DATAS CA P ES Untitled-3 1
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LUCAS KOLEITS 297220
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CONTENTS
DATA AS MATTER
7
Ping Maps Data Storage Data Growth Digital Dark Age
DIGITAL POLITICS
MATERIALS
ICELAND
STORAGE SYSTEM
DATASCAPES
Seeds Spatial Interpretation Computable Matter Computable Environments
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141
Existing Conditions Growth Environments
89
Experiments Monoliths Datascapes
SCRIPTING
127
Seed Nodes Construction Seed Points
39
Environment Energy Connectivity INTERVIEW: Alix Johnson Jurisdiction INTERVIEW: Gudjon Idir Seydisfjordur
LANDSCAPE
Archival Discs Nickel
23
Political Geographies The Silk Road Ends Here INTERVIEW: Adam Fish
121
101
MODEL
165
REFERENCES
173
APPENDICIES
177
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We rely on digital technology more than ever before... we live at the dawn of the digital age. Information is treated like matter, traded, hoarded, stolen and liberated - a new currency for a new age. The amount of data we generate is growing exponentially and much of this information is short lived. Stored data is extremely fragile, and while some organisations go to the expense of maintaining long term archives, much of the digital culture we produce is lost. In 200 years time, how will we know what life was like in 2015? What sort of record will we leave if the vast majority of our culture is online? We risk creating a digital dark age for ourselves, to be lost in a future history. What if were to make an effort to capture the ephemeral matter of the internet? What would the spatial consequences be? The great archive soon surpasses any data center in existence; moving across the landscape creating an entirely new environment somewhere between the natural and the unnatural. This becomes a monument to the digital age; a monument build by everyone that have ever used the internet.
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[ DATA A S M AT T E R ] Data is trafficked, hoarded, protected, hidden, distributed, packaged and traded everyday, at speeds close to the speed of light. But how does this actually happen? How does the data of a Youtube clip storage in a Google data center in Ireland reach your personal computer of phone? Thinking about this question it helps to think of data in a slightly different way than normal. What if we thought of data as matter - not an intangible recording of 1’s and 0’s, but a physical resource that is vital to the operation of our modern society. This shift in perspective begins to illuminate some of the issues that we will face in the near future - exponential increase in data use and demand for internet access, and critically, the increased demand for data storage facilities. Considering data as matter means it has a location. The Youtube clip is located in Ireland, and is copied to Melbourne temporarily at my request. If data is matter then this journey is a significant one, especially considering it happens seemingly instantaneously.
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1/ P I N G M A P S
To investigate the journey that data packets take, data requests were tracked with ‘pings’ small packets of data that can be tracked as they are bounced off different IP addresses around the world. These IP addresses can be traced, and here have been mapped to develop an atlas of data journeys to different politically motivated sites. The difference between these journeys begins to illuminate the political dimension of the internet. For example, a ping request sent to the wikileaks server was bounce to many more servers, spread around the world in places like Hong Kong, Germany and Mauritius, than requests to websites such as Google. Unlike other matter, each piece of data has a different political dimension. It may be welcomed in some parts of the world, or blocked in others. In this way data is unlike no other resource in the world, imbued with an inherent political ambiguity.
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www.theguardian.co.uk www.nsa.gov www.thepriatebay.se www.google.com www.wikileaks.org
In visiting 5 websites in 60 seconds: 242,000 km travelled through 2.42 million tons of cable at a 336ms average response time visiting 22 cities in 12 different countries.
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www.thepiratebay.se
Minato, Tokyo, Japan 35.66, 139.744 202.192.167.86 203.192.167.86
Canberra, Australia -35.87, 149.98 203.50.80.11
St Kilda, Australia -37.87, 144.98 203.45.255.1
Sydney, Australia -33.87, 151.21 203.50.11.122 203.50.20.64
San Fransisco, California 37.76, -122.34 173.245.61.146
Brisbane, Australia -27.47, 151.21 139.130.94.34
www.google.com
Dublin, Ireland 85.33, -6.24 209.85.142.11
Canberra, Australia -35.87, 149.98 203.50.80.11
Mountain View, California 37.38, -122.09 72.14.222.54 St Kilda, Australia -37.87, 144.98 203.45.255.1
Sydney, Australia -33.87, 151.21 203.50.11.124
Mountain View, California 37.38, -122.09 216.58.220.100
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www.NSA.gov Hong Kong, China 22.28, 114.17 202.84.223.38 202.84.143.154 202.84.203.30
Cambridge, Massachusetts 42.36, -71.09 184.28.51.190
Rochelle, Illanois 34.05, -118.24 63.218.51.149
Adelaide, Australia -34.92, 144.93 203.50.11.124
Hernden, Virginia 38.98, -77.38 63.218.212.78 St Kilda, Australia -37.87, 144.98 203.45.255.1 203.50.80.1
Sydney, Australia -33.87, 151.21 203.50.11.124 203.50.13.70
Plaines Wilhems, Mauitius -20.24, 57.49 154.54.7.53 154.54.29.117 154.54.31.14 154.54.31.15 154.54.42.17 154.54.39.18 154.54.74.126
Hong Kong, China 22.28, 114.17 202.84.223.46 202.84.249.50 202.84.251.174
www.wikileaks.org
Altenberge, Germany 52.02, 7.497 195.35.109.53 Amsterdam, Holland 52.37, 4.89 149.6.116.138
Taipei, Taiwan 25.05, 212.54 134.159.63.198
Oslo, Norway 59.93, 10.79 31.169.49.89 178.255.148.14
Adelaide, Australia -34.92, 144.93 203.50.11.124
St Kilda, Australia -37.87, 144.98 203.45.255.1 203.50.80.1
Sydney, Australia -33.87, 151.21 203.50.11.122 203.50.20.64
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2/ DATA S TO R AG E As digital technologies have developed over time,they have progressively gotten smaller. This is well documented by what is known as Moore’s Law, which predicted that the number of capacitors that fit onto a computer chip will roughly double every year. This prediction has held true for the last twenty years. Data storage does not follow this exact same patter, however. While data storage technologies are getting smaller, they are lagging behind the rate for computing power. As more data is produced with ever more powerful computers, the need for data storage infrastructure is growing. While personal data was easily stored locally on PCs in the past, now people have to look toward cloud computing solutions, or off site data storage and access, to manage their informational needs. This has given rise to the data center, a new architectural typology of the 21st century. Data centers are getting bigger and bigger, as the production of data grows. At current rates of increase, data storage requirements will soon dwarf entire cities, even when one takes into account the technological advances predicted by Moore’s law. This raises an interesting question - where does all this data go? And how will it be stored in the future?
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1956 IBM 350 RAMAC 0.003 GB
1970 Cassette 0.0006 GB 1971 8” Floppy 0.00007 GB 1982 3.5” Floppy 0.0002 GB 1985 CD ROM 0.728 GB 1995 DVD 4.7 GB
2002 BluRay 25 GB
2012 SD cards 32 GB
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3/ DATA G R OW T H To begin to understand the impact data will have on the Icelandic landscape, we must first understand the scale of the issue. At the end of 2012, it was estimated that globally 2.8 zettabytes of data was stored . 1 zettabyte is equivalent to one sextillion bytes, or a one followed by 21 zeros. At current compression rates, 1 zettabyte of audio data would take roughly two billion years to listen to. Using data from the last 7 years , and two forward projected estimates, we can plot an exponential growth of data that has been consistent over the last 20 years. This suggests that within the next decade, global data will surge to approximately 491 zettabytes. By the year 2037, only 22 years away, we can expect global data storage to be around 10,000 zettabytes. However these measurements are somewhat arbitrary when asking questions about the physical world. To gain an understanding of data’s impact in the physical, data volume was translated into required space occupied by using the NSA’s new Bluffdale Data Facility as a precedent . This facility was completed in late 2014, using the best data storage technology at the time. By assessing the data hall space and the infrastructure support required for this facility, these comparisons can be attributed to the growth in data to get an idea about the amount of space required to 14
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store zettabytes of data. However this would be an incomplete picture, for as data grows, advancements are made in technology. Moore’s law is a well known principle that predicts that the number of capacitors capable of integration into a circuit board doubles roughly every 1.5 years . While not directly applicable to increases in data storage, a similar relationship exists where the space required to store a specific volume of data decreases roughly every two years . This mathematical relationship was built into the predictive equation for required data storage space, resulting in a shallower exponential curve than the curve describing the increase of data. The results are still staggering; with data storage predicted to cover over 10,000 km2 – a space occupying more than ten times the metropolitan area of New York - by the year 2037. Clearly, the facilitation of data storage in the near future will have significant impacts on the landscape, occupying a significant amount of space. This growth was graphed over time, with the curve described by the function s = 0.0026e.319t. Other calculations were made using this growth function as a baseline to determine the impact on resources and plot the spatial impact of this growth. 15
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z e t aby t e s / k m 2 2 5 , 00 0
2 0 , 00 0
15 , 00 0
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where s = s p a c e r 5,000
and
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D ata gro w th f o re c as t d= 0 . 0 0 5 e . 371 t w he re d = data i n ze taby te s an d t = ti m e i n y e ars tons
5000
4 000
3000
Data space fore ca st s=0. 0026 e .319 t = s p ace required for d a t a centres in k m 2 and t = tim e in ye a rs
2030
2000 1000
2 0 35
2040 - 1000
- 2000
Ru t hin i um de pl e ti o n f o re c as t r = 5 0 0 0 - (0 . 3 874 Δd) w he re Δd = c h an ge i n data b e t w e e n t he c ur re n t an d pre v i o us 17 y e ar.
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- 3000 - 4 000
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2025 251 km2
2020 51 km2
Malta
Manhattan 2015 10 km2
Melbourne CBD
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2030 1,238 km2 London Greater Metoploitan Area
Comparisons of global data area, and well known locations from 2015 to 2030. 19
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4/ D I G I TA L DA R K AG E
Our ever growing reliance on digital technologies threatens our ability to look back at our past. Today we understand so much of where we came from by looking at the artifacts and writings that we left behind. Often it is the most mundane accounts of everyday life in the past that teaches us so much. But in this age of tweets and emails, youtube shares and instagram posts, what we produce is stored in a much more fragile way. Today, most data is stored on magnetic media. This typically has a lifespan of 5-10 years, at that stage the data needs to be migrated otherwise it becomes corrupted or lost. What is stored and maintained in such a way are kept by large corporations, and are only archived if it economically makes sense. What happens to facebook photos when facbook goes bankrupt? Will amazon sell thier mailing lists when they go out of business? A further reaching question is, in 100 years time, how will we know what life was like 20
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today? The feaability that our facbook photos are maintained uncorrupted for a century is unlikely, especially with the volume of data increasing exponentially and data space becoming a prcious resource. Access may be limited by obsolete hardware or software, or data may simply be lost over this time. On the other hand, never before in history has so much information been shared at one time, and all in a few standard formats, and with the capability to be stored in such small spaces. The digital age gives us an opportunity to store as much information as possible for future generations, a chance to write an objective history of globaslised culture, played out across the internet. If we were able to collect and store the data the move around the world digitally, we would have created the greatest, most informative time capsule in history. A monument to the dawn of the digital age.
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[ D I G I TA L P O L I T I C S ] The digital revolution has not only changed the way that we work, live and socialise, but it has radically changed the political nature of our society. It is now almost standard practice for heads of state to maintain social media accounts - important policy announcements utilize social media platforms - and social media itself is seen as a political resources, for good or bad. This new frontier is also a dangerous one, and we have recently seen the rise of state sponsored digital warfare with incidents such at the implementation of the StuxNet virus, created to disable Iran’s nuclear facilities, or North Korea’s Sony hack in retribution over a parody movie. Clearly there seems to be less reluctance to attack an enemy on a digital platform when compared to a geopolitical one. These attacks are occurring due to the connectivity of the world’s information. As we rely more and more on the internet and digital technologies to manage and store this information, the more attention digital space will draw within the world of politics. The smallest bit of information can have an enormous impact politically. When Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed over war torn Ukraine, it was a tweet from a Russian backed rebel general that provided strong evidence of the rebel’s responsibility. This tweet was quickly deleted by the general, but was archived by a group in the US, and reproduced to the US government as evidence. This was disputed by the Russians however, by pointing out that the archived material was just a jpeg image, and there was no way of verifying its authenticity. This just one example the complexities of dealing with data in the political realm.
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1/ P O L I T I C A L GEOGRAPHIES Different countries have very different attitudes to the way the internet should be used. There are many countries around the world that believe that it could be controlled by the state to some degree, to create the safest possible environment for their citizens. This is a highly contentious view, as many believe that having their private dealings on the internet monitored or having their access to information restricted violates a fundamental right. Some of the largest, most powerful countries in the world are seeking to control the internet in different ways - through the censorship of undesirable material, the surveillance of individuals or large swathes of meta-data, and for the persecution of digital law infringements. This is not the case everywhere, there are countries that encourage the freedom of information and knowledge facilitated by the internet. These are, after-all, the ideal that the internet was founded upon. Countries such as Romania, Sweden and Iceland are building legislation around the freedom of access of information. However this has made these countries targets for illegal online activity, with illegal marketplaces such as Silk Road and torrent hosting site such as The Pirate Bay being hosted in Iceland and Sweden respectively.
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It is here that the internet begins to manifest itself geopolitically. While we often imagine the internet as decentralised, ethereal and ungrounded, there is an ever widening gap between some countries for the facilitation of certain types of data. Whether one wants to facilitate crime online, or simply protect their personal privacy, there are some places that are far better suited than others. In terms of surveillance, an alliance of five countries, the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, have agreed to share any metadata and surveillance information that they collect, in the interest of domestic and international security. Known as the Five Eyes, each of these countries are moving to extend the reach of the supervising governmental agencies. Some of the most interesting and unprecedented political clashes occur when countries of differing digital ideologies come into conflict. By looking at these situations, in particular the shutdown of the Silk Road site, we can see a glimpse into the future of a new type of political conflict.
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86.
