See Behind the Scenes Photos of the Internet’s Hidden Infrastructure
Last week, Wired published a piece on artist Timo Arnall’s recent work Internet Machine, which documents the physicality of the internet:
Arnall gained access to Telefónica, a 65,700 square meter data center in Alcalá, Spain that handles much of Europe’s cloud computing services. He wandered the halls for miles, capturing the sprawling rooms with a Canon 5D. “The server rooms felt like entering an intensive care unit at a hospital,” he says. “I felt quite alien, especially as film and photography shoots are always a bit hazardous, you have unwieldy bags, lights and tripods and sound recording equipment.”
The images are strikingly sterile. You see rows of nondescript servers and the machines that keep them going. Fiber optic connectors are routed through the labyrinthine building and connect to from room to room through holes in the concrete walls. Power sources, Arnall writes, are backed up by caverns of lead batteries, which are in turn backed up by rows of yellow generators.
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