States of Entanglement

STATES OF ENTANGLEMENT: Data in the Irish Landscape Published by Actar Publishers, New York, Barcelona www.actar.com Author and Editor ANNEX | Sven Anderson, Alan Butler, David Capener, Donal Lally, Clare Lyster, and Fiona McDermott

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, on all or part of the material, specifically translation rights, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or other media, and storage in databases. For use of any kind, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained.

Graphic Design Alex Synge

Distribution Actar D, New York, Barcelona.

With contributions by Patrick Bresnihan, Patrick Brodie, Catherine Ince, Merlo Kelly, Chris Morash, Paul O’Neill, and Nicole Starosielski

New York 440 Park Avenue South, 17th Floor New York, NY 10016, USA T +1 2129662207 salesnewyork@actar-d.com

Copy editing and proofreading Michael K. Hayes Printing and binding Arlequin All rights reserved © Edition: Actar Publishers © Texts: ANNEX | Sven Anderson, Alan Butler, David Capener, Donal Lally, Clare Lyster, and Fiona McDermott. Patrick Bresnihan, Patrick Brodie, Catherine Ince, Merlo Kelly, Chris Morash, Paul O’Neill, and Nicole Starosielski © Content: ANNEX © Design, drawings, illustrations, and photographs: ANNEX Cover illustration: ANNEX and Alex Synge

Barcelona Roca i Batlle 2 08023 Barcelona, Spain T +34 933 282 183 eurosales@actar-d.com Indexing English ISBN: 977-1-948765-59-6 PCN / Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944351 Printed in Spain Publication date: 2021

STATES OF ENTANGLEMENT DATA IN THE IRISH LANDSCAPE

ANNEX

Fig. 1. Vertical section of the bed of the Atlantic Ocean, from Valencia, Ireland, to Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, (on line C.D. of the chart above) showing soundings made by Lieut. Dayman in HMS Cyclops, 1857, for laying the transatlantic telegraph cable. The vertical scale, showing depths of soundings, is about seventy-two times greater than the longitudinal scale.

But one morning he made him a slender wire, As an artist’s vision took life and form, While he drew from heaven the strange, fierce fire That reddens the edge of the midnight storm; And he carried it over the Mountain’s crest, And dropped it into the Ocean’s breast; And Science proclaimed, from shore to shore, That Time and Space ruled man no more.

Author unknown

Table of contents

08

States of Entanglement Introduction

16 18

PART 1: PAVILION

Entanglement, the Irish Pavilion, 17th Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 Introduction

21

From Construction to Simulation

82

Poesis

ANNEX

ANNEX

102

Thermal Imagery

120

Structure and Furniture Drawings

132

Thermal Entanglement

Nicole Starosielski

142

A Room of Our Time

Catherine Ince

152

Part 2: STATES

154

Atlas of Data Infrastructure in Ireland

ANNEX

174

Displaced States The Imagined Annihilation of Time and Space

Chris Morash

188

Landing States Valentia Cable Station and Sites

Merlo Kelly

206

Weedy States The Cybernetic Wilderness of Data Centres

Donal Lally

218

Networked States A Tour of Dublin’s Digital Ecosystem

Paul O’Neill

232

Contested States Rural Geographies of Data and Energy

Patrick Bresnihan and Patrick Brodie

250

Sensory States Instrumentation and Automation in the Natural Landscape

Fiona McDermott

260

Bizarro States Litter and its Digital Doppelganger

Alan Butler

270

Excessive States Not a Cloud, but a Void

Sven Anderson

278

Archival States Data, Entropy, and the Algorithmised Futures of Everyday Life

David Capener

284

Synergistic States Living Together Through Data

Clare Lyster

Back Matter 308

Acknowledgements

310

Biographies

316

Credits

318

Index

8

Fig. 1a Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut ut aliquip ex ea2:commodo Part States consequat.

Introduction STATES OF ENTANGLEMENT ‘To be entangled is not simply to be intertwined with another, as in the joining of separate entities, but to lack an independent, self contained existence. Existence is not an individual affair’.

Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway

Fig. 2.

Entanglement.

Pavilion plan and burn concept.

Sara Murphy and Frank Pendergast, 2020.

