Internet Tour: Invisible Infrastructures and AI Hallucinations

Like any other digital technology, or the Internet itself, the current explosion of AI research and applications relies on their conceptualization as immaterial technologies. The idea of clean, ethereal networks whose data is stored in a bodiless Cloud is nothing but a fallacy that hides thousands of miles of fiber optic cables, innumerable data centers, and increasing global energy consumption. The Internet that feeds and fuels AI is made up of a series of materials, constructions, and interventions that are hidden from the naked eye; from inconspicuous buildings in the centers of our cities, to urban beaches where the undersea cables that connect countries and continents are buried under the sand.

“Internet Tour” is an initiative by Barcelona-based artist Mario Santamaría, whose successful bus tours have explored the hidden digital infrastructures of many European cities. Now in Berkeley, in collaboration with Alex Saum-Pascual, and together with the Berkeley Center for New Media and the Arts Research Center, we’ll embark on a collective exploration of the world’s preeminent technology hub, the San Francisco Bay Area, as we unearth its Internet infrastructure. Traveling by bus and on foot across Berkeley, Emeryville, and Oakland, this guided tour will also feature poetic and artistic experiences. We’ll visit the places through which our voices, images, cryptocurrencies, and future intelligences circulate as cursed matter that flows from the same wound. Where to go from there?