.j 3,173
Makakilo
A
R
C
T
I
C
O
C
E
A
Portland
94.7%
Los Angeles
.ca 29.7
3,349
N
O
R
T
H
A
M
E
R
I
C
A
K e fl 86.9%
49.2%
.us
.mx [USA] National Security Agency
207
79,829
12.5
34.5
Long Island New Jersey
[CUBA] Ministry for Informatics and Communication
Halifax
San Pedro
N
28.0%
O
R
T
H
A
T
L
A
Bermuda
.cu .32
1.9
Puerto Rico
26 49.9%
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For tazela
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13.4
N
T
I
C
Internet Penetration
86.2% .jp
.kr
67.5
3,173
61.4%
92.4%
803
Hong Kong
61.6
47.4%
.ru
.cn
[CHINA] State Internet Information Office
26.8
9,500
# Domain sites (1,000´s)
506
21.3%
Domain code 28.7
Average internet speed (Tb/s)
Imprisonment for Internet misuse
.mn 17.3
1.1
Surveillance of Internet use Censorship of the Internet
A
S
I
A
61.4% .ru 28.7
506
Federal Security Service (FSB)
19.7% .in 6.7
674 14.8%
C
O
C
E
A
54.9%
N
.pk 41
.kz 19.1
6.7
3.5
5.9%
[IRAN] Revolutionary Guards
.af 2.3
142
[SAUDI ARABIA] Internet Services Unit
55.7% .ir 5.2
135 [BELARUS] Operations and Analysis Centre (OAC)
97.1% .fi
44.3%
83.3%
35.1
132
.ge
.ee
222
42.9
7.3
95.7%
89.8%
88.6%
.nl 51.9
1,446
.uk
U
O
P
E
.ie 27.0
Widemouth Bay
1,230
.fr 40.8
3,231
65
Alexandria 53.2%
11.0
.eg
.it
83.3%
Jeddah 29.7
64
.gr 58.5%
[SYRIA] Syrian Computer Society (SCS)
.il
59.9%
30.4
79.0%
169
R
.de
6,298
30.8
4,720
E
13.1
1,278
73.41
47
45.1
75.8%
.tr Paphos
.ro
24.1
324
56.7%
51.4%
.pl
.dk 573
1.8
3.1
66.9%
97.3%
.is
K e fl a v i k
58.6
384
53.7
10.3
.sy
.se
.no 96.5%
.sa 27
26.2%
26.9
105
6.0
.6
.ua
13.1
11
94.8%
66.9%
.iq
41.8%
.by 95.1%
9.2% 13.83
5.4
54.2%
31.4
14.7
25
10.1
2.8
Palermo
Marseille 21.8% 46.2% 74.8% .es
64.9%
.ly
.tn 5.7
2.3
5.7
4.4
[SUDAN] National Intelligence and Security Service
28.9
1,453
.pt 75.9
31.1
Lisbon
L
A
For tazela
13.4
N
T
I
C
O
C
E
A
[UK] Government Comunication Headquarters (GCHQ)
N
61.3% .ma 20
5.6
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2/ T H E S I L K R OA D E N D S HERE The Silk Road was website that emerged on the Dark Web in 2011. It quickly grew to be the largest online marketplace for drugs, and soon branched out to provide a safe, anonymous platform for other illicit activities, such as contract killings. Soon after the site’s launch, the site had grown large enough for the FBI to launch a task force to shut down the website. The figure at the center of the investigate was an individual known only as his screen name, Dread Pirate Roberts. The dramatic pursuit of Roberts involved undercover agents, fake contract killings are meticulous sting operations. The site was eventually shut down in October 2013, and Dread Pirate Roberts was unmasked as Ross Ulbricht, who was detained in the San Fransisco Public Library, after a combined digital and real world surveillance operation. The key to finding and capturing Ulbricht was the IP address of the Silk Road site, which was allegedly unintentionally leaked through a faulty capcha. However technically speaking this is highly unlikely, and there is some evidence alleging the FBI engaged in counterhacking operations of personal computers to obtain this information.
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However the information was attained, the IP address showed that the site was hosted in the Thor data center in Iceland. This location was chosen for is relative distance to the US seaboard and western European coast, but also because of the modest data protection laws that Iceland had recently adopted. Once the US state department began to pressure the Iceland government, the quickly moved to circumvent some of these laws and immediately allowed US federal agents access to the facility. With access to the physical location of Silk road, the FBI could shut it down immediately. However this may have resulted in the loss of the suspect, so the task force instead monitored the traffic to and from this server, allowing them to outline a detailed web of servers and mirrored devices throughout Europe and north America. Eventually they traced administration activity to a portable computer in San Fransisco, belonging to Ross Ulbricht. The Silk Road example demonstrates the way that a free, private internet can be exploited, and consequentially ask questions about the moral responsibility places like Iceland have if they were to establish themselves as a data haven.
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ADAM FISH
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY LANCASTER UNIVERSITY
AF: How could we visualize this opacity? The very terms that we use to describe the problem, are visual. It’s about opacity and transparency, translucency, etcetera. LK: The approach that I have been taking to conceptualize this has been to consider data; bits and bytes; as a physical resource. This started to draw a parallel between the aluminum smelting industries in Iceland. While data moves all around the world, it still needs a physical location to be stored at. And there are legal advantages and disadvantages to where it is stored. However, data is unlike any other resource. It has a different meaning to different people, in different places. There is a difference between data and information. The problem is how to deal with a resource that has different meanings to different people. It can be useful to some, useless to others, but at the same time, can be manipulated politically and culturally by different people. It is an incredibly dangerous, fluid resource.
I N T E RV I E W
AF: So what is information? If data has a materiality, a use value, it intersects with nature.
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So you have two problems. You are not going to ignore the data opulence, the data deluge, the actually housing of the data, taking into account all this exponential growth. I’ve been looking at a lot of those numbers too, and it is astounding and terrifying. You are also going to be wrestling with the artistic, ironic interpretation. You want to both house, and comment on the data info glut that we are currently immersing ourselves in. Do you really think that Iceland is that place to explore that? Because the undersea cables, the bandwidth activity is so shallow, and while there is a proposal to put in a third high speed cable has been rejected. LK: Who was it rejected by? The government? AF: Well we are trying to get a bit of this information out, but it’s a
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very political situation currently. FARICE, the Faroe Islands – Icelandic undersea cable contractor or private corporation has a monopoly over it at the moment, and they have a monopoly over both cables going in and out because they owe a huge debt to the government, so the government is allowing them to have a natural monopoly over the undersea cables. Verne global we think was putting a lot of lobbying power to get the third cable put in that would go to Denmark, but that has been rejected because the government wants to make sure it can get its debt paid off by giving the natural monopoly to FARICE. So essentially the wiring itself will never be enough. The cost of the undersea cables are such, there might be a more terrestrial, cheaper solution somewhere else cold that might become the data haven. LK: So in that case, you are looking like somewhere like the US or Canada, both members of the 5 eyes. AF: But there is something that IMMI never thought about, the ability of the NSA of GCHQ to splice the undersea cables. They never thought about that. They don’t think about the fact that the data is part of a global information network. They were only thinking about preserving the whistle blowing capacities here locally, domestically. Completely ignorant that the cables will be vulnerable splicing. So it doesn’t really matter where you store the data, if data is known through its mutability, its portability, its transferability… LK: There is knowing about the data, and then there is controlling who knows about the data. The NSA GCHQ might want to know what is going in and out of Iceland, but Iceland may still be able to host this data, become a platform for the rest of the world to access the data. The NSA and GCHQ might know about it, but may not be able to do anything about it. But the Silk Road example comes into play here. Talking to the IMMI today, I mentioned this, and the weakest link in the case that they make, is that it all depends on a strong government. The only close link, or ally in this situation might be some of the Scandinavian countries. AF: You need to have a strong government. A strong government can be empowered by appropriate legislation, like the IMMI legislation, however, the seizure of the Silk Road server out of the Thor database was a telling incident. LK: It didn’t take long, did it?
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AF: No! We talked to Chris Hartwell two days ago. Chris Hartwell was the FBI agent that flew here. We got him on the phone, and we asked him about it. The final question, because we knew there would be some controversy a tor scholar was saying that there was no way that the capcha would have puked up the IP address the way they say it did. They must have identified it some other way, as in hacking, as in search and seizure without a warrant. Found it there, and then invented this capcha justification. This is what this tor scholar, Aruna Stanbek has said. WE ask him, who he talked to, and he gives us this story about how it is all about relationships, it’s all about friendships. He got a little cagey about this. He said, yeah, just don’t worry about it. It was just police to police, state department to state department, , no big deal, we do this all the time, it’s because of the relationships we forge over the course of working with these other justice departments. So don’t worry about that. The something was that it was ad hoc, it was informal. It didn’t require John Kerry to call up. If IMMI were in place, would it be more difficult? Maybe a little, maybe not. So what you need is a government that says no, information sovereignty, data sovereignty is part of our national identity, it more important than any trade relationships that we have with these other countries. That needs to be stronger than the US’ war on drugs, right? That’s what it was. They kowtowed to the US war on drugs that we know is a massive failure.
I N T E RV I E W
LK: I can’t see that at any point if Iceland will have that strength. Perhaps if the data center industry become a massive thing for Iceland, and become the corner stone of their economy, unless that’s the case, I can’t see how Iceland would be in the position to sacrifice trade with the US.
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AF: It has to be part of their core economy, but then also that particular proposal in the business pitch has to be a part. Information, data sovereignty, needs to be part of the business proposal for this industry. So what we have discovered when speaking with GreenQloud, a data center that has gotten out of it now, they were saying that they had hired a bunch of pirates. A bunch of pirates were working for her. And they were all saying that they have to lead by example. WE cannot wait for government. It’s the classic libertarian hacker ideology. We’re not waiting for government we are going to make our data center embody the IMMI proposal regardless of whether the IMMI proposal goes through parliament or not. They
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[GreenQloud’s management] say no, we are not going to do that. It is not an important enough business proposal for our clients. They don’t care. What worked for them a little bit was the green argument. But they didn’t even lead with the argument. So yes, not only is it cold and cost effective here, we are also a liberal, you know, we are going to protect the data. So it’s not a priority for these companies. LK: I found something similar in terms of physical security in these data centers. The formidable security encountered when visiting a data center in many cases is a theatrical performance – it was almost a selling pitch. They let me through, and I saw the servers, I had physical access, but I didn’t know what the information was. Talking to people in London, Liam Young suggested that data centers were cultural constructs, the cultural artifacts of the 21st century. All our online activity is a driver of the volume of data center storage required, and so if these data centers are constructed as a direct result of our cultural production, then why don’t we visit them? Why they are physically removed? If we were to visit them, what would they be like? And is it possible to bridge the gap between the physical reality and the digital information. It creates a strange feeling when you are in these spaces [data centers], a feeling of yeah, I don’t know exactly what is going on around me, but I have some idea of what is going on. AF: First, to Liam, everything is a cultural construct. You can read anything for it cultural resonance. Everything is deeply semiotic and harmonistically profound. I guess what he’s saying is public utility – cloud computing as public utility. If it were, then maybe there would be some state funding for the artistic interpretations of the data. People are talking a lot about digital humanities, how we can reinterpret the library for the ADHD rattled brain of young people. And so people are bringing artists in, for visualization of big data, stuff like that. If in fact, data centers were ever to become a utility, a state funded utility, in the era of austerity and privatization in the world – it is highly unlikely – but if they were, you could see you know, it being a space that was more in habitat, or a humane space. More like a library, where you go in and you say wow, this has 7 zetabytes of data in here, and here is an artist trying to make sense of it. And it becomes a place you can grow with and learn with, truly cultured, no somewhere not foreign and antiseptic. LK: A lot of things come back to story I heard, The Library of Babel. It was an infinite library, containing volumes and volumes of every
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single letter in every single combination – so within this was every book that had ever been written in the past, and all the books that ever will be written. All the answers to any question are there. But the problem is that it is buried in mountains of incomprehensible data. And I keep drawing parallels between this and the data center. AF: Well big data is driven by correlations not causality, right. That’s the analytical framework, that correlation will lead us to the next terrorist or the next Volkswagen purchase. If you believe so much in correlation, in algorithmic sorting, that’s a particular type of logic that you are putting a lot of positivistic thought into.
I N T E RV I E W
LK: Recently I have been exploring this computational binary logic, in attempt to find an aesthetic. But as a conceptual device, looking towards the internet of things, and how all this information is understood not by humans but by computed algorithms. If data is a physical resource, we can look as bits a bricks, and algorithms determine where they go. A digital artist, Adam Ferris, gave me a source code, and I have reinterpreted it and integrated the algorithms of Geoffrey West – who reduced the growth of cities to a single simplified equation. I feel that is a precedent for the direction the internet of things and big data is taking.
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AF: I would warn you to be conscious of not conflating data centers, and big data. I see a lot of people not actually taking into consideration that those are actually two different things. I’m just speaking pragmatically, I don’t know if this is true or not, can assay Thor, do an algorithmic analysis on the raw data, the unstructured data within its data? No they can’t. Who can do it? Amazon can do it. They are the biggest cloud service provider in the world, and also a big generator of big data, they can actually look through that data. Most of these other clouds, hybrid clouds, they can’t really do that big data analysis. So in your fictional data center, you might need to explain the terms of service agreement of that data, so that you could do that sort of analytical study of the data. LK: Could you argue, that instead of it being about the analysis of the data kept at any one data center, but rather it is the nature of the internet of things, and this trend that we are moving towards, that more and more things are controlled or understood by algorithms. The more data you feed into an algorithm, the stronger it gets. That is the principle of these city algorithms, which were based on lots of
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data from existing cities around the world. Perhaps we are moving to an algorithmic way of thinking, which drives the need for more data collection, and drives the Internet of Things. AF: Absolutely, but you’re assuming that everyone will be sharing data, that it will be the same protocol, the same TCP/IP, big hippy sharing agreement. When in fact all of the big data collectors, all the sensor companies, will be closed silo entities. They’re not going to share this across. They will monopolize all the data on all of the TV’s we’ve got, and we are going to get into an agreement with Samsung, while the other TV companies will say, well we are going to harvest our data and we are going to get into an agreement with Nike, and Apple, and we will make the largest Internet of Things, analytical engine possible. They will silo it up. It’s not going to be this big sharing – ‘let’s all grow together’. LK: If the Internet of Things will be linked to these large corporations, could you see several Internet of Things appear, in competition with each other? AF: Absolutely. Just like there is a big data competition at the moment. There are a hundred, maybe a thousand companies right now that are in that game but they are rapidly coalescing into singular monopolized conglomerates. LK: If you imagine in a perfect world, you only need to collect data once, when there are several parties in competition, you will end up with redundancies. AF: Yeah, but isn’t that good though? That there isn’t just going to be a single person that understands all that. That has all the power. There will always be redundancies. That is the internet, the internet works on redundancies. Mirroring, Co-location, it’s all about redundancy and resilience through waste. These things are all waste. Only 9% of the electricity they are using is actually being used for computation in these data centers right here. The rest of it – is 90% of just waste. Just garbage, there just in case there is a voltage over, whatever, or if something breaks. LK: That begins to make an interesting parallel to mining resources, where you have slag and runoff as waste products of the handling of a valued resource. Redundancy power usage, redundancy data as
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well begin to occupy a similar relationship. AF: I would say that a stronger parallel, or metaphor, between mining, is more in the data. Because it’s all in the data isn’t it? Because there is all sorts of waste data within it. There is all sorts of noise that is inherent to the information. I would say that the waste – it is an intentional waste. The miner that wastes all the ore that isn’t fine grain enough that’s not intentional. This is actually an intentional waste. It is planned into the business proposal, it’s wedded, and it’s welded into the architecture itself. It’s hooked up into the electrical grid in certain ways so we can waste it. That is why some of these data centers have been known to sell electricity back, and if they find some efficiency, then they find they have this banked up, quantum of electricity, they can sell back into the power grid, and make some money.
I N T E RV I E W
LK: Is there a push for data centers to be built away from the US, considering the activities of the NSA?
