IN CONTEXT 5: Another Infrastructure (AI)

For In Context Strand 5, Living Rhythms join arts ensemble Drop Table to collaborate and create works with the community in Clondalkin about how we use technology together.

According to research by TASC “Nearly 90% of Dublin’s data centres are located in economically-deprived areas. This is not an incidental pattern or a quirk of urban planning - it is a defining feature of how Ireland’s digital infrastructure has developed. Rather than being evenly distributed across the city or concentrated in already-affluent business districts, data centres are overwhelmingly clustered in communities that already face structural economic disadvantage.”

The Clondalkin area hosts a significant number of these data centres with residents raising concerns in recent weeks about intrusive fumes alongside a persistent, low-frequency humming noises among the issues. With the Women’s Collective we will be exploring these challenges through a series of workshops questioning the environmental, ethical, and social impact of commercial technologies.

Inspired by feminist movements at home and around the world we will be working with the Women’s Collective to explore alternative futures. The work will centre around Nora Bateson’s concept of warm data which “familiarizes groups of people with the ways in which the contexts of their lives marinate and overlap into each other, and it offers an introduction to the complexity of their own lives so that they may better see the complexity of others. Through this discovery, people begin to see how vital it is to tend to their families, and the land, and they are able to respond to emergencies with warmth.” Put simply, warm data is described as information that is alive.

The Drop Table arts ensemble brings together a team of six artists led by artistic producer Shane Finan (he/them). Details on the artists can be found here.