States of Entanglement: Data in the Irish Landscape draws attention to some of the extraordinary transformations and profound contradictions being brought about by data technologies, decoded through the lens of Ireland’s significant role in telecommunications.

As our everyday lives become increasingly entangled with data technologies and their assemblages, our routines are shifting to ever more virtual forms of exchange. We are increasingly constructing and experiencing the world via data networks as apps, algorithms, sensors, data sets, digital devices, and e-platforms that provide new forms of exchange between us and the spaces around us. Not only did COVID-19 provide evidence of our increasing engagement with the digital but it dramatically accelerated how we live together in data. Just think about how quickly we came to rely on digitally mediated forms of interaction, beginning in March 2020. During lockdown, we didn’t go outside that much, Zoom and Facetime became part of everyone’s repertoire, while our kitchens were repurposed as proxy offices and schools as we worked remotely and home schooled our kids.

Moving from traditional physical modes of interaction to a more cloud-based lifestyle has enormous implications for not only how we live in the world, but also for how designers conceive, order, and produce space. Ours is an age where networked information-gathering devices are pervasively deployed across the built and natural environments. From the data-gathering machines that we carry in our pockets, to the proliferation of cameras, sensors, actuators, and other computational devices embedded in the architecture and infrastructures that surround us, radical changes are occurring to spaces via the deployment and integration of digital technologies that design theorist, Benjamin Bratton characterises as a ‘new normal’.

Yet, even within this new normal, our reliance on data cannot be isolated but must be interrogated within the larger cultural, political, and environmental situation around us; our everyday lives have become increasingly entangled with data technologies. One of ANNEX’s objectives for Entanglement, the Irish pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 is to attend to the supposition that surrounds the cloud, as transcending States of Entanglement

9

physical presence or resourcing. By bringing the physical infrastructure around data under the spotlight, it might reframe how we understand the exponential growth of global data and to raise awareness of the spatial presence of data and its corresponding environmental impact.

The Irish Context ‘This new world of modern communications is a triumph of science and energy over space and time – a world where a small town called Mallow in Co. Cork is now a suburb of New York’.

Mayor of New York, 1866 ‘… on a single day, the world read closing quotations from Wall Street, learned the prices on the Brussels grain market and the fact that Congress had readmitted Tennessee into the Union – the world changed’.

Minister Paschal Donohoe (quoting an unnamed historian on the Valentia Island transatlantic cable)

In 1858, the world’s first transatlantic telecommunication cable landed at Valentia Island, a sparsely populated, rural wilderness off the south-west coast of Ireland. The 3000km cable that extended from Newfoundland in Canada rendered the remote 11km-long island as the most connected node in a global telecommunications network. No longer would Valentia’s morphological attributes – a few small village clusters, gently sloping topography, rugged coastline, and patchwork of fields – be presented as its most essential characteristics. Instead, the meaning of space would be defined by the umbilical communication infrastructure that infiltrated its earthly mass. Valentia was not not only a physical, geospatial construct but had been augmented as an information space. Almost fifty years later, in 1907, a second event with equally significant ambition took place in Connemara, when Guglielmo Marconi set up his communication station to transmit some of the first commercial wireless radio messages across the Atlantic Ocean.

And so the building blocks of the internet and our contemporary planetary communication systems began. Owing to its favourable geo-spatial location on the western fringe of Europe, Ireland has historically emerged as a strategic node for technological infrastructure, and has thus played a disproportionately significant role in the development and production of network communications. Today, Ireland’s agency in global information can be witnessed in the IT sector, in particular. The country is home to corporate headquarters of gigantic tech companies, from Amazon to Facebook and Google to Microsoft, as well as the backstage landscapes of globalisation, from data centres to warehouses and their attendant hardware and software. This recent and rapid intensification of global data now manifests itself locally across the Irish landscape as a vast constellation of data centres, fibre-optic cable networks, and energy infrastructures. Ireland is a

10

Introduction

hub for the European headquarters of multinational IT corporations, and is therefore the de facto centre of data regulation in the European Union (theoretically at least). In 2019, Dublin overtook London as the data centre hub of Europe and now hosts twenty-five percent of all available European server space.