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AF: I think we are seeing a push towards the arctic right now, for the reasons that you know. And for co-location, right, to create redundancy and to reduced delay and lag, in getting your Facebook photos up and shown to your friends, but there are still a number of major operations happening in both the east coast and the west coast of the united states. Particularly where I’m from, Washington State, where there is plenty of cheap hydroelectric power, and a lot of subsidies, which are given by a very IT friendly state of Washington, because that’s where Microsoft, Amazon and SpaceX have been. So they are really happy to give out state subsidies and cheap land. I’ve been an archaeologist for 10 years working with Native Americans in that area. I know that data centers are being plotted down in traditional hunting and fishing lands, traditionally village lands. I would love to go back and have a project where I would hang out with the native people and I would ask them what they think about these centers. LK: That’s similar to the reasons why I have come here, to investigate the possible social and cultural implications of the establishment of a data haven here. However, it seems that there is nothing particularly immediate. What I have found interesting from talking to Alix [Johnson] was the way that the data centers are sold to the communities there. Where it put forward as ‘wouldn’t it be cool if BMW did their computations for their newest design next door to your
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house?’, but the reality is that all they will be seeing is a large concrete box, with no idea of what is really going on inside. It could be another Silk Road. This unknown is very interesting. This has the potential to change Reykjavik, Keflavik, and even the Icelandic landscape. AF: Remember they have selected Keflavik because it is already seen as a non-place. It is a sacrifice zone. It’s not the highlands. It not at some sacred sites. There was some report of some people getting sick from the vibrations. Alix lives right next to one, she lives right next to Thor, and hopefully she doesn’t get sick. Another thing, practically speaking, I just like to know who is in the data centers. I proposed this to some contacts within the pirate party, and a city council member, and he agreed, and some of the other pirates I spoke to said, ‘yeah, I could’ve gotten behind that’, just a list of the names – but they won’t do that. I can see someone visualizing that in a way. As in, what would the ultimate IMMI proposal, state financed, hyper accountable, hyper transparent, ironically so, data center look like? It has to somehow tell us who’s in there. It has to somehow automatically give us correlations. It has to be something that is living, in a way, and not in some cheesy way. Or it could be a cheesy way. I’m thinking about the way that you visualize this very sensible mining of the Antarctic proposal with those sexy graphics. You’re aesthetic is very elegant, very subdued with its irony. LK: Typically I like to keep most speculations realistic, except for one or two, typically cost, because cost is the most fun to throw out the window. This begins to illuminate the essence of some of the political ideologies that are floated about today. The proposed reality of this actually happening gives you a different perspective.
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[ICEL AND] Iceland was one of the hardest hit European countries in the 2008 banking crisis. A lopsided national finance structure made bailouts impossible, and the country was forced into a heavy recession. They have since recovered impressively, but Icelanders did not forget or forgive. Furious with the way the government managed the situation, they held extensive protests and drove out the existing government. The new government made the freedom of information and protection of journalistic sources a priority - they were adamant that the government were to kept as transparent and accountable as possible, while maintaining privacy for the individual. This led to the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI) and led strong political support to a young industry in Iceland - the data storage industry. Already attracted to the cheap electricity, cool temperature and global connectivity, many global operators were looking towards Iceland as a new site for data storage. The movement towards data protections which gained momentum thought IMMI help to further support this industry. While many are still waiting on critical legislature to come trough, Iceland could boost its recovery from recession with a new industry. This may come at a cost, with data freedoms in Iceland attracting illicit operators such as the Silk Road drug trading site, and political groups such as ISIS, who hosted a webpage on Icelandic domain. This was chosen as a site early on, with extensive site investigation, interviews and analysis being conducted on location in July 2015.
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1/ E N V I R O N M E N T
Iceland’s cool environment provides a clear benefit to potential data storage facilities. Data centers require a great deal of electricity and generate a great deal of heat. Dealing with this excess heat is one of the highest operation costs for a data center. In recent years, contemporary data facilities have begun to utilize environmental factors to minimize the need for active cooling processes, resulting in a lower cost of operation. One such example is Google’s data storage facility in Hamina, Finland. This facility uses the nearby cool seawater to cool its servers in a specialized heat exchange system. The general ambient temperature of the region reduced the need for cooling, and the high winds in the area also are harness for cooling purposes and to generate electricity. The average temperature of Iceland is around 2.94°C, while there are colder locations around the world, there are none that match the energy availability and favorable political climate. Areas towards the north have lower humidity and cooler temperatures, yet have less localized energy resources. Towards the north east, an extensive system of fjords create channels of frigid katabatic winds to flow from 44
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the country’s largest icecap. These winds could potentially be harness for an optimised heat exchange system. Another environmental factor to consider is the stability of the landscape. There are often severe storms throughout the winter, resulting in heavy snowfall and potentially avalanches, particularly in the fjord lands towards the north and east. Large areas of Iceland are volcanically active, and while most construction occurs well away from these areas, there is a low possibility that new areas of volcanic activity could emerge in the lowland areas of southern Iceland. Due to the environmental instability and extremes, most infrastructure within Iceland has been designed to be resilient and has a high level of redundancy, essential features for a data storage facility.
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The Eastern Fjords region of Iceland experiences some of the lowest average temperatures along the coast, and some of the highest wind speeds due to katabatics from the central ice caps. 47
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2/ E N E R GY One of the main considerations for the facilitation of data storage is the availability and reliability of energy. Increasingly the environmental sustainability of the power generation is becoming another concern. Cost per kilowatt hour determines the base running costs for data storage facilities - however other factors, such as redundant network availability, power grid resilience, sustainability, climate and cooling requirements impact on a successful data storage operation.
74% 12 10 8 6 4 4% 0%
4%
5%
5%
6%
2
1% 0
The three main drivers for data hosting are energy prices, grid reliability and resilience. Iceland has incredibly cheap electricity prices, with the country producing electricity from a large amount of geothermal and hydroelectric sources. This has primarily been in support of the localized aluminum smelting industry, that has been the major source GDP for several decades. The surplus of energy infrastructure and expertise and resources to expand this infrastructure allows for a cheap, and reliable national power grid. Iceland is subject to large, relatively frequent natural disasters, but the due to the even spatial destruction of energy sources and a ring of energy infrastructure around the coast, rarely is any part of the system completely isolated. This results in a high level of resilience and redundancy in the national grid.
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Coal Oil
Geothermal Hydroelectric
Iceland utilized more geothermal energy than all other sources combined. This is followed by hydroelectric sources, which have seen an increase of investment over the last 15 years. Roughly 74% of all the energy produced in Iceland was used by the aluminum smelting industry, with the other proportions being used by other minor industries, services and domestic use. This heavy reliance on one industry makes Iceland’s energy prices very susceptible to the global economy. After the financial crisis of 2008, a significant dip in aluminum production led to a surplus of energy production, and resulting in extremely low energy prices. This is one of the key factors enticing the establishment of data storage facilities in Iceland. 49
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Iceland’s energy infrastructure often has to span across vast distances of unstable terrain, but is well established to handle and localized damage to the national power grid.
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3/ C O N N E C T I V I T Y Currently there are four main fiber cables connecting Iceland to Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Greenland, Canada and the United States of America. The first cable established was FARICE-1, that connects at Seydisfjordur, in the Eastern Fjords region. This is still today the most utilized cable despite only 3% of its capability being stored. Iceland’s domestic internet usage averages at 200Gb/s, which is only 2.5% of its maximum capacity of around 7.8 Tb/s. Despite Iceland’s underutilization of its connectivity resources, there are several pending proposals for high volume high speed cables to land in Iceland on the way to other destinations. The one closest to realization is the Emerald Express, which prosed 6 100x100Gb/s cables from Ireland to the United States. Another proposal is a polar cable, that connects Europe with parts of Russia and Asia through the arctic ocean. Iceland would be a key stepping stone for this proposal. Iceland’s infrastructuraially strategic position is the reason why it has such and under utilized connectivity network. Iceland is currently seen as a stepping stone to other places, yet it has a great potential to become a destination for data also. The theoretical round trip time for a photon from Iceland to London is 14.02 ms - slight 52
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more than the time taken for a round trip to New York. Being located in such an equitable location between two of the planet’s major digital trading and activity hubs presents as a great opportunity for remote trading and other activities. While having a data storage facility as close to the center of operation as possible will maximize the speed of connection for one machine, the global economy is migrating to the facilitations of connections between multiple devices in multiple locations - meaning there are prime locations, identified by relativistic
statistical arbitrage, for the operation of data centers. Interestingly, many of these locations are found in remote or hard to in habit areas the middle of the ocean, or in the middle of the arctic. However this method also designates Iceland as an underexploited location for arbitrage - one that also has favorable environmental, political and energy conditions.
Raufarhöfn
Isadjörður Siglufjörður
Arnarfjörður Oil Refinery
Dalvik Mjólkárvirkjun
Grenivik
Skagaströnd
Húsavik Bakki Alcoa
Laxárstöðvar
Vopnafjörður Akureyri Krafla
Hvammstangi
Blöndustöð
Lagarfosstöd
Seydisfjordður Grundarfjörður 400 kV Transmission Lines
Reyðarfjörður Alcoa
Kárahnjúkar Hydroelectric Power Station
Neskaupstadur
Faskrudsfjordur Stodhavarfjordur
Hydroelectric Dams Andakílsárvairkjun Djúpivogur
Katanes Hvalfjörður Grundartangi Century Aluminum Company
Arkanes
Reykjavík Thor
Helguvik Century Aluminum Reykjanesbær
Steingímsstöð Hafnarfjordur
Rio Tinto
Ljosafossstöd
Nesjavellir
Búðarháls
Hellsheiði
Höfn
Hraneylatosstöð Sigöldustöð
Verne Global Svartsengi
Vatnsfell
Surtartangastöð Búfellsstöð
Grindavik Reykjanes
Vestmannaeyjar
Vestmannaeyjar
Imports
Exports
Australia Brazil United States Ireland
Netherlands Germany Poland United States
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Beneath these waters lies the major fiber connection point for Iceland. The infrastructure of the internet is often unseen; here the landing point is marked by a small buoy in the fjord, with all other structures buried or submerged. 55
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ALIX JOHNSON
PHD CANDIDATE, UNIVERSITY OF SANTA CRUZ
LK: Is there a difference between what you might term data, and information? AJ: I think there is something colloquially that there is something more accessible about information, where data is more of an aggregate term. Information is something that we can do something with. We talk about information and information freedoms more than we talk about data as a quantity of stuff, that goes somewhere, that is stored someplace. LK: That’s the observation that I have taken out of my research so far is that data is a resource, almost. Iceland is starting to utilize that.
I N T E RV I E W
Politically, I know a lot of the initiatives of the IMMI have not yet been ratified by parliament, so where is that situation at the moment?
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AJ: It’s just kind of stalled out, because of political issues. It’s definitely still accessible, and could still be picked up. The pirate party is pulling really high right now. If they form a coalition with other parties its possible to pull that stuff out and get it back on the agenda again. But it hasn’t been on the agenda for a while. So a few of the key components were passed a couple of years ago, but in terms of a comprehensive package, its less than half done. LK: What does this mean for Iceland as a Data Haven? AJ: I think that the idea of an information haven is that it’s like an object that people want to exist, but doesn’t exist as an object yet. It exists as an idea, a plan and a proposal and a project, in all these different ways and in all these different spheres, but its not in place. So you have to keep talking to industry, especially 56
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people like data hosting,.. The political people are waiting on the political will that has to come from making a good business case, the data center people are waiting on the politics, the software people are waiting on the data centers, so there is a lot of we can move forward when you do. But somebody has to first. LK: In some ways, the IMMI is in contradiction with itself. This all came out of the 2009 financial crisis, a push for transparency within government , within business. If they are offering themselves as a data haven, a place to store data, then privacy becomes an issue. So they need transparency for corporations and privacy for individuals. Is that what they are proposing? AJ: The pirate party’s line is transparency for the powerful and privacy for the powerless, transparency for states and privacy for people. And then there are all these major IT corporations that need data centers and occupy the space between the public and the private. There are different opinions about this. LK: There is obviously a scale between what some people consider what needs to be transparent and what needs to be private. The IMMI doesn’t seem to engage with that. Is that holding the program back in a way? AJ: A lot of the language of the Data Haven picks up on the idea of the offshore tax haven, which is actually the opposite of transparency, and I think there is a certain amount of letting that be useful as long as it is useful to get people on board. Something I have heard from people in ministries is this fear that when you become a data haven it is going to become the same thing as a tax haven. That people are going to store things that are unsavory. Someone articulated it as ‘the garbage can of the internet’. LK: It get to the point where Iceland become a gateway to the rest of the world. What does mean for place, what does it mean about Iceland? Iceland has 320,000 people but expect 1.2 million tourists each year. 57
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AJ: Part of the way I have been conceptualizing this is by imaging Iceland as being infrastructuraially ‘on the way’ because at different points in its history has been physically built into these networks between powerful places. In some ways they have been able to exploit that position and at other time it has been really exploited by that position. LK: How does this new industry impact local communities? AJ: That’s what Ive been starting to do in my second phase of my research. I think there are a couple of things at play, and because it is not an established industry yet I’m looking at the future, the speculative, more like what is in the imaginations that what is actually there. I think there are a couple of ways the data centers are sold. The two major ones – one is a Keflavik, which is a suburb outside of Reykjavik, and in the middle of a lava field basically, and the other one is in Ausburic, on the southern peninsula and both of these places have an interesting history of having very low education levels, suffering from being close to Reykjavik but not close enough. Keflavik was a military base and there was this exploitative labor relation. When the data center came here I know it was really prejudiced. First of all as an income generator - we know that data centers actually don’t create too many jobs.
I N T E RV I E W
LK: There seems to be a movement to larger facilities, with greater degree of automation.
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AJ: That is totally the case there. While they don’t create to many jobs, the other selling point is regional pride. Like, ‘isn’t it cool that BMW developed their new model in your neighborhood’. Isn’t it cool that this place, that used to be a fishing town, is now part of this information economy? And I’m trying to figure out the extent that this is meaningful to everyday people that have nothing to do with it. LK: Are these communities isolated? AJ: Certainly there are places here that feel more isolated. The 58
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place I’ve been working is not one of them, mostly because it is a port town, and they have the military base, it has always been known for its international connections. This is the town that got rock and roll before anywhere else in Iceland, because the Americans came there. Something that I’m interested in is the historical conception of transnational connections and how that is changing with data centers and data storage, and how that feeds into an already existing idea of Icelanders as a culture. LK: I’ve seen this as a commodification of data. If Iceland is positioning itself to collect data as a resource, using that as a national resource, how does data fit into this nationalism. AJ: I haven’t really through of it that way. One thing that when we talk about resources and the data center on point of comparison is the aluminum smelters, the major industry here, and also the reason the power grid got built. This allows the data centers to happen. So when you talk about data centers, they are always in contrast to the smelters. This has been the way we have used our natural resources so far, and now we want to do that differently, so we are turning to data centers. The aluminum smelters are another place where nature as a common resource really gets called into question, because I think there is an idealized image of Iceland, that it is so naturally beautiful, so pristine and so wild, everyone has access to this nature, but its actually a very contentious debate with industry and with tourism, of what should they actually do with the nature. So when you talk about data centers, there is a perception that there is an infinite capacity for energy development, but when you talk to environmental activists its just not true. That would require damming these really big, important rivers and causing damage to natural habitats and wildlife. LK: It seems that tourism plays into this, to a degree. Are the true resources of Iceland AJ: And that is part of the great conversation with data, is that there is a concern that Iceland is not extracting enough value from its resources. There is this idea that their doing the processing of the aluminum, and then someone else is selling it 59
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for a lot more money. They are catching the fish, and someone is selling it for a lot more money. So there is this capture problem that happens here, where things are moving through, questioning whether that value actually stays in Iceland. LK: Is there the perception that a more holistic industry needs to be set up here? AJ: It think certain people really want that. I think that this is part of the data center model, is that while data centers won’t create that many jobs themselves, but there will be these corollary industries, and subsidiaries – it service companies, that sort of thing. I think that’s the hope, and definitely there is a lot of energy around this IT startup world. LK: Is there more energy around that than the IMMI? AJ: It’s hard to quantify energy. There is definitely a lot more money [for IT startups] and institutional support. After talking with some of the MPs that have been moving this through parliament, I think that is part of the strategy is that human rights just don’t sell, there is not a lot of imperative to pass something just because it is good for people. There is better imperative if there are better business and economic position behind it.
