo taken in 1940, a group of British tourists gathered around the generators of the Hoover Dam in the USA, a scene which historian David Nye described as fascination with the "technological sublime." However, as time goes by, "technological sublime" is no longer the only approach for us to engaging with infrastructures. The visibility of technological infrastructures also arises from the uncertain, perplexing, and sometimes distant relationship we experience with them. As a result, these infrastructures, once hidden in backdrops, have come into sharper focus in the foreground, with their "existence" now perceivable (sometimes in the form of an accident.) Geographers Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin view infrastructures as "the largest and most sophisticated technological artefacts ever devised by humans." Sociologists Susan Leigh Star and Geoffrey Bowker extend the discussions about infrastructures to intellectual and mechanical operations, including the designs of necessary standardised measurement, naming schemes, classification systems, and technical protocols. Among these discussions, some writers carefully capture the emotional resonance humans cast upon these out-of-sight objects, like the feelings when we encounter unknown species. Lisa Parks expounds on the active "concealment" of infrastructures, as people feel "indifference, apathy, or disinterest" towards them, while Steven Jackson proposes "broken world thinking," by which he means a cognition shift from "novelty, growth, or progress" to "erosion, breakdown, and decay" in the discussions about technology and new media. Guizhou, as a specific example, reminds us that infrastructure can have different access methods and research approaches under particular geopolitical conditions.

In August 2021, we commenced our first official trip of "Under the Cloud." We arrived in Guiyang, the landlocked city known for its hilly terrain and cloudy skies, aptly captured by an ancient proverb: "Flatland stretches as far as three feet, clear sky lasts as long as three days." Through tunnels and high bridges, we traveled from the old city to the high-tech New District located at Guanshanhu. Facing the wide road and high-rise office buildings, it was difficult for us to imagine that this used to be an area of wilderness and farmland up until 2008. In the satellite snapshot, a solitary white cloud drifted across the city's shrouded and grey-hued sky, a common sight in this landscape. But it soon underwent a transformation, changing from an aggregation of water molecules into a digitalised information carrier. In May 2021, the 7th China International Big Data Industry Expo concluded, and the "Guizhou-Cloud Big company Data" was enthroned as the region's largest big data operator and Apple's iCloud service partner in mainland China.

Some 50 kilometres outside of Guiyang lies the Gui’an New District. Once the location of the Machang town and several other townships well-known to local residents between Guiyang and Anshun, it is now the eighth national-level new district in China. In fact, Apple isn’t the only tech firm building data centres in Guizhou. Long before its arrival, the new district had already anchored data centres including those from Tencent, Huawei, and the three major operators in China, as well as contracts with enterprises like Foxconn, Microsoft, and Qualcomm. In the following few years, these projects were successively completed, continuously attracting new partners under the lasting hype. Even satellite imagery could not catch up with the changes underway around Guiyang: As of late 2021, Google Earth imagery was still showing the newly-finished iCloud data centre as a half-built complex surrounded by dirt. When bird's-eye views proved to be lagging and inaccurate, we chose to visit the site in person. 

As a result, we, adopting the perspective of adventurers, were also able to peek into the invisible world beneath these man-made constructions — a convoluted karst underground system, woven by subterranean rivers, limestone, caves, and tunnels. At the Institute of South China Karst, geological crises and the fragile ecosystem affecting both flora and fauna are lingering issues. Our journey also took us to a new energy wind farm, where we organised an online meeting with a recently established local lab for radio astronomy. This experience allowed us to unravel knowledge and imagination about large-scale computing as well as the far and ancient celestial bodies.

During this site-visit, we glimpsed a future full of uncertainty for Guizhou under the framework of data. It encompassed not only the promise of rapid industrial development but also the reality of a talent shortage. There was a gap between the paces of technological upgrades and talent cultivation, while Guizhou faced new challenges such as cold data storage, the relationship between the natural resources and computing power in western China, and more. Moving underground, this 'cloud' was borne by a land increasingly suffering from desertification, whereas up in the sky, FAST was gazing back at the universe's past. We tried to investigate whether these multiple layers of time could help us re-examine everything happening at the present moment. Understanding events like the 1940s' Rear-area Relocation, the 60s-70s' Third Front Movement which centred on the defense industry, and more recent developments like the Western Development Strategy and 'West-to-East Power Transmission' might lead to a deeper and more accurate understanding of Guizhou's narratives and role. It might help us consider how geographic factors across different time periods become instrumental in shaping people's consciousness and activities, and what kind of legacy they leave us. Beyond the blank space in satellite imagery, we might also hear the echoes of history slowly reverberating along the corridors of time.