Heat ‘Our bodies are fire containers, each cell an image of the vestal hearth. Heat control is one of the classic cybernetic processes that unite humans and machines, and it remains the central design problem for the chief medium of our time, the computer’ John Durham Peters, The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media

Entanglement uses the prism of heat to explore the material relationship between data infrastructure and architecture. Technological development from the stone age to the industrial revolution is inextricably tied to thermal energy. In his 1851 text The Four Elements of Architecture, architectural theorist Gottfried Semper puts forth fire as “the first and most important and moral element of architecture”. For Semper, the first human groups assembled, formed alliances, and developed religious concepts around the domesticated fire, “Throughout all phases of society, the hearth formed that sacred focus around which took order and shape”. For environmental historian Stephen J. Pyne, “ civilisation would be impossible without fire”.1 The production and dissemination of data is also the production and dissemination of heat. In the 1850s, due to its inherent thermoplastic properties, sap from the Palaquium gutta tree, was used to insulate the world’s first transatlantic telegraph cable between Canada and Ireland. In the early 20th century Marconi used peat from local bog lands in Connemara to power his radio stations. By the year 2027, data centres are forecast to consume thirty-one percent of Ireland’s total electricity demand. In 2018, South Dublin County Council partnered with Amazon to recycle the exhausted heat from its newest data centres into local homes, offices, a university, and a hospital.

Information exchange has both technical (as both fuel and byproduct) and cultural (heat being adjacent to information sharing and gaining symbolic qualities) aspects. Heat’s relationship to the movement of information begins half a million years ago with our early ancestors telling stories around the first campfires. But now, as global communication coalesces around the internet, the thermal forces underpinning this planetary-scale network of information exchange has receded from view.

Architecture is a material organisation that stabilises energetic flow.

The data centre is an artificial environment that maintains and renders safe a constant supply of electricity to its aisles of servers; its mechanical

States of Entanglement

11

systems then exhaust the waste heat produced by those servers into its surrounding environment. Heat speaks to a material primitiveness about something often misconceived as ‘virtual’ or taking place in a cloud. A data centre’s exhaust heat is evidence that watching a cat video has material consequences that are distributed across space. Heat emerges as a sort of temporal footprint of a virtual act taking place. A visual rendering of a virtual fire, such as Netflix’s Fireplace For Your Home, creates real heat in its production.

Heat is entangled with the notion of deep time. In the form of coal, ancient carbon was burned to produce the electricity that powered the tiny dots and dashes that zipped through the thin cable lying on the Atlantic Ocean floor, instantly connecting the old world with the new.

Today, billions of little puffs of heat plume from the servers in data centres that use recorded information from the past to produce calculations in the present, enabling the predictive modelling of future events, such as climate breakdown scenarios or potential new waves of infection in a pandemic.

States of Entanglement: Data in the Irish landscape features a catalogue of Entanglement, the Irish pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021, that details the theme, ideation, process, and construction of the project over two years. In addition, it draws together contributions from the fields of media theory, art, and geography, as well as architecture and design, to respond to and interrogate some of the cultural, material, and environmental states of data infrastructure as told by the pavilion. Part catalogue, part atlas, and part design manifesto, Entanglement argues that the cloud is not an ethereal and abstract space but has distinct material and environmental footprints that compel us to re-evaluate the utopian fantasy of digital communication and to reflect on how we live together through data infrastructure, today and into the future.

Finally, Entanglement questions if any single discipline can understand and meaningfully respond to the changes brought about by the deployment of digital technologies in different environments? Architecture alone cannot answer these questions. The complexities of these new territories require a multidisciplinary approach. We hope that this is reflected in the diversity of our backgrounds and the insights included in this book.

ANNEX, 22 March 2021

Endnotes 1 Pyne, Stephen J. Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe’s Encounter with the World. Seattle; London: University of Washington Press, 1997. P4.

12

Introduction

Fig. 3. Map of Valentia harbour and position of the ships, John R. Isaac, 1857.

Map of the harbour of Valencia, showing the position of the Atlantic Telegraph Squadron, on the occasion of laying the cable from the USS Niagara to the shore, 5 August 1857.

Fig. 4 (Following pages). Landing the Shore End of the Atlantic Cable, Robert Charles Dudley, 1866.

Painting describes the epic event of the first transatlantic cable coming ashore at Valentia Island and the physical act of pulling the cable onto the rugged Irish landscape by hand.