I N T E RV I E W
LK: What are the opportunities for internet activism? How much of the Pirate Party/Wikileaks ideology is ingrained in this?
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27:13 AJ: I think there are certain convergences. The 2009 crash, a lot of the public and political interpretation of that it came from a lack of transparency. A concentration of power and corruption that would’ve been avoided if the government had been more open and transparent. If everyone had access to what was going on, people would be more informed, and I think that interpretation translates easily into an information freedom platform. The people should be involved, the people should be empowered, the people should have access to what’s going on in government, and that jives with the wikileaks perspective. I think there is a Venn diagram of convergence there, but for sure the government does not get too involved. There was a very short-lived proposal to give Edward Snowden Icelandic citizenship, the pirate party wanted it but everybody else said of 60
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course not. LK: Do you think this political balance is heading more one way or another? AJ: I think that the process of it becoming institutionalized results in both a gain and loss of momentum. The finance minister, last week, made some comments about how we need more direct democracy. On the one hand that is an incredible gain, that an old school conservative finance minister is saying yes you should be able to vote online. In some ways that is a real tangible gain, in other ways it’s such a watering down of the principles they have been fighting for. An online platform for voting is not what wikileaks has been fighting for. The way the pirate party is in office right now… I think its both a tangible gain and a diffusion of principles. LK: Are there inherent dangers, politically, culturally or socially, if Iceland became a data haven? AJ: One of the questions that comes up a lot is to do with the geopolitical histories – the strategic value of being a target. There is a certain amount of security through obscurity that happens here. One of the two data centers here is run by Verne Global, the other one is Thor that is run by Icelanders, and they both kind of joke about the security. They made it clear that this is theatre for people like you. I went to visit the cable landing station, on the other side of the coast, and the guy that I went with said “look around you – no one is coming here, no one is coming for us”. However the proposal is that if you become a data haven, they will. For me there are always two end points for the data haven that have not been resolved. There is the legislative, but there is also the political and the infrastructural.
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4/ J U R I S D I C T I O N A critical aspect of any economic enterprise are the political conditions that it is subjected to. Political bodies in Iceland have identified the potential for a data center industry to be established, and are moving towards a system that will encourage the growth of this industry. Variations in the jurisdiction and control of this industry can affect the profitability of the enterprise significantly. These restrictions can be in many forms, from state surveillance and security measures, to taxation and market control measures. Iceland is currently a member of the EEA (European Economic Area) and is subjected to most EU commercial directives, giving other larger European countries and degree of control over commercial enterprises in Iceland. Iceland does currently have a national data retention directive, and has previously worked with other countries to combat cybercrime, notably helping the FBI in the Silk Road case in 2013. Digital privacy is an ongoing issue in Iceland, with a great deal of public support behind a movement for privacy for the individual and transparency for government organisations. This is entangled with the rhetoric surrounding the establishment of a data storage industry, as a high degree of data protection would give operators in Iceland a global competitive edge.
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After the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis hit Iceland, and a sudden leadership change in Icelandic parliament, significant momentum had built up for political and social change around the media and the internet. Out of this, the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative was established. The proposal was sponsored by Birgitta Jonsdottir, a well known member of Icelandic parliament and advocate for digital rights, alongside several members of the Pirate party, a political movement that is closely related to members of the wikileaks organization. The initial proposal for IMMI has several specific goals, such as removing the threat of libel, protecting journalistic sources and reducing the amount of data retention for the general public. In the years since its establishment, IMMI has achieved a modest amount of these goals, with the latest success being the removal of blasphemy as an percercutable offence. The IMMI is an important piece of the puzzle that seeks to establish Iceland as a data haven. While it still has much work to do, they are slowly gaining momentum both locally and globally and seem to be moving the local political discourse towards the protections of individual privacy and freedom of journalism.
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GUÐJÓN IDIR
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
ICELANDIC MODERN MEDIA INITIATIVE
Interview Friday 17th July, 2015.
I N T E RV I E W
LK: Could you please explain a little bit about the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative? As in what you do here, and what your goals are.
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GI: The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative is the name of a parliamentary resolution that was unanimously passed in parliament in 2010. That resolution has as an objective, to create a safe haven for freedom of expression and freedom of expression of information in Iceland, which means comprehensive legislative change in various fields of law. In 2011, the International Modern Media Institute (same acronym) is founded. And it was founded by the same people that were behind the initiative. It’s a non profit, fully independent, small institute, and out work is to conduct the required research and to lobby for these changes. Because a parliamentary resolution is only a signal of intent, as opposed to an act, or a bill. The background to this resolution was obviously the economic collapse in Iceland, and so during the collapse there was a major lack of trust in official institutions, and it also affected the media. The media was sort of asleep of the watch as it were, during the build up to the collapse. So they were cheerleading the growth of the banks, which eventually grew ten times the size of the GDP. Once there was, I think it was 2008 rather than 2009, when there was a Wikileaks published on their website information about in loan accounts in the Kaupthing bank, with a lot of suspicious activity. Kaupthing got an injunction on the national broadcaster, so they couldn’t report the news, but they only took that injunction against the one state channel. So when the news aired, the anchor tells the viewers that they cannot report the news, so they refer them to the Wikileaks website. I think this kind of crystallized the need for comprehensive reform.
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LK: When did this happen, was it towards the end of 2009? GI: Yes, that was in 2009, in August. I think generally during the political crisis here as an aftermath of the crash, people were very much in favor of Wikileaks and transparency. There was a great need for a paradigm shift. The resolution takes to all sort of connected fields within media, information and expression. It was drafted by a few people, including Julian Assange, people who were looking at examples of best practice law from around the world, and were trying to make a blueprint for nuance. The initiative meant to function as a blueprint for others to follow. So it is not the objective is not to become necessarily to only or the first safe haven of this kind, even though it seems quite remote that there would be another country in the world that would do it before Iceland. LK: Why would you say that? The IMMI has clearly spearheaded this, and have taken a far, when it comes to a crystallized political resolution, than anyone else that I know of. What is stopping it becoming fully resolved in Iceland? GI: I think EU countries, if the EU will do something as an organization, that’s different. But I don’t think individual countries within the EU will takes these steps. I certainly don’t see the US doing anything close to this. And it sort of undermines the whole surveillance industry. I think that we had a governmental change in 2013 that affected the speediness of the process. Because there is a steering committee under the authority of the ministry of education and culture which has a mandate to work on implementing IMMI, of this resolution. We now have an individual now leading that group, understanding the requirements or the importance of privacy concerns, and of proportionality when it comes of surveillance and data retention. The resolution takes to deformation law, which is law protections, source protection, access to information, trying to prevent libel tourism, and then there are more fields and then later, given the scale of the exposures, which Snowden thankfully disseminated through journalists, privacy becomes more and more part of our focus, even thought we have already been working on trying to remove data retention from Icelandic law, which violates proportionality and privacy.
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I N T E RV I E W
LK: From people that I have been talking to recently, there seems to be an element of conflict between transparency for the powerful and privacy for the individual. They are the two extremes, but its actually more of a sliding scale between the two. With people or organisations between the middle of these two extremes. So how does the IMMI deal with this situation?
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GI: It’s fairly straightforward when it comes to governmental transparency in a democratic society where the population needs to be some sort of a supervisory role. As the media as well. Also when it comes to individual privacy, which is constitutionally protected, and protected in various international treaties even though that hasn’t been implemented in the online world. Coming from Australia you know this full well. Well it gets more draconian every month. And it’s the same in the US and the UK. Then these three countries happen to be part of the 5 eyes alliance. But in terms of organization or companies where transparency is concerned, our stance with regards to that is journalistic work requires a level of judgment. And that is just on the media. That is part of the journalists work. To evaluate what is of great public interest, and what is more irrelevant and invasive in terms of individual privacy or business secrets. So that is something that gets lost in public debate about these things. There was a leak from the interior ministry in Iceland which was defamatory against an asylum seeker from Nigeria. It was unsupported defamatory statements, leaked to the press, and the oppress reported it verbatim, and then the whole debate became about how this leak should not have happened, but there was no onus on what the role of the media was. It was irresponsible to publish without properly evaluating the sources and evaluating weather this had public interest. It so happened that it was published on the morning of a planned solidarity protest outside the ministry in support of those asylum seeks. So that was a good way to see how the media role often doesn’t get the right attention. It went to a supreme court, and they did mention that the media carried great responsibility in deciding what needs to be disseminated to the public in regards to someone’s details. LK: That is interesting because you see all around the world the media controlled by a small group of people, for example, Rupert Murdoch, a lot of the media released is very conveniently timed. How has the media’s role changed over the last 5 or 6 years since the financial crash?
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GI: I’m not so sure. The media in Iceland is still very much in the ownership of big businesses with strong political agendas. We have a state broadcaster, this government in particular has voiced its concern about discontent over newscasts of which are unfavorable. Which is quite unethical. And then they have hinted at slashing budgets – so that is direct interference with media reporting. This is the same story all over the world. We have two big newspapers. One of which is owned by a person that owned one of the banks, and the other paper is the oldest paper in Iceland, which was bought by someone who has a huge stake in the fisheries. It is run at a major loss, and it’s editor in chief is the previous prime minister for the tory equivalent independence party. Trying to rewrite history. We don’t have a great media environment where we can say our objectives are reflected in the media environment here. However, if what we work towards becomes reality, then it will create the soil for actual real media to work within. And real journalistic work to take place because it is governed by data protections. We get numerous request from various media outlets and technological companies as to the progress of the implementation of the resolution. It will be desirable to relocate aspects of your operation, or if you are a small media outlet, to host your content in Iceland, so, it will very much have a global significance as opposed to a local media impact. LK: The IMMI would like to see Iceland become a Data Haven. Is this targeted to media companies, or does the cope extend much broader than that? Part of the concern about Iceland becoming a data haven is what sort of data could be hosted here – could get more unsavory data that is hosted here. Do you have methodologies in place to stop that? Do you think Iceland could pick and choose which data to store? GI: No, and I don’t think you can. I think it is the same as defending free speech. You will have to defend free speech for all, and you will have to defend opinions that you might be disgusted by. You can’t pick and choose battles in the sense because then you massively undermine the principle. In terms of data being hosted that is unsavory – if it is illegal activity, and it is investigated as such, then it is for the courts to decide. And that stands in terms of content that is hosted. We wouldn’t want to see take down of content without an actually court procedure. There was a website hosted here by ISIS, the company that handles all the domain registrations in Iceland was under some pressure to remove the website from its servers. Our stance was it shouldn’t be taken down without a court deeming it illegal.
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LK: That process is incredibly important isn’t it. GI: But they didn’t – they took it down. I know they were divided internally about whether to do so or not. So as a test case, I would say it was flawed. With regards to what sort of data would be hosted here, I think, this initiative doesn’t just impact on civil society operators and media. It’s not just something that civil society can look at favorably. It will also have an impact for large businesses, which is also one of its strengths, because it needs to garner political will and bipartisan support. We already have data centers in Iceland hosting content for major international, multinational companies. LK: Have any of these companies gotten involved in the political process here? GI: No. I think, given the size of the size of this organization, given there is no culture for support to NGOs in Iceland by company donations and the like, we want to retain our independence from the state in the sense that we don’t seek any state support. It’s a continual struggle to keep funding the institute. Even through it’s a pittance that we need to keep operational. So we have relied on donations and funding from European project in which we are partners, that have overlap in our sort of scope, but don’t directly affect the objective of the IMMI resolution.
I N T E RV I E W
LK: Are these partners similar sort of initiatives and institutes?
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GI: We are part of a project now called Decentralized Citizen technologies and the original objective was to create a platform for citizen engagement that is decentralized and is an open source platform where people can discuss ideas and collaborate together across different platforms. Like most European projects, it will not be fully completed, as according to the original vision, but it will have components of that vision. It will be open source so, it can be worked on more by others. So that’s very much about direct democracy measures and the like which is also no directly our work, but the IMMI objective only has weight in the sense that it is an instrument to create a more meaningful democracy. A more meaningful democracy will always be the thing associated with that and different ideas, new technologies, will have an overlap with our objectives. This has been one of our revenues, if you like, but with regards to companies hosting data here, it would be quite relevant that they would support our work. We currently have two of them, but we are basically the
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only body that is trying to safeguard this implementation and push for it. We have one person in the emissary committee, with the ministry, and there was another resolution that was passed last autumn called the utilization of the internet and the action abuse of rights. A very broad objective, so its not just a sort of think tank group, it is supposed to make legislative proposals quite speedily. We have to evaluate in which group we can push different legislative reform. That group might be more relevant to push data protection legislation through, or perhaps intermediary protection. LK: That is something that I have notice with the IMMI – that you do have a very specific set of goals to attain. GI: I think that is explained by the fact that we are small, so if you had a similar organization in the UK, the likelihood that they would be able to push for legislative changes is so remote it is almost astronomical. Whereas Iceland is tiny the access to influence is at hand. There is a slight overlap from IMMI and the pirates in the form the pirate party, even through these are two separate things, the pirate party has these objectives – to promote transparency and freedom of information and the like. The first law that they got passed, that happened this month, was the decriminalization of blasphemy. This is very much in the spirit of IMMI even through we are still quite away from the safe haven objective. It is also for someone who is not in the pirate party, like myself, I can currently I am not involved in any political parties, it is quite promising to see them polling quite high, month after month, because it makes it more realistic that all these measures will be taken. But it also – and this is my hope – might awaken the political parties of the importance of these other topics, because we can’t just push this through one political parity. It really needs to have bipartisan support, and I think that’s where all the economic benefits from an implementation come into play. We already have data centers coming in, but funnily enough, we don’t have the IMMI safe haven. Sometimes that can be a lack of understand of what protections are actually offered here, and what a resolution means as opposed to an act. There are other desirable qualities that Iceland has for data centers, as you know, cheap energy, cool climate, plenty of space. LK: What you mentioned earlier about how this imitative might have more impact elsewhere makes the situation interesting. Any data here is subjected to the laws of Iceland. If you do create a data haven, it almost extends Iceland’s laws beyond your borders to a greater
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populace, in a way. GI: That’s the objective. That needs to be insured in any sort of data center act or specific set of laws that can be implemented. However there is this ongoing case regarding the US and Ireland, where Microsoft host parts of their data in Ireland, and the US district court has required information associated with a Hotmail account, which is data hosted in Ireland. The US position is that they can circumvent Irish jurisdiction and Irish courts because it is a US company with its headquarters located in the US. Microsoft has been challenging this position and it seems logical and pretty obvious that it would need to go through the Irish courts to be handed over to the US authorities. And if it doesn’t, then this will put so many business in jeopardy because there are so many data centers all over the world that are operating on the premise that they are benefiting from jurisdictional protection. So that is a case we are looking at, because if that were to happen here, and Icelandic authorities were to be weak enough to not insist on Icelandic sovereignty.
I N T E RV I E W
LK: I have heard about the Silk Road site that was hosted here, and how the Icelandic government pretty quickly did what the US asked them to and took down the site almost immediately.
