Produced by Timo Arnall, Internet Machine is a multi-screen film about the invisible infrastructures of the internet. The film was made to reveal hidden materiality of our data by exploring some of the machines through which ‘the cloud’ is transmitted and transformed.
Filmed in one of the largest, most secure and ‘fault-tolerant’ data-centres in the world, run by Telefonica in Alcalá, Spain the film explores hidden architectures with a wide, slowly moving camera.
In this film I wanted to look beyond the childish myth of ‘the cloud’, to investigate what the infrastructures of the internet actually look like. It felt important to be able to see and hear the energy that goes into powering these machines, and the associated systems for securing, cooling and maintaining them.
The film uses a 3D mapping techniques where photographs and video are mapped to a simulated 3d environment. This allows the creation of camera-rig-like movement of the camera without resorting to actual rig equipment. The film was shot using both video and stills, using a panoramic head and a Canon 5D mkIII. It was shot using the Magic Lantern RAW module on the 5D, while the RAW stills were processed in Lightroom and stitched together using Photoshop and Hugin. Finally, the film is presented in a 3-face multi-screen environment.
Internet machine is part of BIG BANG DATA, open from 9 May 2014 until 26 October 2014 at CCCB (Barcelona) and from February-May 2015 at Fundación Telefónica (Madrid).