It encapsulates the visceral materiality of information systems.

States of Entanglement

13

14

15

Part 1:

16

Part 2: States

PAVILION

Emerging Rural Geographies of Data and Energy in Ireland

17

18

Part 2: States

ENTANGLEMENT Ireland at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, 22 May to 21 November 2021 AR S E NAL E , S E STI E R E CA STE L LO, CAM P O D E L L A TANA 2 1 6 9 / F 3 0 1 2 2 VE N I C E , ITALY

The Irish pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Entanglement, explores the materiality of data and the interwoven human, environmental, and cultural impacts of information and communication technologies. It highlights how data production and consumption territorialise the physical landscape, and examines Ireland’s place in the pan-national evolution of data infrastructure through raising awareness about the material footprint of the global internet and cloud services, which is entwined with the Irish landscape both historically and in the present day, from the landing of the first transatlantic cable at Valentia Island in 1858 and Marconi’s, transmission of wireless radio messages across the Atlantic Ocean in the early 20th century to Ireland’s current role as Europe’s data centre hub.

Fig. 0. Entanglement.

Pavilion interior.

Frank Prendergast, 2020

Entanglement uses the prism of heat to explore the material relationship between data infrastructure and architecture through a structure that collapses local- and planetary-scale data infrastructure networks into the most primitive of socialising technologies: the campfire. The pavilion draws from both contemporary and historical data storage artefacts as building blocks to form its structure. These artefacts are assembled in a campfire formation, referencing this primitive architectural space where early human civilisations formed alliances, built social networks, and eventually developed complex societies. The pavilion asserts that from the burning of campfire logs to the management of waste heat generated by contemporary data infrastructure, the production and distribution of information is intrinsically connected to the production and distribution of heat and fire.

By foregrounding these thermodynamic processes as a link between the architectures of the campfire and the data centre, the pavilion speculates on the relationship between these forms and how diverse communities converge around them in the past and into the future. Highlighting the materiality of our digital age, it subverts a fundamental artefact of the network – the server cabinet – to uncloud the sleek aesthetic of an industry which is forming our realities. The pavilion invites its audience to experience this thermal logic themselves through real-time thermograph-

From Construction to Simulation

19

ic imaging technologies that juxtapose key sites associated with data infrastructure in Ireland with traces of human activity in the Arsenale.

Entanglement is part pagan festival, part data infrastructure, part signal.

It connects bodies, thermal flow, matter, and the environment, to expose the romantic metaphor of the cloud by looking at data infrastructure: it’s materiality, the spaces it produces, and the vast ecological footprint it creates. It argues that the digital is material.

Entanglement responds to the theme selected by the curators of the Biennale Architettura 2021, ‘How will we live together?’, by exploring how we cannot separate our relatively discrete and emotional desires and habits from the influence and pervasiveness of information technologies.

This pavilion asks: How do we live in, and with, data?

Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland, in partnership with the Arts Council.

The exhibition in 2021 is curated by ANNEX, a collective of architects, artists, and urbanists.

20

Part 1: Pavilion

Fig. 1.

Entanglement.

Pavilion build area at Dublin Port.

Sara Murphy, 2020.

Fig. 11. Entanglement. Pavilion structure.

Stacked tiers of server racks with props.

Sara Murphy, 2020.

Fig. 12 (Left).

Entanglement.

Pavilion structure.

Frontal view of completed structure.

Fig. 13 (Right).

Entanglement.

Pavilion detail.

Power Plate. Sara Murphy, 2020.

From Construction to Simulation

39

Figs. 14, 15 Entanglement.

Pavilion details.

Ethernet cables

40

Part 1: Pavilion

64

Fig. 30.

Entanglement.

Pavilion detail.

Rubber trees.

Fig. 31.

Entanglement.

Pavilion interior #1.

From Construction to Simulation

65

66

Fig. 32. Entanglement. Pavilion interior #2.

68

Part 1: Pavilion

Fig. 33. Entanglement. Pavilion interior #3.

From Construction to Simulation

69

Fig. 34 (Left).

Entanglement.

Pavilion Interior #4.

Fig. 35 (Right).

Entanglement.

Pavilion exterior.