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GI: Yeah. I think the Icelandic police were working with the CIA or the FBI think both bodies were working on it. There were foreign journalists at major international news outlets that are still trying to be the proper information from that particular case. Which has highlighted one flaw in the new Icelandic Information Act, that we see that even thought there is a great access to information, the time that it takes to get particular information can be so excessive that story has lost its news value once the information is finally handed over. That is something that came to light through that particular case. It is something we are working on. LK: I’m sure certain involved parties know that very well, and may be a strategy that they employ. I’ve seen this several times back home. Freedom of information can take months – but the public loses interest in 2 or 3 days. GI: That particular case, its not a matter of a month or two, but quite a few months to get that information out about how the Icelandic Police were compliant with the US authorities. It hasn’t
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been completely resolved. There was quite a big piece on it in I think Weis motherboard. A very long journalistic piece about the whole thing. You could have data centers here hosting data, and because of privacy protections which will involved encryption and various technological means to protect the data, in theory a lot of content could be hosted here that could be illegal. I think that is the nature of things generally. If you look at where this term comes from, the data safe haven, it is derived from a quote from John Perry Barlow who came here in 2009 or 2008 and he suggested that Iceland could become the Switzerland of bits. If you look at Switzerland, it does have this banking secrecy, now maybe a lot of that is all perfectly legit, but without question, a lot of it isn’t. So if you offered a safe haven of this sort, then its not going to be all rosy or one dimensional. LK: What sort of dangers do you see possibly arising out of Iceland becoming a safe haven for data? GI: Its difficult to gauge what could come out of that as a downside – I think the biggest danger would be cyber attacks, hacking, forging government surveillance and hacking and foreign government pressure. That is not just limited to hosting data, but the whole objective. So say that we have this safe haven already in place, there is another Edward Snowden, they decide to move to Iceland before they disseminate their information, and they would be guaranteed protection, that would obviously bring about some sort of diplomatic struggle and forging pressure. So for a safe haven of this kind to be ensured, it would need to have a government in place that doesn’t yield to foreign pressure easily. You could have a very strong legislation and protection here, but that could be circumvented by an incredibly weak government that wants to appease forging superpowers. So that in terms of whistle blowers you could have journalistic pieces posted or disclosed from here that could bring about the same sort of resentment from other countries. I think that the pros far outweighs the cons. I think that if this was an actuality, it would prove inspirational to populations as opposed to governments around the world. In that sense, and maybe this is naïve, because I thought that the Snowden case would be a pretty unanimous verdict by different populations, which you do have to a kind in Europe at least. But not in the US. I’m not sure what the latest polls are, but I know fox news has about 40% of the viewers.
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I N T E RV I E W
LK: Even in Australia, Julian Assange, more of a local topic for us, opinion is incredibly divided. The media reports focused on Julian Assange as a person, and all of a sudden it doesn’t became about what Julian Assange or Edward Snowden did, but more focused on what sort of people they were, a close examination of their individual character traits. But really, that is not the issue.
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GI: You can see that when you watch Citizen 4 – before his face is on the package as it were, the media in the US is focusing on the actual information. As soon as his name and his face is out there, it is the Edward Snowden story. With regard to how Julian Assange is portrayed in Australia, as you say, it just reminds me of Edward Bearnaise, and how Joseph Goebbels looked to Hollywood. People say that you should never talk about the Nazis in any sort of subject, because it devalues the conversation, but I do think there is an example there, where I think Hitler wanted to make movies about Jews they were quite crass and extremely black and white. Goebbels wanted to do this in a more sophisticated way, where you had a movie, a drama, and it was about maybe a couple, the woman was killed, and the culprit was a Jew. So it’s more sly a sophisticated. I think this is the way you get people emotionally invested in a story. If particular media manage this to drive an agenda to paint the picture of Julian Assange the individual, or Bradley Manning the individual, or who ever it may be, then strangely enough that is where we are too dormant to really shake off those tendencies to start to compartmentalize these things in such a fashion. And it works. To me because I didn’t begin working for IMMI until January 2014, and the Snowden exposures were in June 2013. For me it was immediately, this is the biggest piece of news that has happened at least since the last major thing by wikileaks, but its vindicating what a lot of people have been saying for quite a long time that have been painted as conspiracy nuts. This will bring about some sort of a global shift, because it is of such enormous magnitude, and then that didn’t happen. And then people know that their privacy is completely unguarded online, and yet they don’t care enough to either demand changes or take the required measures to protect it. I think the biggest challenge as I see it is less to do with pressuring policy makers, and more to do with raising lasting public awareness. The sort of public awareness that has behavioral changes as a consequence. LK: In Australia, the data retention debate has been caught up with
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the issue of ISIS. There is an argument that one justifies the other. Australians are recruited by ISIS via the Internet, and because the Internet is such an uncontrolled place, data retention is what we need to do to protect ourselves. I feel that this fear is mitigating the public understanding of the consequences of data retention. It is sold as this is being done for our protection. What is also relevant is the nature of the content – the Guardian did quite a good job of summarizing Edward Snowden’s leaks, but I personally haven’t looked at a fraction of the actual documents. I don’t think most people have. So there it is difficult to get that directed information, the media, in some form, is always in the middle. GI: I think that is one of the brilliant things about Snowden, that he chose a particular journalist that he trusted, and I think Greenwald has done a fantastic job of rendering that information into the public domain. They obviously set up the intercept as a consequence of this, and I think that it has been extremely well done. I don’t think people generally would read troves of documents, just as they wont read a 20 page privacy user agreement in legal speak. Actual authentic media is extremely important. I doesn’t really grow on tree unfortunately. It’s not financially supported, investigative journalism. So the fact that they go the media to put his money behind the intercept is a bit of an anomaly. There are a couple of news outlets in Iceland that a couple or more in depth news – one is based on a subscription basis, which is a struggle I’m sure, and the other is gathering small investors, and they both run with adverts. I think we need to figure out how to ensure sustainability of these media platforms that provide actual news, which is a problem everywhere. But in terms of data retention and surveillance, like you were saying about Australia, we are looking at a European country, one after the other, who’s constitutional court has found data retention illegal and in violation of constitutionally protected rights. The EU has had its data retention directive invalidated, by the European court of justice because of these concerns. They have signaled that they wont create a new one. There is legal uncertainty about what will take over from this, but through reading about all these different countries and what their experience of data retention has been, you don’t see anything, any report, that shows the efficacy of data retention. You don’t see literally anything. I haven’t seen any proper argument for it. It’s all rhetorical. The argument against it is principally, logically sound. In terms of mass surveillance, it has been shown again and again, and again the intercept is a good source of information with
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regard to this, it undermines targeted surveillance which is important. We are not naïve enough to think there can not be any sort of secret services by any government. Everyone should just be friends. There is a person on our advisory board, Thomas Drake, that worked for the NSA, and he saw that the program that they were running, which was a mass surveillance program, was far less efficient and incredibly flawed, whereas they had a targeted surveillance program, which was actually, in his words, superb. There are different theories about why we have this mass surveillance. One theory is that it is a self serving industry, and the more money you get, it’s the same doctrine as is behind the perpetual war economy of the US. The other is that it is this desire for absolute power. Obviously information is power, and if you know everything about everyone then you don’t really have a functional democracy, instead you have a suppressed regime. The third theory I’ve seen which I was reading recently is that some people within the surveillance industry and the secret services were saying that the escalation of this mass surveillance trend is because people don’t want to be mad scapegoats for the next 9/11. They want to have everything they can to make sure it can’t possibly happen. I think this is the weakest theory of all. It conceivable, and it was play a part in it, but given that this is less efficient than other methods, it doesn’t really hold to logic. Our problem is, given what we know, given our consensus that exists that there needs to be proportionality and peoples privacy needs to be respected and international treaties are supposed to safeguard it, the problem is how that get implemented in each country. How there is local implementation or national implementation and parliamentary committees have actual oversight over surveillance, if they have measures to slash budgets or somehow put a straitjacket on industries that have run out of control. What we see in all these different countries is that they don’t have these safeguards, they don’t have these measures to scale down these monstrous trends that have been growing. Whether that is due to a lack of political will, or pressure from governmental bodies, there are all sorts of different possibilities. But to go back to the home territory, I think this will always be a concern. If IMMI is fully implemented, there will never be a safe haven where your privacy is 100% protected. We have seas cables that connect us with the rest of the world, we cannot guarantee that they will not be intercepted. We cannot always guarantee that we will always have a government that will uphold Icelandic law instead of bowing to enormous foreign political pressure. But it is a blueprint, it is something that might inspire others, might inspire other legislators, but it will certainly inspire other
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populations if and when it happens. LK: The way I have been conceptualizing this issue so far is by treating data as a resource; in the same way as Iceland gets a lot of Bauxite from Australia for the aluminum smelting industry here, there seem to be some parallels between these two industries. If you start to think of data as a physical thing, it has a different value or function in one place as opposed to another, then it seems that Iceland is exploiting this resource. If we speculated that in 20 years data storage in Iceland has become more established, what sort of cultural changes could you see occurring? GI: Looking at the whole picture, instead of just data storage, social and cultural effects will certainly be that it will create a more tech savvy environment in which there will be more onus and focus on that within the universities, it will strengthen that part of the education sector in Iceland, and it will create more individuals for that workforce. It will raise the technology expertise; it will be more common here. It’s impossible to say what consequences will be in 20 to 30 years because every 5 years the change in technology is so enormous, I think if there was to be a safe haven here in Iceland within the next 5 years, it won’t be big news 15 years from now. The field moves so rapidly, that novelty quickly becomes obsolete. The cultural and social impacts will be manifested in the educational sector, and it will probably have a stimulating impact on employment and the economy in general, but I think because you compare it to the aluminum smelters, we really are selling energy to enormous polluters, so we are enormous polluters, at an outrageously low price. So we are one of the most exploited countries in the world. We are not in a position where they are in, where they are forced into a position to sell off their national resources to multinational companies that pillage them basically. We are doing this willingly. Even though we have cheap energy, we should definitely be selling the energy at a higher cost, or somehow get more out of this. Because you could have loads of data centers here, but it might not increase employment that much. It could just be a small part of a major company, they might get a special tax dispensation by the government, because they want them here, which I think has already happened, it needs to be desirable for companies to come here financially, but it also needs to be desirable for the Icelandic community to have those companies here. That’s something not for IMMI to think about, because we are not in that business side of things. It’s just one of the selling points of the whole
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objective, which appeals to the political spectrum at large. Cultural I think, if we have the safe haven I think it will bring about a more meaningful democracy, which I think is a gigantic thing to happen. This could be my positivity that something incredibly positive is going to happen. But given the interest that has consistently been from abroad in this resolution and its implementation, I believe that people are anticipating and are waiting for this to happen. Its taking a while, which has all these different explanations, but if it and when it does happen, I think it will quite clearly have enormous positive effects for democracy and that will inspire others. And it will instill trust that has not been here for years and years, if not decades. I think it will transition the way we view out society a little a bit. I think it will be a bit of a learning curve, just like if you do have a bit more of a direct democracy in society, where by people could push through different topics in a referendum, I think it is a steep learning curve. It might start off as quite populsistic and maybe even narcissistic. So I think it might have to be cultivated, people need to have it for quite a while before it is properly used. I don’t mean that in any sort of arrogant or permissive way, I include myself completely in that. No one has the experience so we need to get to grips with it for 5 – 10 years. We are just not used to it. We are used to voting every 4 years and then complaining about how we can’t do anything about a horrible government because we have to wait to the next election, with the only exception to the was when the government was ousted in 2009. But that definitely has changed the mentality here a bit. People feel more empowered to actually do things. And if that never happened, then IMMI would never have happened. It’s all connected. Through our negative crises, there were some positive social things that came out of it, as opposed to what normally happens during a crisis, the worst policies are implemented because somehow you are told it is necessary.
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3/ S E Y D I S FJ O R D U R
One of the most unique places in Iceland is the small rural town of Seydisfjordur. Located in the middle of the Eastern Fjords, the town is nestled between snowcapped mountains, and isolated from the rest of the country by barren ice covered highlands, perpetually soaked in heavy fog and suffering through sub zero temperatures. Katabatic winds from the surrounding slopes tear into the valley from different directions, at times creating a harsh, cold climate. Multiple streams and rivers cascade down the steep slopes framing the small town. Originally a fishing village, Seydisfjordur, with a population of only 665, has an interesting history as a gateway to the rest of the world. It is the location of one of the first consistent ferry routes from the Faroe Islands, a route that still operates twice a week to this day. But perhaps most importantly, it is the landing point for Iceland’s most critical data cable 78
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connection - FARICE - 1. The vast majority of domestic data consumption from outside Iceland come through this cable - despite bing at only a fraction of capacity. The landing site itself is completely innocuous. To the unknowing observer, there is no indication of the location of the landing site, only a small buoy around 100m off the coast in the fjord, signifying the point where the cable moves from a submerged cable to subterranean one. There is no other indication of the presence of this cable, despite its importance. Any damage to this cable would cause major problems for the connectivity for Iceland, despite the redundancy of 3 other cables landing at other sites. The town itself is developing as a tourist attraction, through the exposure from cruise ships and the ferry from the Faroe Islands. Despite this, it is still not a prominent tourist location, most likely due to the distance from Reykjavik.
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The highlands throughout the Eastern Fjords isolated communities and restricts modes of access to only one route in most cases. These highland passes are often enshrouded in a thick fog. 81
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At the peak of the highland approach to Seydisfjordur, the terrain plateaus out into an icy, stark landscape of small frozen lakes and tundra like scrub. 83
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After passing through the frozen highlands, you are presented with a view directly down the valley towards Seydisfjordur. The road winds its way through the landscape, loosely following a river dotted with waterfalls. 85
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The town itself is nestled around a small bay, with a larger ferry terminal recently built just to the north. 87
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[ DATA I N T H E L A N D S C A P E ] Semester 1 involved the investigations around how data on a scale true to cultural production would manifest itself in the landscape. By looking at the resources and environmental conditions that are unique to the region, and adapting the misunderstood data center typology to this landscape, a new kind of space emerged. It was not a natural environment, but it wasn’t made for humans either - it was somewhere between the natural and the unnatural. As we enter a new epoch - the anthropocene - we begin to change our surroundings in ways we have never before imagined. This will move beyond shaping environments for us to live. We have seen in the twentieth century the rise of many of these anthropic landscapes, such as the super highway, warehouses and ports the size of cities. As we enter an age dominated by the reliance on digital technology and digital technology, it is data that will shape us and our surroundings. It will change the way we live, the way we use our cities, and have effects further reaching still. As our data use grows exponentially, the infrastructure required to support this grows exponentially also. Data begins to shape landscapes creating a nature that is driven by cultural production, but mediated by the objective logic of computer algorithms. The way that the digital and the natural interact is something rarely speculated on, but it is already becoming a reality, and will gain far greater significance in the near future. The following pages are investigations into the nature of this interaction, the interface of the natural and the digital.
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1/ E X P E R I M E N TS
Initial experiments started with the integration of industrial support systems in the environment - adapting these systems to optimise the process. Initial designs included a mountain-like data center organised in fins to enable wind to permeate the structure, cooling essential systems. The provision of geothermal power for data center operations was a key factor why Iceland was chosen as a site. The harnessing of geothermal resources and water was to be important in the shaping of the system itself. One of the most important investigations was into the sheer volume of data to be integrated into the landscapes. Calculations indicated that within a matter of years, entire geological formations, such as glacial valleys, would be filled by data storage, even in high densities. 90
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2/ M O N O L I T H S The next iteration resulted in large monolithic structures designed to efficiently house large amounts of data. These were at a completely inhuman scale, but were discrete and disconnected across the landscape. The tower contained large pillars approximately 2 meters wide, with infrastructure, particularly coolant pipes, inhabiting the spaces between these pillars. This allowed for the utilization of Iceland’s cool climate to assist in the cooling processes of the facility.
