What's in the "Cloud"?: Collective Map-Making Workshop

Concepts like "the cloud" and data are often perceived as abstract and weightless, yet they depend on minerals, energy, and labor extracted from specific places on Earth. This workshop creates a public space for critically engaging with those material realities, attempting to make the planetary resources behind our digital systems visible and tangible. It asks: what does it mean to hold, in our hands, a device that connects to infrastructure spanning continents?

Participants bring their own mobile devices and apps and, using provided resources, trace the minerals, energy infrastructures, and data centers that support them. Through guided research and collective discussion, they translate their findings into visual diagrams, building a map of the systems we rely on daily but rarely see. The workshop closes with a reflection on how the metaphor of "the cloud" displaces responsibility, warming some places in order to keep others cool.

Together, participants contribute their diagrams to a collective sculpture-map hung from the ceiling like a mobile, with three levels: the lowest most visible and immediate, the highest most hidden and remote. The sculpture grows through the event, becoming a physical record of the group's research and a material map of the cloud as it relates to the people in the room.

Registration opens mid-August.