Screens on during technical performance testing.

70

Part 1: Pavilion

Fig. 36.

Entanglement.

Pavilion exterior.

Frontal view.

Fig. 37.

Entanglement.

Pavilion exterior.

Showing opening and interior.

From Construction to Simulation

73

CAMPFIRE The campfire has many references that are pyrotechnic in nature – the primitive role of fire as a communication agent in society and fire as a collective space. For architectural theorist Gottfried Semper, the hearth formed the ‘focus around which took order and shape’. The formal configuration of the pavilion is based on familiar typologies of fire.

82

Part Part1:2:Pavilion States

From Slack thread # curatorial (archived) Clare Lyster, 13 August 2019 at 12:22 PM I’ve been looking at recent manifestations of primitive/plutonic/brutalist forms in digital imagery. For example, the interiors in Blade Runner 2049 (stone/heavy/brutal/elemental) as opposed to the machine aesthetic that we have come to associate with the representation of digital space/digital futures.

Donal’s use of ‘fire’ (and Semper’s hearth as a primitive space in general) is similar here and I like this reference. Gottfried Semper wrote that the hearth (fire pit) was the foremost element of architecture, while Vitruvius claimed the first hut was built around a fire.

Fire (heat) is a source of evolution of society from tribal collective to capitalist production. The bonfire is also a pyro-technic form associated with Ireland. It is a community building event associated with pagan festivals such as Bealtaine. But the bonfire is also a warning, an effigy and so bears sinister connotations that plays into the dystopian repercussions of data.

One approach to the pavilion would be to play this up – a very strong elemental space that acts as a counterpart to the digital. This may also clearly express the theme of ‘entanglement’ too – a combination of emerging data with elemental forms and traditional materials. Fiona had mentioned an active slate quarry on Valentia.

In summary: the campfire is an example of a primitive/elemental space around which people have gathered for thousands of years, but how we use this idea within the pavilion is not clear. The analogy of a campfire is also strong given Sarkis’ theme of ‘how we live together’ and our focus on heat as one of the main aspects of the pavilion.

David Capener, 14 August 2019 at 10:26 AM Here is a variation.

I think the idea of the campfire is central to the narrative that we are trying to tell – the data centre as campfire of our age, etc. We should not be worried that the size of the structure means that our campfire becomes a bonfire (whatever that means). The bonfire is also a fire structure, lit during pagan festivals such as Bealtaine in Ireland, so it also exhibits some of the primitive references that Clare talked about. It’s a kind of performance too, which is something we are all interested in.

We should just build an oversized campfire – this would then create a nice play on scale. The campfire of our age is a hyper-scale data structure, etc.

To do this is simple – we make a super literal reference to the typology of a traditional campfire (a kind of Nam June Paik move).

We lay a circle of rocks around our structure (could they be from Valentia?).

Emerging Rural Geographies of Data and Energy in Ireland

83

SERVER RACK Server racks are standardised metal frames that house the computer servers found in contemporary data centres. These are the primary building blocks of the pavilion and are stacked in tiers with an opening into an interior space.

84

Part 1: Pavilion

Date: 06 March 2021 To: ANNEX From: Sara Murphy; Frank Prendergast Subject: Port Transmission This situation regarding the Entanglement build in Dublin port amplifies the expectation of it being forwarded to the port in Venice as soon as construction is complete. Container ships, periodically rolling their cargo on and off, have framed the build locale as a transmission space, reinforcing the inevitable porting of the piece to the Arsenale some 1600km away.

At each stage of the project, Entanglement has undergone a phase transition: from concept, to digital, to analog, to digital analogous packets to be faithfully reconstituted as analog again; multiplexing its prior states to arrive at its final form. It makes us think of the engineer Massimo Francheschetti, when he said that: ‘The information a signal carries is its form, in the sense of Plato’s eidos.

Signals with different shapes can have different meanings, and choosing one among them implies that a certain amount of information is transmitted via the selection process’. So too has the structure phase transitioned through flame and mechanical means, a process of experimentation, discovery, and refinement of the waveforms into a readable output. Tactile and sensory, the renders have been made real through steel and flame.