However there were certain aspects of this design that failed to properly harness and represent different aspects of the system. Other infrastructures, such as fiber connectivity, power generation and transport, as well as the source of water for coolant, were not properly represented in this iteration. As the design progressed, these features became driving factors of the design.
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3/ DATA S C A P E S As the system became more dependent on the local conditions and resources, the design began to spread out and grow to immense scales. While the harnessing of local resources such as water, geothermal energy and cool katabatic winds began to take precedence as driving factors for design, the nature of growth itself became important. Where does the growth begin? How fast does it occur? What resources are required first? The next few pages outline some of the formal experiments that attempt to answer some of these questions. One important finding was the role of automation in the project; as automation of data centers is a blossoming technology, it would be reasonable to assume that this will be implemented in future data landscapes. This began to inform the way data storage grew. It may grow in a grid, that is optimised for robotic operation, or begin to parametrically seek ‘data micro climates’ withing the environment, locations where the resource availability is optimal. This is a process that could be driven by automation, and led to some interesting design developments. The following research exercise focused on one location in Iceland, at the foot of the MyrdalsjĂśkull glacier and Katla volcano, due to the proximity to existing network connections and the geothermal potential of the area. Here a series of spatial and formal experiments 94
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were undertaken to help understand how such a volume of data could be integrated into the landscape. On such as large scale, architecture becomes responsive in the same way as Smout Allen’s Geofluidic Landscape, or Lebbeus Woods’ Terrain, a system of anthropic technology operating with the greater forces of the natural world. The context in which the architecture is positioned governs not only the form, but also the operation. Late investigations in this system also examined proposed developments in data storage technology. DNA data storage has been achieved, and at extremely high densities. But the time it takes to read and write data is far to slow at the current time to be useful. However, speculation on developments in this technology suggest that if these technological barriers are cleared, the data center turns into something different. It turns into part living, part engineered, grown from algorithms. This results in a further blurring of the lines between the natural landscape and the unnatural. 96
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The view across the glacier valley containing the data center. The positing of the data towers and geothermal nodes is dependent on katabatic wind flows. 99
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[SCRIP TING] After investigation creative responses to infrastructure systems in the first part of the year, further investigation was taken into the nature of the algorithm. Algorithms play an important role in our lives, although they are rarely noticed. The rise of the digital age and our growing reliance on digital technologies further drive our use of algorithms - from ordering Google search results to making music suggestions to organising our calendars, they are in many aspects of our lives. How does an algorithm deal with data differently to a human? They are far more efficient, and allow us to comprehend a great deal of data, otherwise unfathomable to the human brain. An important aspect of understanding how data is stored is understanding what is storing it - we have been using algorithms to sort, distribute and store data for a long time. The volume of data we use each day surpassed the capability of individuals long ago. Instead, we use mathematical relationships, processed by a binary computational system over a series of iterations that help wake use and make sense of data. This method of ‘reading’ the data is very different to how a human being reads or understands information. Where a human seeks to understand some feature of the information, and then categorises it into a system, and algorithm is far more objective, using key markers, threshold or relationships to make decisions.
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1/ S E E D S
As part of my technical studies, I investigated the computational relationships that are formed through seeds script, originally written by Adam Ferris. These scripts dictate a random point on a screen a random RGB value, and depending on the iteration, color and random inputs, more pixel would begin to grow across the screen. Ultimately what dictated the appearance of these images is the internal relationships of the R, G and B values of each of the pixels. To add greater variation to the system, I programmed a simple user input into the script, that reseeded the system each time you pressed a key. This allowed for the simplest level of human interaction with the script, and the results changed significantly.
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Not only do we see a change from the independent computer script, but we see a significant variation between different people behind the input. Some people pressed quicker than others, resulting in more detailed drawings. Some people waited until a certain amount of the screen was filled until they reseeded the system. Some kept re seeding the script until they generated a color that they liked; only to reseed again as that color migrated to something that they once again didn’t like. This simple experiment touch upon some interesting ideas about the nature of computational thought and human thought - two very different ways of doing similar tasks. But when we combine the two, we see emergent effects. Could this be extrapolated to other systems? What happens if natural environments, human culture and algorithmic systems combine? From this experiment, one would expect some kind of emergent effect.
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Even with the most simplified human - algorithm interaction, nothing more that a press of a button, once begins to witness emergent effects that are unique to the user. Each image here was ‘drawn’ by a different person - but with the same algorithm. Here we begin to see another curious interface - the interact between human creativity and digital algorithms. These images show a kind of inferred spatial result generated by an algorithm. The seed script deals with the relationship between a new pixel and the information embedded in the pixel preceding it. It is an example of an algorithm constructing in digital space, and while it is doing so, constant reevaluating the conditions to make decisions on where to place the next pixel. This is a useful precedent for dealing with the generation of data storage space constructed by automated systems.
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2/ S PAT I A L I N T E R P R E TAT I O N The output from the seeds script is highly abstract - a representation of the computation decisions and process that are mediated by the algorithm. Despite this, there is a definite three dimensionality to each of the unique drawings. They can be interpreted as landscapes, cities, or Escher-esque constructions. An initial experiment was to begin tracing the lines of interactions produced by the script, and subjectively interpreting depth by the variation in color across the image. These colors were simplified and manipulated to create a complex, impossible landscape of cliffs and valley, viewed orthographically. This is a highly subjective interpretation of digital space - another individual undertaking the same exercise will likely produce a very different result. Despite this, it was an informative experiment to find a unique aspect on the interpretation of digital space. Beyond interpretation, the actual production of these images is not considered here - only the result is considered. Further investigations looked at the spatial effects of algorithmic growth.
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3/ C O M P U TA B L E M AT T E R
The seeds algorithm constructed images through an additive process. Context determined the placement and the color of the next pixel. This process is repeated to create a form that filled up the canvas. This is not a process unique to digital space - many additive building processes can be considered a type of algorithm. A brick, due to its form has an optimised way of being used. This is open to interpretation by the user, but it is designed to be constructed in a limited number of ways. Taking this idea further, Skylar Tibbits of MIT researches the potential of programmable matter - forms that have inherent characteristics that could be used to program physical matter. He has achieved this through geometry, material properties and robotically. The geometrically programmed matter utilized tetrahedrons as a basic form. Also using the tetrahedral form, I developed a script to investigate the feasibility of having a storage system where the structure itself was encoded information. Would this system be able to propose an alternative topology to the fluid, temporal topology of the internet, which it is archiving?
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SKYLAR TIBBITS Skylar Tibbits researches the new field of self assembling architecture - forms that can form themselves, or have the instructions for assembly contained withing their form. Tibbits initially explored this concept with his MIT thesis, entitled ‘Logic Matter’. Logic matter was a system of tetrahedral blocks that were self coding - the assembly sequence was coded into the form itself. This was achieved through a complex geometry based on a tetrahedron, with two faces of the tetrahedron acting as input sources, the other two output nodes. The way the previous black has been assembled ultimately dictates where future block can be placed. So the geometry of the individual block codes for the form of the overall structure. This system is a form of geometry being used as a binary computing system - where the instructions for the form are interpreted as 1’s and 0’s. The ultimate assembly of this system
requires human agency, but Tibbits has also experiment with other similar systems, some using material properties or robotics to create structures that assemble autonomously. Ultimately, there are fours things required for a self-assembling structure. 1. Simple assembly sequences. 2. Programmable parts - forms that can respond to instruction sequences. 3. A force of activation (in the case of Logic Matter, this was human agency) and 4. Error Correction - the requirement for the system to stop or correct when it experiences errors in the instructions. Logic matter and similar projects looks at the relationship between the digital and the physical in a very different way. After all, binary computing is not restricted to the processors of PC’s, it is simply one method of communication information. 111
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To investigate this, I first made small tetrahedral models and investigated how they behaved geometrically. The forms readily make long chains and they do not spatially pack perfectly, leaving a small gap after six tetrahedrons have been assembled. This could be utilized to promote air circulation around the storage units to promote cooling. Once you added one tetrahedron to another, you had three remaining faces to choose where to place the net tetrahedron. One of these would leave very little space between the original and the new tetrahedron, and would ultimately risk a self intersecting form. So really you had two options - which could be expressed as a binary option, 1 or 0. This was developed a script where a series of random numbers and generated data was converted into binary information and fed into a script that generated tetrahedrons, placing them on particular faces depending if the coded information dictated a 1 or a 0. This created some interesting forms, with minimal self intersection dues to the elimination of the third face as an option. The real problem with this system began to develop when the size was calculated - the large size of the units means that a minuscule amount of information would actually be stored across large areas. The topology of the system does not need to be in a binary format, and later designs began to experiment with alternative ways to designing a physical network topology. 112
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4/ C O M P U TA B L E E N V I R O N M E N TS
The results of the tetrahedral recursive script were taken as a basic geometry, and the design of these forms were developed to begin to estimate the volume of data that it is capable of storing. The volume of data expected to be entering the system per day at year 0 was used as a starting point. This assumption meant that there was an expectation to initially produce and transcribe at least one of these units each day. The data storage volume was based on the best current day technology, namely archival discs. These surfaces were re imagined in form to be placed into a tetrahedral form. It was designed to be made of long lasting materials - polystyrene for thermal insulation and a polyurethane case - both materials that are highly resistant to biodegradation, as well as being cheap and readily available. 114
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The result of one day’s worth of data in this format was a tetrahedron that is 5m wide, and a little under 5m high. This design began to fall down when translating into constructibility - the placement of these units according to a central algorithm would be next to impossible. This highlights a critical barrier between the production of digital space and physical space. The recursive script operates in a zero gravity environment, and to translate a real computated environment, this must be taken into consideration. However this experimental solution was collaged in the Icelandic landscape - a critical area of investigation as the interactions between the natural environment and the digitally generated environment are the unique conditions of this project. The form quickly drew comparisons to Superstudio’s Continuous Monument - a megaconstrcution that grows without regard for the landscape. This comparison is a useful one, as where superstudio was using the monument to represent the globalisation of culture, this design is constructed from the digital matter that is such an important part of globalised culture today.
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A representation of the tetrahedron structure across the landscape - growing with little regard for context. 119 119
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[ M AT E R I A L T E C H N O LO GY ] The tetrahedron based design began to investigate materials to optimise the system. In particular, the material for storing the data is of critical importance. Today, most information is stored on magnetic media, Hard Disc Drives or Solid State Drives. These have short read and write times, and are readily available, but have short lifespans. Data on these devices will often start to degrade after 5 to 10 years after manufacture. If we want to store data for a long period of time without constantly migrating information (and therefore stressing the volume of infrastructure even further) we will need to look at other forms of information storage. Recent research into organic data storage (DNA), crystallized materials and nickel alloys have shown that there are advancements to be made. Organic data storage will greatly increase the density of data stored by hacking into the way DNA works, rewriting strands to code for the information we want, and then sequencing the molecules to retrieve the information. This is an incredibly slow process, and so unsuitable for transcribing a large amount of data over short time frames. Crystal storage systems are incredibly fragile, and while they do increase density, are very expensive and require a large amount of support infrastructure for operations. Nickel alloy technology has shown to increase storage space modestly, but most importantly has an impressive lifespan - with data inscribed onto nickel media lasting between 10,000 and 1,000,000 million years into the future. The best choice for a long lasting archive.
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1/ A R C H I VA L D I S C S
As we begin to see the rise of the commercial value of large data sets, we see an increased interest in medium and long term data storage solutions. There are three main features of a storage system, read/write speed, durability and volume. Currently the most common types of data storage system are magnetic based media - Hard Disk Drives and Solid State Drives. They have very high read and write speeds, but are not very durable in the long term. On average, they can be expected to last between 5 - 10 years after the date of manufacture. After this point, the magnetic domains, which code the binary data, become susceptible to degradation and cause corruptions in data. This can be counters by migrating to other media, but that is a resource costly exercise. Magnetic tape media, which has been in use since the 70’s is another option for long term storage. It has greater durability than other magnetic media, but suffers modestly in areal density. Archival optical discs are another good medium term option, with discs lasting between 50 and 100 years without maintenance, and high write and read speed. 122
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Magnetic Tape Media
Optical Discs
DNA storage
Nickel / Silica Disks
Solid State Drive
Hard Disk Drive
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2
1 Durability
Recording Speed
Areal Density
Expense
Maitenance
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2/ N I C K E L
I one was to store data for over 100 years, the only currently feasible option is nickel and nickel alloys. These media operate in a similar way to optical discs, by making microscopic indentations by laser etching the surface of the media. Nickel is a readily available mineral, and easily worked to meet the format for data storage. Only thin layers would be required, as long as they are protected with a plastic coating. The rel benefit of using a nickel based media is its durability. The metallic lattice structure of nickel and its unique valency means that it maintains its metallic lattice structure for long periods of time, even when subjected to extreme environmental conditions, such as changes in temperature or inundation of water. It is relatively inactive chemically, maintaining structural integrity in a wide array of situations. This makes nickel a prime candidate for very long term data storage, and has already been used in projects such as the Rosette Project (see opposite).
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THE ROSETTA PROJECT The Rosetta Project was initiated by the Long Now Foundation, with the intent to store 13,000 pages of inscribed text of 1,500 different human languages. These were microscopically etched and micro-formed in a solid nickel plate, resulting in a slightly raised surface in which the data is stored. Each page is around 400 microns across and can be read through a microscope at 650x. It is designed to last fro 10,000 years into the future, preserving some under utilized languages at risk of dying out due to under use. Translations of most modern common encoding. It is feasible to encode data digitally languages are also included, so all texts can be onto nickel media the same way that one would translated in the future. transcribe information onto an archival disc or similar media. The information stored on the Rosetta disc was not digitally encoded, actually letters were The Rosetta Project looks to preserve etched at microscopic sizes. This is a far less knowledge that is currently under threat. efficient system of storing data than digital When we compare this to the amount of the information traveling across the internet, some lost, some hoarded, some slowly decaying over time. Soon the sheer volume of data we generate will mean that much of our digital cultural production will be lost. Perhaps the technology utilized in the Rosetta project could help combat this threat.
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[ S TO R AG E SYS T E M ]
After extensive investigations around materials, algorithmic topology and industrial systems surrounding long term data storage, the insights gained were used to inform the design of an initial storage system - one that was designed to store the current data volume traveling across the North Atlantic undersea data cables. The system was deigned as an additive system, constantly under construction, and able to accommodate increases in data volume. The starting point was placed just outside the town of Seydisfjordur, where the major undersea data cable lands on Icelandic soil. The town also has a modest functioning port, which would accommodate the inflow of large amounts of raw material for construction. The initial start point was chosen for accessibility, space, and proximity to water for cooling. From there an automated system that included the 3d printing of concrete structures by walking drones, the automated delivery and transcription of nickel plates to their eventual storage. The design of this system pays keen attention to exploiting the local natural environment, in a similar way to some recent data centers being constructed today. After this design was completed, the amount of data to be stored over time was calculated, and the system played out across the landscape.
