Places on Earth Where all Forces are Absent: Reconstructing computational infrastructures through Neural Radiance Field Imagery

Abstract

'Places on Earth Where all Forces are Absent' is a series of images captured from within the digital architecture of Google Earth. It is made by exploiting software glitches to ‘break through’ the usually seamless surfaces of digitally rendered buildings. On the other side of these facades, conventional 3D models become fictional spaces defined by their wireframe forms. From here, screenshots from within these structures have been reconstructed into volumetric renderings using Neural Radiance Field (NeRF) imaging. This technique uses machine learning to generate new 3D representations of a scene. In this work, it reconstructs physical places using the digital residue of their existence on Google Earth.

By employing this technique at GPS locations of data centres, warehouses, base stations, and headquarters of ‘tech giant’ corporations, this series renders transparent some of the world’s most powerful industries that are deliberately kept opaque. By using the Google Earth interface to peer into the digital void behind its exterior shell, the tools designed to ‘see the world from above’ instead expose the illusions of computational infrastructures from below.

While only metaphorically deconstructing these systems, this approach fabricates a notion of seeing inside the ‘black box’ of algorithmic, cloud-based, and AI technologies. The resulting images are composed of skeletal empty architecture that frames surrounding landscapes from which many digital industries extract precious natural resources. By dismantling and imperfectly reconfiguring imagined spaces, they explore the politics of redaction and materiality of digital infrastructure. By doing so, 'Places on Earth Where all Forces are Absent' conveys sites symbolic of celebrated technological innovation as facades shielding flawed interiors paradoxically devoid of substance.