Our cardinal points on the structure are four columns that provide a key to the layers. The individual rack units in each layer are brought into tension with angled brackets connecting the faces. Reminiscent of the corbelled beehive huts of west Kerry, we built the campfire in a way that is structurally open and at the same time self supporting.

The surface detailing involved treating samples with various compounds to visually represent a burnt structure. We arrived at a process of scraping away the protective powder coat, reaching the bare steel, to begin a multi-stage application and torching of chemical mixes to penetrate, char, and oxidise. In the mix is ash made out of discarded files taken from our homes. Our data is now part of the structure.

In parallel to the build, a series of phase shifts occurred. From its inception, Entanglement has had a set broadcast point, known in space, but not always in time. While the uncertainty of the pandemic demanded an exercise in persistence, working with these discrete, nuanced concepts has created a piece that has been incredibly gratifying to fabricate.

Sara and Frank

ANGLED BRACKET The 162°-angled bracket maintains the circumference of the tiers and allows the structure to pivot in a circular pattern.

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Part 1: Pavilion

Date: 20 February 2020 To: Adela Tablas | Arup From: Frank Prendergast Subject: Server rack / Structure Hi Adela, We are connecting the faces of all the racks with a 3mm mild steel plate. Each plate uses the existing hole for the cable tray and an additional hole we drill. We are mounting the plate top and bottom of the racks. These are connected with 1/2” UNC bolts.

The bottom tier is 162°, the middle 157.5°, and the top is 150°, maintaining mechanical rigidity in the ring.

The non-face or outer circumference of the ring in tiers two and three are secured to the one below at every connecting point by a ‘cinch’ plate which is 5mm-thick steel, 30mm wide by 140mm long.

This connects with M8 bolts to the frame below and catches the plate to the heel of the one above, as per diagram.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if there is anything else.

Best regards, Frank

Date: 26 February 2020 To: Frank Prendergast From: Adela Tablas | Arup; Cc: Cathal Quinn | Arup We’ve reviewed your proposal and, in general terms, it works structurally. Please see attached small workbook containing a summary of the assumptions, checks, and structural requirements that need to be incorporated for the construction of the pavilion.

None of the requirements affect the proposal significantly and are all reinforcement required. See below a list of the structural requirements proposed: 1. Introduce midspan horizontal restraint to prevent lateral/torsional buckling.

FP: What dimensions of midspan reinforcement would be required?

There will also be midsection stability provided by the addition of the servers and the fan mounts. I am worried that this midsection bracing will stop us being able to fit the mounts for the screens and fans, etc.

2. Introduce midspan connection.

FP: No problem, presumably just the bottom tier?

3. Use minimum 8mm plates for the ‘cinch’ connections and bolted to the rack member above.

FP: Will update from 5mm to 8mm.

4. Provide connection details between SHS members (assumed factory welded?). Confirm SHS are S355.

FP: 4 x M12 Bolt EN 14592 on each cross-member to connect to the uprights. Connections are made through 5mm plates on either end of the 40mm box section. SHS are S355. Welded to EN287 and ASME IX designation for this process.

5. Provide connection details between racks and door frame.

FP: Connected at the base with M8 EN 14592 bolts through 30x3mm angle tabs welded to the box section.

6. Provide additional weight at base level (circa 150kg).

FP: Will do. It will be in the form of 365x50x30mm steel plates bonded to the inside of U-channel sections. This will leave 4.25kg in each channel or 8.5kg for each rack.

Best Regards, Adela.

Fig. 1. Entanglement.

Elevation and plan of pavilion.

120

Part 1: Pavilion

Fig. 2. Entanglement.

Components of pavilion, including server-rack angle brackets and frame for opening.

Structure and Furniture Drawings

121

Fig. 3. Entanglement.

Elevation and plan of pavilion in the Arsenale.

Fig. 4. (Right)

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Part 1: Pavilion

Entanglement. System diagram, showing location of components in the structure.