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1/ S E E D N O D E S
The starting point of the system is the seed node - a 15m x 15m square space that acts as a marching are for resources and data to be connected. It is from this point that construction starts, with a walking 3d printing drone printing 1000m thick walls of concrete strengthened with glass fibers. This mixture is delivered to the seed marshalling are through a subterranean channel. As the structure is printing, ridges and supports are printed to ensure structural stability and to accommodate secondary automation. Tracks are laid to transport nickel plates to the laser arrays. The laser arrays themselves stay towards the edge of the growing structure, dissipating heat through the cooled concrete wall. After transcribing a plate, it is given a thin coating of protective plastic, and pushed towards the far wall, stacking against other data packets. This system is capable of storing around 0.06 Eb (equivalent to 1 billion gigabytes) per m3. 128
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This deign was informed by the process of growth witnessed in the experiments with Adam Ferriss’s seeds scripts. A similar approach to volumetric additive growth was adopted for the storage of data. It was well suited to handle to constant influx of data to the facility. As much of the seed node is designed to be run automatically as possible, but there will be times where humans need to intervene, if a node has run itself into a corner or unnavigable terrain and gotten stuck, or maintenance A key aspect to each node is that construction begins orientated to the prevailing winds at the time. This allows for maximum wind circulation over the three most active sides of the node, and assists in cooling the concrete to allow for optimisation of the transcription process. Water is also used to cool the system, and several different approaches to utilizing water 130
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were experimented with. Piping water through the concrete would be optimal for cooling a durability, but would slow down the 3D printing process and elevate the cost of construction. Instead, channels could be printed through the outer-side of the wall that collected water from the environment, channeled it through the concrete and back out to the surrounding context. This coupled with the surfaces orientated to katabatic winds would provide a comprehensive passive cooling system for the structure. One issue with this system is the potential for cracking when the water freezes in winter, a problem solved by keeping the channels towards the outer edge of the wall and allowing this to happen. Any reduced cooling capability due to this damage is negligible, as the laser array is likely to have moved on to another section by that stage.
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2/ C O N S T R U C T I O N
Designing an efficient construction method for the storage structures was met with many challenges - transportation of materials, limited access to the material, and a varied and at times unstable terrain. While different lower tech system were trialled initially, none proved capable to effectively handle to difficult terrain. As a result, a walking 3D printing drone was the most effective solution. Five legs allow it to not only move around circumnavigating the seed node, but also allow it to climb on top of existing structures to continue growth in 3 dimensions. The materials are transported through subterranean channels to the center of the node, where they are pumped up to the constructions drone. This drone is effectively tethered to the central seed point, but does have the capability of detaching and moving to other seed nodes if necessary - making it a highly effective piece of machinery.
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The spider-like nature of the drone also references the ‘web crawling’ algorithms used by Google and other parties to automatically identify and catalogue web pages hosted on the net. These drones are the physical counter parts of these algorithms, objectively moving around the landscape, ordering information by constructing the spaces for its storage.
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3/ S E E D P O I N TS
The initial point was specifically designed to only cater for the volume of data for one year, and expected to grow over time as data generation increased and space within the system decreased. Space was not the limiting factor in this system, rather the rate at which these seed points could transcribe data. Designed with 100,000 laser etch head arrays initially, each seed point had considerable technological power. There is a balance between investing too much transcription capability in one seed point, as if that point does run out of space then it is an expensive effort to recover the isolated laser arrays. By using the calculated data growth function, we can expect that data volume per year will increase at the rate relative to s = 0.0026e.319t Where s = number of seeds, and t = year after establishment. From this, the data was sketched across the landscape according to topography (avoiding steep topography). 138
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[ DATA S C A P E S ] The core of the design is in how data grows and interacts with the landscape. What kind of a new digitally mediated landscape will emerge? The seeds script was a critical aspect of research into how such a landscape might manifest itself. That script was operating solely in digital space, this design proposal takes that concept and places it in Iceland. Not only do we see emergent effects between data growth nodes themselves, but also between the landscape and other human constructions, such as roads and towns. The development of this design began with the careful sketching and analysis of the site, starting with seed points and how they might grow across the landscape. Eventually, this was generated using a diffusion limited aggregation script, that found efficient pathways between nodes with an element of change integrated within. After the nodes were established, the painful task of drawing, assessing and cleaning up the growth of the system was undertaken. The volume of data equivalent to 16.5 years of data production (projected figure) and fills up a great deal of the valley. Once this had been drawn out, one can begin to map the different effects and responses the surrounding environment has to this disruption - the changing flow of waterways, influence no wind circulation and the readjustment of the road.
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1/ E X I S T I N G C O N D I T I O N S
With the site determined, the area was carefully mapped using GIS software to allow for accurate mapping of the results of data growth. Key areas were identified, the surrounding peaks and valleys, the FARICE data cable landing point,and any prominent features, such as waterfalls, that might be found in the area. The most important part of mapping the region was accurately identifying the terrain contours, and modeling this in 3 dimensions. Once and basic mesh was created, a liquid flow simulation script was used to simulate the pathways of katabatic winds in the valley. The liquid flow simulation takes a series of points across a mesh and iteratively migrates that point down the steepest slope. Originally designed for water flow analysis, this can be adapted for use with katabatics as they essentially work in the same way. Katabatic winds are created when cold air from mountain tops or icecaps flows down a mountainside, beneath any warmer air within the valley. This can result in strong winds and cooler temperatures at the base of the valley. 142
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To determine the location of the seed points, a diffusion limited aggregation (DLA) script was used. The DLA sets an initial point as an attractor, and a region as a point emitter, with the points generated tracking towards the attractor with an element of noise in directionality. When the point moves within the threshold distance of any other point, it stops roaming and connects the two points with a line. By setting the first seed node as the attractor, and placing the emmiter region along the existing road, I simulated the growth of a network with relative efficiency. This resulting in a focus of growth along the shallowed inclines in the valley, but also with growth up along the edges of the narrow parts of the valley. 143
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Existing conditions surrounding Seydisfjordur
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Katabatic fluid script analysis 147
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DLA script seed analysis 149
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2/ G R OW T H
The growth process was the most important part of the generation of this landscape, and it was essential to have a high level of control over the growth process. Each node point had a square offset from its initial start point, representing a new volume of data to be stored. By starting with the initial seed point, I offset several times until the volume reach what was to be predicted for 2015. The next year required two seeds, so I offset boxes from two seed points - both areas growing simultaneously. As this continued, the number of seed grew exponentially as the data production rates increased, with increase of more than 50 seeds each year after 10 years. Following the DLA seeds map, and with simultaneous growth from all active seeds, soon there was interaction with each of these structure. This interaction was often seemingly irregular, as each seed node had a slightly different orientation due to the unique microclimate and katabatic winds at the point.
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As these structure intersected, I had to trim each line to fit into the plan. This resulting in a strong pattern emerging across the landscape. Collisions did not mean that growth ceased, rather the system would continue where there was the next most available space. The drawing process was arduous and slow, as while some aspects of this growth could be automated, the interactions between data structures and the volume of each offset needed to be carefully assessed and monitored. The process took around 30 hours of continual drawing to get to a landscape that was equivalent to 16.5 years of data production traveling across the Atlantic. 151
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Data landscape after 16.5 years of growth 153
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Growth after 2 years
Growth after 3 years
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Growth after 4 years
Growth after 6 years
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Growth after 8 years
Growth after 10 years
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Growth after 12 years
Growth after 15 years
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3/ E N V I R O N M E N T After the landscape was drawn in 2D, the spaces needed to be calculated in 3 dimensions as well. This was achieved by tracing around the contours of the valley laid over the drawing. Areas were built up higher where growth had been active for longer, and ares with little constructible space had a great deal of crowding. The result is an interaction between the topography and the system - with the concrete structures clinging to the steeper parts of the valley, and expanding outward in the shallower parts. There are different conditions that arise out of this system staggered formations with steep drop offs occur in areas of dense topographic change, and an more expansive, field-like growth occurs along the valley floor. The system initially grows around the rive flowing through the center of the valley, but once it reaches a certain extend, the landscape had be altered to such an extent that the river finds a new course amongst the new topography. The landscape soon outgrows the priority for the original road, which needs to be re mapped across the new terrain. This begins to intersect across the new river also - bridges are built and the natural environment and the human built environment confirm to the new environmental topology.
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Alteration of waterways 161
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Roadway adaptation 163
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[MODEL] As a final mode of representation, I have constructed a 1:10000 scale model of Seydisfjordur and the surrounding valley. Each of the nodes and the overall growth pattern were modeled, cut and arranged in the landscape. This model is a canvas, with information and further drawings to be projection mapped onto the model. Just as the design deals with the projections of data - the matter of the digital realm onto the landscape, the final mode of presentation will be a representation of exactly that. These projections are animated and show the growth of the seeds, the cultural connections to the growth, the environmental responses and speculated upon some of the cultural responses.
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1/ C O N S T R U C T I O N
The model is built on a 1600x1000mm MDF board, with structural reinforcing at the bas to resist the model bowing. To establish the terrain outlines, a waffle script was used to generate a basic outline of the form. These were cut 10mm shorter than to scale, to account for some of the layering in the later stages. 166
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Once the waffle was constructed and secured, texture was created by sculpting aluminum foil on top of the waffle. This gave some volume to the model, as well as a jagged, non uniform texture , and also served to removed to amount the spaces between the waffle that would show up in the final finish. The foil had to be taped down to ensure that the foil conformed accurately to the existing topography. This was more problematic than it initially seemed - taping across 1000m of varied terrain tends to just elevate the tine foil at the lowest point of the topography. To counter this, I ensured that I staggered the tape and tried not to tape across dips in the terrain as much as possible. 167
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The data landscape was constructed of layers of spray painted box board. The model was designed so that 1mm thick box board could be used to equate to a 10m elevation at a scale of 1:10000. To orientate the data landscape correctly within the model, the outline of the water front and boarder of the landscape were cut and placed relevant to the edge of the model. 168
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These layers were kept in order, and carefully glued together with pva. Once the entire landscape was assembled, it was orientated in the landscape and backfilled with Linseed putty to fill any volume gaps. To create a hardened seal, the linseed putty was covered with hardened building putty to create a stronger surface. The landscape was then painted a matte white to facilitate the projection mapping. 169
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[REFERENCES] A d a m F i s h , D a t a H a v e n s o f I c e l a n d , S a v a g e m i n d s , 2 014 , w w w . s a v a g e m i n d s . o r g / 2 0 14 / 0 2 / 0 6 / d a t a - h a v e n s - o f - i c e l a n d / ( a c c e s s e d 14 M a r c h , 2 0 15 ) B B C I n f o g r a p h i c s , ‘ B y t e s i z e d g r a p h i c g u i d e t o d a t a s t o r a g e ’, 2 0 13 , h t t p : / / w w w . b b c . c o m / f u t u r e / s t o r y / 2 013 0 6 21 - b y t e - s i z e d g u i d e - t o - d a t a - s t o r a g e ( A c c e s s e d 2 0 M a y 2 015 ) Birgitta Jónsdóttir, ‘Lessons from Iceland: People can have the p o w e r ” , T h e G u a r d i a n , 2 011 , h t t p : / / w w w . t h e g u a r d i a n . c o m / c o m m e n t i s f r e e / 2 0 11 / n o v / 15 / l e s s o n s - f r o m - i c e l a n d - p e o p l e - p o w e r ( a c c e s s e d 19 M a r c h , 2 0 15 ) C l a u d e L e v i - S t r a u s s , ‘ T r i s t e s T r o p i q u e s ’, 19 7 3 , L o n d o n : C a p e D i o g o A z e v e d o , ‘ S u p e r s t u d i o – C o n t i n u o u s M o n u m e n t ’, T h e F u t u r e i s S u p e r , h t t p : / / s u p e r - f u t u r e . t u m b l r . c o m / p o s t / 2 3 2 316 6 519 2 / s u p e r s t u d i o - c o n t i n u o u s - m o n u m e n t ( A c c e s s e d 15 M a y 2 015 ) E w e n M a c A s k i l l a n d G a b r i e l D a n c e , N S A F i l e s : D e c o d e d : Wh a t t h e R e v e l a t i o n s m e a n f o r y o u , T h e G u a r d i a n , 2 013 . h t t p : / / w w w . t h e g u a r d i a n . c o m / w o r l d / i n t e r a c t i v e / 2 013 / n o v / 01 / s n o w d e n - n s a files-sur veillance -revelations-decoded#section/1 (Accessed 23 M a r c h 2 0 15 ) J a m e s B a m f o r d , ‘ Th e N S A i s b u i l d i n g t h e c o u n t r y ’s b i g g e s t s p y c e n t e r ( w a t c h w h a t y o u s a y ) ’, 2 012 , h t t p : / / w w w . w i r e d .