In 2023, the project's long-planned second iteration finally began when summer air vibrated with a relentless energy that swept away the remnants of spring rain and the shadows of the pandemic. Building on the first year's theme, the second visit incorporated more layers. Just like in the previous trip, we invited artists, scholars, researchers, and writers to enter spaces like data centres, laboratories, and observatories, places that may appear to be ordinary, dull, and colossal. We revisited Huawei Town under the scorching sun, met engineers from Africa and Eastern Europe who came to attend training sessions, released weather balloons amidst the morning dew, observed the equipment at a climatological reference station, felt the computation of massive data in the howling server rooms, and saw radio and optical telescopes built by students and teachers from a university astronomy lab. We learned about the myths of data security and the daily work of astronomers, and grasped the concept of "Guizhou is becoming a computer" at Guizhou-Cloud Big Data and Gui'an Supercomputing Center. These infrastructural elements are both "objects" and "stories" (Lisa Parks); they are spaces full of fluidity (Manuel Castells), the secret entrances to the backstage of technological landscape, and witnesses to modernity's tendency to separate people, nature, society, and technology (Paul Edwards). Yet, infrastructure also harbours the potential for a re-aggregation of technology and nature, a fascinating scale and relationship philosophy, and a perspective to understand the complex modern technological world from the "backstage." The "inside" of infrastructure is not (just) a physical "interior": on one hand, its relational nature invalidates any attempt to observe it from just a single node; on the other hand, a network of complementary knowledge and meaning is required in order to understand the inside of infrastructure, and the individuals providing this knowledge can come from every possible corner of the world and life.

In the field of infrastructure studies, people often describe its existence using terms such as "concealment," "naturalisation," and the "lenticular" effect, which alternates between visibility and invisibility. They also emphasise its preparedness for disaster and apocalyptic narratives. However, when a plane landed in the "China Data Valley" on the eve of the Big Data Expo, people still felt a more vivid and unrestricted sensation which could not be depicted by any theoretical discourse. An increasing number of data centres by technology companies spring up on the map of Gui'an New District. Although they are still "inaccessible" to the public, we can sense their strong presence and their ability to shape Guiyang's landscape, reflected in the Big Data Expo advertisement banners at the airport, on the LED lights atop taxis, and in the billboards glimpsed through rearview mirrors. "Big data" here does not just exist backstage. "Big Data" is not merely an autonomously operating layer of information, but also a flowing medium that can pervade through mountain tunnels (Tencent's ‘Seven-Star Data Center’ is built in a tunnel), emerge from various corners of everyday life, and even project itself into the depth of night sky (the radio telescope in Guizhou Pingtang generates about 10PB of data each year).

Both trips, naturally beginning from the Gui'an New District, eventually evolved into distinctive yet mutually enriching research routes, each with its own unique approach. Participants arrived at numerous stops including the data centre building complex, the Supercomputing Center, the Big Data Security Center in the economic development zone, Guizhou-Cloud Big Data, and other institutions focused on big data research, application, and platform services. We then explored the process of collecting, processing, and transforming scientific data, as well as the interfaces of major scientific discoveries centred around large scientific equipment, from the perspectives of the Guiyang National Reference Climate Station, State Engineering Technology Institute for Karst Desertification Control, Guizhou Provincial Key Laboratory of Information and Computer Science, and Guizhou Provincial Key Laboratory of Radio Astronomy and Data Processing. Approaching the final destination on our itinerary, we stayed overnight in Pingtang Astronomical Town, which was conveniently close to the FAST telescope yet far enough from urban bustle or excessive electromagnetic interference.