Cam 3

IP: 118 HDMI:Sl ave1

IP: 116 HDMI:Sl ave3

IP: 117 HDMI:Sl ave2

Cam 2

M aster PC 1

ENTRANCE

IP: 115 HDMI:Sl ave1

IP: 107 HDMI:Sl ave3 +M aster on HDMI3

Slave PC 1

IP: 114 HDMI:Sl ave1

IP: 105 HDMI:Sl ave1

IP: 106 HDMI:Sl ave1

Slave PC 3

IP: 113 HDMI:Sl ave3

IP: 111 HDMI:Sl ave2

IP: 103 HDMI:Sl ave3

IP: 104 HDMI:Sl ave3

IP: 110 HDMI:Sl ave2

Slave PC 2

IP: 112 HDMI:Sl ave3

IP: 102 HDMI:Sl ave3

IP: 101 HDMI:Sl ave2

IP: 110 HDMI:Sl ave3

Ch.8

Ch.10

Ch.9

Ch.11

Ch.13

Ch.12

Ch. 3+4

Cam 1

Ch. 9+10

Ch. 1+2

Ch. 11+12

Ch. 15 To amps Ch.1-16 Ch. 5+6

Ch. 7+8

IP: 108 HDMI:Sl ave2 Ch.1

Ch. 13+14

Ch.3

Ch.2

Ch.6

Ch.5

Ch.4

Ch.7

ENTRANCE

USB Power

IP: 109 HDMI:Sl ave1 Ch.15

Ch.16

611 : P I 3e va lS:IMDH

711 : P I 2e va lS:IMDH Ch.8

811 : P I 1e va lS:IMDH

Ch.10

Ch.9

Ch.11

Ch.13

Ch.12

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Cam 1

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2 ma C

Ch. 1+2

Ch. 15 To amps Ch.1-16 Ch. 5+6

011 : P I 2e va lS:IMDH

IP: 108 11 : P I HDMI:Sl1ave2 2e va lS:IMDH Ch.2

Ch.1

2 CP e valS

Ch. 7+8 3 CP e v alS

211 : P I 3e va lS:IMDH Ch.3

1 CP e v alS

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411 : P I 1e va lS:IMDH Ch.6

1 CP re tsa M

Ch. 13+14 511 : P I 1e va lS:IMDH

Ch.7

ENTRANCE

Subwoofer speaker

Networked PDU

101 : P I 2e va lS:IMDH

201 : P I 3e va lS:IMDH

301 : P I 3e va lS:IMDH

401 : P I 3e va lS:IMDH

Ch.15

501 : P I 1e va lS:IMDH

601 : P I 1e va lS:IMDH

IP: 109 HDMI:Sl ave1

Ch.16

Fan

Rack PDU: 6-way

Video display

Rack PDU: 8-way

Rubber Plant

Ethernet switch

Grow Lights

4G WiFi

Speaker

Thermal Camera Speaker amp

USB power supply

PC

Soundcard

701 : P I 3e va lS:IMDH re tsa M+ 3IMDH no

ECNARTNE

USB Power

Subwoofer amp

Map 1. Globe map. ANNEX, 2021

154

Map showing the position of Hearts Content, Newfoundland, (western terminus of the first transatlantic telegraph cable) and Valentia Island (eastern terminus of the first transatlantic telegraph cable).

380 miles

Trial #1 August 5, 1857, cable snaps on the sixth day, 380 miles off-shore.

Trial #2 June 25, 1858, an extra 700 miles of cable is made for a second attempt.

Cable snaps immediately when the two ships meet half way.

40 miles

146 miles

Trial #3 40 miles before the ships meet, the cable snaps.

Trial #4 146 miles before the ships meet, the cable snaps.

Trial #5 On August 16, 1858 connection is established however high voltage destroys the cable after 27 days.

1200 miles

1686 miles

Trial #6 July 1865, The Great Eastern, the largest steamship in the world, carries the entire weight of the cable.

Cable snaps 1200 miles out from shore. Attempts to retrieve broken cable without success Trial #7 On July 27, 1866, cable is pulled ashore at Hearts Content, Newfoundland. Transmission successful.

September 1866, broken cable from Trial #2 is retrieved for second transmission cable.

155

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Part 2: States

LANDING STATES Valentia Island Cable Station and Sites M E R LO K E L LY

Fig. 1. Entrance gates and former lamp standard at Cable Station, Valentia.

Merlo Kelly, 2019.

In 1858, the first transatlantic submarine cable was laid between Valentia Island in Co. Kerry and Heart’s Content in Newfoundland. This infrastructure fundamentally transformed international communications, allowing Europe and North America to correspond directly and instantly. Thus, it is proposed that those sites on Valentia Island – associated with the historic narrative of the first transatlantic telegraph transmissions – be collectively nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Valentia nomination would include three structures: the Slate Yard, the Relay Station, and the Cable Station. Preparations for its addition to the tentative list are ongoing.

In 2017, the Canadian government announced that the Heart’s Content Cable Station in Newfoundland was to be one of eight sites in Canada to be nominated for UNESCO World Heritage site designation. This proposal for inclusion highlights the significance of the historic connection with Valentia Island, marking ‘one of the major milestones in global communications and the birth of globalization’.

In addition to their international significance as part of the transatlantic cable’s history, the Cable Station and Slate Yard are of national significance for their architectural, historic, cultural, and social heritage. The three structures are situated in a sensitive landscape of high visual quality. The integrity of the sites is somewhat compromised by the condition of the structures, particularly in the case of the Slate Yard and the Relay Station. All three sites are listed as protected structures, but are in need of conservation works and repair to ensure their legibility and protection, and to safe-guard their authenticity. The Cable Station in Valentia is an essential reference point for the community of Valentia, and its social and cultural significance is considerable. Several telegraphists at the station were transferred from England to work in Valentia. By all accounts, many of these employees and their families became permanent residents, integrating into life on the island.

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Fig. 2. Atlantic Cable route, 1857. Korff Brothers, 1858

The Atlantic Telegraph Company was established in 1857, on foot of proposals by American businessman Cyrus Field (1819-1892) for a transatlantic cable to establish direct communications between Europe and North America. The cable was to run from Heart’s Content in Newfoundland to Valentia Island on the south-west coast of Ireland. The first telegraphs were transmitted in a visual Morse code which involved the use of lights instead of sounds, with messages relayed and received in a darkened room. The deepsea cable, which was laid along the Atlantic floor, was encased in gutta-percha, a natural type of insulating rubber.

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Fig. 3 (Following pages). ‘Captain Brine’s Map of Valentia and Atlantic Telegraph’, Frederic Brine, 1859.

Knight’s Town, known today as Knightstown, was developed in the early nineteenth century on lands to the east of Valentia Island belonging to the Knight of Kerry, Maurice Fitzgerald (1774-1849).

Alexander Nimmo (1783-1832), a Scottish engineer and surveyor who specialised in roads and harbours, was engaged by Fitzgerald to lay out the harbour at Knightstown. The sheltered geographic location of the harbour, and its physical depth, made it ideal for transatlantic navigations. On completion of the pier in 1825, lands were developed around the harbour and the town was established. The paths of the Atlantic cables between Valentia and Newfoundland, and the ships involved in their installation, are documented in a series of maps by Captain Frederic Brine.

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Fig. 4. ‘Captain Brine’s Map of Valentia and Atlantic Telegraph’, Frederic Brine, 1859. (Detail showing Slate Yard.)

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Fig. 5. Slate Yard and Royal Valentia Hotel, Knightstown. Aerial view, Daphne D. C. Pochin Mould, 1978.

The first unsuccessful attempt to land a transatlantic cable was in 1857, at Ballycarbery Strand, on the Kerry coastline opposite Valentia harbour. A second landing at Knightstown harbour was successful in 1858, and a transatlantic telegraph message was successfully transmitted from the Slate Yard in Knightstown. The Slate Yard was the location where quarried slate from Valentia quarry was processed into marketable products, beginning in the early nineteenth century. From here, it was transported by ship to the mainland from Knightstown harbour and distributed overseas.

Captain Brine’s 1859 map shows the line of the cable from the bay to the Slate Yard via Knightstown harbour.

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Fig 3. Entanglement. Historic image of Marconi Station, Newfoundland, 1901 with thermal color overlay. ANNEX Sneak Peak, 2021.

Then the brotherhood lost on Shinar’s plain Came back to the peoples of earth again.

‘Be one!’ sighed the Mountain, and shrank away.

‘Be one!’ murmured Ocean, in dashes of spray.

‘Be one!’ said Space; ‘I forbid no more.’

‘Be one!’ echoed Time, ‘till my years are o’er.’

‘We are one!’ said the nations, as hand met hand In a thrill electric from land to land.

Author unknown