There, the "Under the Cloud" members experienced the opening night of the 2023 China International Big Data Industry Expo – an annual grand event in Guiyang, for which the entire city takes one day off from work and school to celebrate. The following day, we returned to the "heart" of the event, mingled with the crowd of visitors, and immersed ourselves in the dazzling exhibits showcasing emerging data industries and innovative products. Outside our tight schedule, we also encountered moments beyond "digital time": in Guizhou Provincial Geological Museum, we saw old sea lilies from 500 million years ago, burial cave belonged to bygone ancestors, the silent skeletal landforms of Jiaqing Ice Moulins, the construction of a hydroelectric dam, the parallel universe depicted in Miao embroidery, rocket components jettisoned during the launching, and the UFO sighting legends of Duxi Forest Farm. Among the researchers who joined the visit were a PhD scholar in media studies who had spent years in the fields of Guizhou, a video artist who made a documentation about the AI industry in Bainiaohe Digital Town, someone interested in mapping Guizhou's electromagnetic waves, and another who wished to explore entropy and monuments. Over a brief span of just seven days during each trip, a diverse group of creators, each with unique research topics and plans, united to form an alternative tour group. Together, they embarked on a journey traversing various times within this cloud — geological, meteorological, infrastructural, urban, and human times are thus mapped, visited, heard, and perceived.

Throughout various stages of the project, the research has sparked and connected diverse insights, aiding in the curation, writing, and creation processes. At the end of 2021, a small-scale exhibition titled “Temporal Stack: the Deep Sensor” opened in an underground space in Guiyang. This exhibition crafted a media landscape comprising elements of “cloud atlas,” “waterfall,” “cave,” and “radio wave.” The featured works, while not explicitly commissioned for this exhibition, were compiled into the trail of visits and the local space of “Under the Cloud” in different ways. Through Dries de Porter’s work, we listened to the sound from Chile, another prominent site for astronomical observation and located directly opposite Guiyang on the other side of the world; we also discovered local amateur radio enthusiasts through Daniela de Paulis’ work. Dennis de Bel, showing his self-made speaker device, used to drive all the way from Shenzhen to the construction site of Guizhou Data Center; the process of this construction was continually documented in the video triptych Caches From The Landscape by The Nomadic Department of the Interior (NDOI). In Universe of the Underground,” ZHOU Yuanjie, a local adventurer, presented a video of himself walking through the luminescent calcite inside the Miao Room, the largest known cave chamber by volume in the world. Artist ZHANG Wenxin, a participant of this trip too, continued to advance into the depths of the systems connected by caves. At the same time, LIU Xin was filming for her video White Stone in Guizhou. XU Zhengyue, who had finished a video work about data annotation before she joined "Under the Cloud," just concluded the filming process for her latest work Data Phantasmagoria. In late 2023, artist ZHOU Tao participated in the Taipei Biennial with his video The Axis of Big Data, which pivoted on data centers and natural fields; and simultaneously, in the Shanghai Biennale, HE Zike’s film Random Access expounded on the multi-layered time in the Guizhou-verse, while ZHANG Wenxin, by applying serial photography, unveiled her persistent explorations of caves in the karst mountains over the past few years, of which the images have been compiled with new additions into her latest work series A Cave is a Holographic Film in a Prolonged Exposure. Parallel to their practices, over the past three years, writing in various forms, such as novels and academic papers, has added a multitude of diverse dimensions to the research. This book is a collection of travel essays in which the participants of "Under the Cloud" employ varied forms of writing to respond to a shared experience: together, we rekindle the memories of each stop on our journey, memories that glimmer like scattered stars; our writing practice also ventures beyond pre-established frameworks, expanding from abstract data to hidden moss beyond the scope of our sight, ascending with invisible air currents up to towering buildings, drifting from terrace fields into caves, and wandering through sci-fi scenes set in different imagined time. Across different practices, "Under the Cloud" is not so much an organization or a commissioner as a container for holding our findings or a thread that connects them. From 2021 to 2023, we have met with countless people and experiences. In this constantly changing "cloud atlas," "Under the Cloud" also continues to evolve and expand as an ever-wider network.