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c o m / 2 0 12 / 0 3 / f f _ n s a d a t a c e n t e r / ( A c c e s s e d 12 M a y 2 015 ) J G K o o m e y , ‘ O u t p e r f o r m i n g M o o r e ’ s L a w ’, S p e c t r u m I E E E . 2 01 0 47: 3 ( 6 8 ) L e b b e u s W o o d s , ‘ T h e S t o r m a n d t h e F a l l ’, 2 0 0 4 , N e w Y o r k : P r i n c e t o n A r c h i t e c t u r a l P r e s s . ( 41 - 4 5 ) Mark Smout, Laura Allen, Neil Spiller, ‘Pamphlet Architecture 28: A u g m e n t e d L a n d s c a p e s , 2 0 0 7, N e w Y o r k : P r i n c e t o n A r c h i t e c t u r a l Press N Tr i f t , ‘ F r o m B o r n t o M a d e : t e c h n o l o g y , b i o l o g y a n d s p a c e , Tr a n s a c t i o n s o f t h e I n s t i t u t e o f B r i t i s h G e o g r a p h e r s , 2 0 0 5 , 3 0 ( 4 6 3 - 4 76 ) R i c h M i l l e r , ‘ Th e E c o n o m i c o f D a t a C e n t e r S t a f f i n g ’ D a t a C e n t e r Knowledge, 2008. ht tp://www.datacenterknowledge.com/ a r c h i v e s / 2 0 0 8 / 0 1 / 18 / t h e - e c o n o m i c s - o f - d a t a - c e n t e r - s t a f f i n g / ( A c c e s s e d 2 7 M a y 2 0 15 ) R R S c h a l l e r , ‘ M o o r e ’ s L a w : p a s t , p r e s e n t a n d f u t u r e ’, S p e c t r u m I E E E . 20 0 2 34 : 6 ( 52 - 5 9 ) S a s k i a S a s s e n , ‘ T h e G l o b a l C i t y ’, 2 0 01 . O x f o r d : P r i n c e t o n Universit y Press S J G a l e a n d P G H o a r e , ‘ Th e S t r a t i g r a p h i c S t a t u s o f t h e A n t h r o p o c e n e ’. T h e H o l o c e n e , 2 012 , 2 2 : 12 ( 14 91 - 14 9 4 ) W h a t m o r e , S , ‘ C u l t u r e - n a t u r e ’ i n P. C l o k e , P. C r a n g a n d M . G o o d w i n ( e d s ) ‘ I n t r o d u c i n g H u m a n G e o g r a p h i e s , 19 9 9 A r n o l d : L o n d o n ( 4 - 11 )
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[APPENDICES]
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1/
EDITED SEEDS SCRIPT / / C + + #include “testApp.h” #include <iostream> #include <vector> //-------------------------------------------------------------void testApp::setup(){ scale =1; //load(“SEED2.png”); //filename goes here //size(img.width, img.height); //image(img, 0, 0); /* w = 2000; h = 2000; */ w = 1280; h = 720; inc = 1.25; ofSetWindowShape(w*scale, h*scale); ofSetFrameRate(80); ofSetVerticalSync(true); ofSetBackgroundAuto(false); ofBackground(0); finishIt = false; numRandSeeds = 20; step = 0; steps = w*h; screen.allocate(w, h, OF_IMAGE_COLOR); screen.grabScreen(0, 0, w, h); lastFrame.allocate(w, h, OF_IMAGE_COLOR); movement.allocate(w, h, OF_IMAGE_COLOR); toSave.allocate(w, h, OF_IMAGE_COLOR); traversed = new bool[w*h];
noise = new ofxPerlin(); simplex = new ofxSimplex();
} //-------------------------------------------------------------void testApp::update(){ } //-------------------------------------------------------------void testApp::draw(){
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ofScale(scale, scale); //if (h>200 && h<220); rr+=rSpeed; gg+=rSpeed; bb+=bSpeed; if(rr>1.0 || rr<0.0){ rSpeed=rSpeed*-1; } if(gg>1.0 || gg<0.0){ gSpeed=gSpeed*-1; } if(bb>1.0 || bb<0.0){ bSpeed=bSpeed*-1; } // The key to initiating and proceeding the function. Says that i=0 (so i is really an arbitarary interger in this case) and if i is less than the numRandSeeds - which is by default 1. // Basically says that the process will start at a random location on the canvas. /* if(step == 0){ for(int i = 0; i<numRandSeeds; i++){ int seed = int(ofRandom(w*h)); seeds.push_back(seed); traversed[seed] = true; */ // Alternatively, we can make it start at a certain location: ?? This doesn’t seem to work that way. if(step == 0){ for(int i = 0; i<numRandSeeds; i++){ int seed = (0,0); seeds.push_back(seed); traversed[seed] = true; } } else{ updateSeeds(); } step++; screen.update(); if(step%300 == true){ int seed = (int)ofRandom(w*h); seeds.push_back(seed); } screen.draw(0,0); } //-------------------------------------------------------------void testApp::updateSeeds(){ // Offset values at the start of ‘updateSeeds’ string float zOff = 0.0; float xOff = 0.0; float yOff = 0.0;
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// conditional function - if the seeds interger (-1) is greater than 0, then subtract it from itself. for(int i = seeds.size()-1; i>=0; i--){ //Definition of x/y. what does % and / mean in this case???? int x = seeds[i] % w; int y = seeds[i] / w; // putting the RGB values through the open framworks noise modifier. The Multiplier at the end of the function influeces the color balance of the pixels. Keep it at 512. float r2 = noise->noise(xOff, yOff, zOff)*512; float g2 = noise->noise(yOff, zOff, xOff)*512; float b2 = noise->noise(zOff, xOff, yOff)*512; // noise detail function - is this determined by the openframworks function? First value changes the scales of variation - if this is a perlin mediated gradient function, then the higher the number, the lower the variation across the gradient. The second number determines the alterations in color across the iterations. noise->noiseDetail(2, 0.25); //whats with the g3? is this actually used or is it an artefact? not entirely sure - it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have much of an effect. //float g3 = ofGetFrameNum()*3%512; // noise function modifier - this determines values n (noise) and r (random) which are used in the growth shift functions. //int n = int(abs(ofNoise(xOff,yOff,zOff))*ofRandom(sin(ofGetFrameNum()*1.9)+3.141592)); //int r = ofRandom(2); //int n = int(abs(ofNoise(xOff,yOff,zOff))*ofRandom(cos((r2/ b2)+(ofGetFrameNum())*(r2/g2)*(g2/b2)))); //int r = ofRandom(2); // Aternative dvelopment of the noise algotithims. // The algotrithm scaling exponent. 1.2 = innovation driven. 0.8 = infrastructure driven. /* float q = 1.2; int n = int(abs(ofNoise(xOff,yOff,zOff))*(ofRandom(sin((r2/g2))+(ofGetFrameNum()*(1q)-(r2/g2))))); int r = ofRandom(ofGetFrameNum()*((ofGetFrameNum()*100-q))); */ float q = 1.2; int r = ofRandom(2); int n = int(abs(ofNoise(xOff,yOff,zOff))*(ofRandom(sin(2%3)))); unsigned char * pix = screen.getPixels(); // RGB redefinition functions - where the RGB values are determined by their reations to one another. This affects the color of the pixels, but does it change the flow? - not really. there must be something else impacting this. // Could we effectively link in the realtions of colours to each other into the noise function or the generation function themselves? // This splits into RGB, but also causes each new seed to become redundant, efectively
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reversing the process and drivning the function to 0 (black) /* int rx = ((r2/g2)*(1-q))*(ofGetFrameNum()); int gx = ((g2/b2)*(1-q))*(ofGetFrameNum()); int bx = ((b2/r2)*(1-q))*(ofGetFrameNum()); */ //This returns the color determination to normal states. int rx = r2; int gx = g2; int bx = b2; //This creates an interesting noise throughout the colur development of the growth function. /* int rx = ofRandom(r2,g2); int gx = ofRandom(g2,b2); int bx = ofRandom(b2,r2); */ // creates traces split into RGB - interesting!! (reduces to 0) /* int rx = r2/b2; int gx = g2/r2; int bx = b2/g2; */ // Color determination - clamp sets a value between 0 and 255 for red green and blue respectively. c = ofColor(ofClamp(rx, 0, 255),ofClamp(gx, 0, 255),ofClamp(bx, 0, 255)); // multiplier for the saturation value. float sat = c.getSaturation(); c.setSaturation(sat*2); // Set a certain pixel (x,y) as color c. screen.setColor(x, y, c); // Growth shifts? // so if y-i (where i is determined by //---------Up, Right, Down, Left int upIndex = seeds[i] - w; if(y-i>0 && !traversed[upIndex]){ seeds.push_back(upIndex); traversed[upIndex] = true; } int rightIndex = seeds[i] +1; if(x<w-1-i && !traversed[rightIndex]){ seeds.push_back(rightIndex); traversed[rightIndex] = true; } int downIndex = seeds[i] + w; if(y<h-1-i && !traversed[downIndex]){ seeds.push_back(downIndex); traversed[downIndex] = true;
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} int leftIndex = seeds[i] - 1; if(x-i > 0 && !traversed[leftIndex]){ seeds.push_back(leftIndex); traversed[leftIndex] = true; } //---------Upper Left, Upper Right, Lower Left, Lower Right int ulIndex = seeds[i] - w -1-n ; if(x-i>0 && y-i>0 && !traversed[ulIndex]){ seeds.push_back(ulIndex); traversed[ulIndex] = true; } int urIndex = seeds[i] - w+1 -n; if( y-i>0 && !traversed[urIndex]){ seeds.push_back(urIndex); traversed[urIndex] = true; } int llIndex = seeds[i] + w -1 -n; if(y< h-1-i && !traversed[llIndex]){ seeds.push_back(llIndex); traversed[llIndex] = true; } int lrIndex = seeds[i] + w +1-n ; if(x< w-1-i && y< h-1-i && !traversed[lrIndex]){ seeds.push_back(lrIndex); traversed[lrIndex] = true; } seeds.erase(seeds.begin()+i); // Offset change at the end of string - differences here alters the color variations. Equal values = greyscale. // No values = nothing. xOff+=0.0005; yOff+=0.002; zOff+=0.001; }
} //-------------------------------------------------------------void testApp::keyPressed(int key){ if(key == ‘ ‘){ int seed = (int)ofRandom(w*h); seeds.push_back(seed); traversed = new bool[w*h]; noise->noiseSeed(ofRandom(100)); } if(key == ‘=’){ screen.grabScreen(0, 0, w*scale, h*scale); screen.saveImage(ofToString(ofGetTimestampString()+”.png”)); /* if(key == ‘r’){
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}
}
screen.grabScreen(0, 0, w*scale, h*scale); screen.saveImage(ofToString(ofGetTimestampString()+”.png”)); */
//-------------------------------------------------------------void testApp::keyReleased(int key){ } //-------------------------------------------------------------void testApp::mouseMoved(int x, int y ){ } //-------------------------------------------------------------void testApp::mouseDragged(int x, int y, int button){ } //-------------------------------------------------------------void testApp::mousePressed(int x, int y, int button){ } //-------------------------------------------------------------void testApp::mouseReleased(int x, int y, int button){ } //-------------------------------------------------------------void testApp::windowResized(int w, int h){ } //-------------------------------------------------------------void testApp::gotMessage(ofMessage msg){ } //-------------------------------------------------------------void testApp::dragEvent(ofDragInfo dragInfo){ }
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2/
T E RT R A H E D R A L R E C U R S I V E S C R I P T / / P Y T H O N import rhinoscriptsyntax as rs import random as r
#Function that extracts points from the surface functions def allPts(srf): border = rs.DuplicateSurfaceBorder (srf) lines = rs.ExplodeCurves(border) center = rs.SurfaceAreaCentroid (srf) allPts = [] allPts.append (center[0]) for line in lines: pt = rs.CurveEndPoint (line) allPts.append (pt) ptsList = [] ptsList.append (pt) return allPts def ag(obj, ptList, rand): if (rand == 1): source = [ptList[1], ptList[2], ptList[3]] target = [ptList[3], ptList[2], ptList[1]] if (rand == 2): source = [ptList[1], ptList[2], ptList[3]] target = [ptList[3], ptList[2], ptList[1]] if (rand == 3): source = [ptList[1], ptList[2], ptList[3]] target = [ptList[3], ptList[2], ptList[1]]
#from random import * #randBinList = lambda n: [randint(0,1) for b in range(1,n+1)] #x = randBinList(1000) #y = randBinList(1000)
def recursive (obj, i, objList, count, rand): # explodes the surfaces and labels each face, now that it is in th recursive function, this happens to each subsequent form allSrf = rs.ExplodePolysurfaces (obj) ptSet1 = allPts (allSrf[0]) ptSet2 = allPts (allSrf[1]) ptSet3 = allPts (allSrf[2]) ptSet4 = allPts (allSrf[3]) A1.append(ptSet1[1]) A2.append(ptSet1[2]) A3.append(ptSet1[3]) B1.append(ptSet2[1]) B2.append(ptSet2[2]) B3.append(ptSet2[3]) C1.append(ptSet3[1]) C2.append(ptSet3[2]) C3.append(ptSet3[3]) D1.append(ptSet4[1]) D2.append(ptSet4[2]) D3.append(ptSet4[3]) if(rand == 1): newObj = ag(obj, ptSet1, rand) copy = rs.CopyObject(newObj) objList.append(copy) rand = 2 if(i > 0): recursive (newObj, i-1, objList, count+1, rand)
if (rand == 4): source = [ptList[1], ptList[2], ptList[3]] target = [ptList[3], ptList[2], ptList[1]] newObj = rs.OrientObject (obj, source, target) return newObj
if(rand == 2): newObj = ag(obj, ptSet2, rand) copy = rs.CopyObject(newObj) objList.append(copy) rand = 3
#this returns a list of 1,000 digits in binary. I’m trying to use this as my input for the recursive function #below. I’m not sure how to get this data to be read sequentially.
if(i > 0): recursive (newObj, i-1, objList, count+1, rand) if(rand == 3):
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newObj = ag(obj, ptSet3, rand) copy = rs.CopyObject(newObj) objList.append(copy) rand = 4 if(i > 0): recursive (newObj, i-1, objList, count+1, rand) else: newObj = ag(obj, ptSet4, rand) copy = rs.CopyObject(newObj) objList.append(copy) rand = 1 if(i > 0): recursive (newObj, i-1, objList, count+1, rand) return objList # the script strains and my computer begins to have trouble around 20 iterations. It seems to me that # there are multiple copies of the geometry in the same position. Is there a way to script that out? # Ultimately Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m looking for this script to begin to generate forms from meaningful binary data as inputs # (replacing the random data I have at the moment - that is just there to experiment) rand = r.randint(1,4) allNewObjs = [] ptsList = [] allSrf = [] A1 = [] A2 = [] A3 = [] B1 = [] B2 = [] B3 = [] C1 = [] C2 = [] C3 = [] D1 = [] D2 = [] D3 = [] count = 0 #Output Function a = recursive(brep, i, allNewObjs, count, rand)
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3/
D I F F U S I O N L I M I T E D AG G R E GAT I O N // VISUAL BASIC #Region “Members” ‘’’ <summary>Gets the current Rhino document.</summary> Private Readonly RhinoDocument As RhinoDoc ‘’’ <summary>Gets the Grasshopper document that owns this script.</summary> Private Readonly GrasshopperDocument as GH_Document ‘’’ <summary>Gets the Grasshopper script component that owns this script.</summary> Private Readonly Component As IGH_Component ‘’’ <summary> ‘’’ Gets the current iteration count. The first call to RunScript() is associated with Iteration=0. ‘’’ Any subsequent call within the same solution will increment the Iteration count. ‘’’ </summary> Private Readonly Iteration As Integer #End Region ‘’’ <summary> ‘’’ This procedure contains the user code. Input parameters are provided as ByVal arguments, ‘’’ Output parameter are ByRef arguments. You don’t have to assign output parameters, ‘’’ they will have default values. ‘’’ </summary> Private Sub RunScript(ByVal seedpoints As List(Of Object), ByVal reset As Boolean, ByVal proximity As Double, ByVal pull As Double, ByVal wander As Double, ByVal spin As Double, ByVal threeD As Boolean, ByVal wind As Vector3d, ByVal show As Boolean, ByRef crystal As Object, ByRef floating As Object, ByRef Count As Object, ByRef filaments As Object, ByRef outer As Object) If reset Then
For i As Integer = 0 To aggregated.Count - 1 startradius = Math.Max(startradius, aggregated(i). distanceto(origin)) Next startradius += wander + pull + 2 * proximity outerdist = startradius Lines = New List (Of line) Dim Random As New Random() Dim randoms(2) As Double Do For i As Integer = 0 To 2 randoms(i) = (Random.NextDouble() - 0.5) Next If (randoms(0) ^ 2 + randoms(1) ^ 2 + randoms(2) ^ 2) < 1 Then Exit Do Loop Dim radial As New vector3d(randoms(0), randoms(1), 0) If threeD Then radial.X = randoms(0) radial.Y = randoms(1) radial.Z = randoms(2) End If radial.Unitize radial = radial * startradius Floater = origin + radial
aggregated.Clear Dim origin As New point3d(0, 0, 0)
Counter = 0 Else
If seedpoints Is Nothing Or seedpoints.Contains(Nothing) Then aggregated.Add(origin)
Counter += 1 Dim Random As New Random() Dim randoms(2) As Double
Else If seedpoints.Count = 0 Then aggregated.Add(origin) End If For Each p As point3d In seedpoints aggregated.Add(p) Next
Do For i As Integer = 0 To 2 randoms(i) = 2 * (Random.NextDouble() - 0.5) Next If (randoms(0) ^ 2 + randoms(1) ^ 2 + randoms(2) ^ 2) < 1 Then Exit Do Loop
End If
If wander <> 0 Then
Dim startradius As Integer = 1
Dim wanderstep As New vector3d(randoms(0), randoms(1), 0)
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Sqrt(aggregated(p).x ^ 2 + aggregated(p).y ^ 2 + aggregated(p).z ^ 2)))
If threeD Then wanderstep.X = randoms(0) wanderstep.Y = randoms(1) wanderstep.Z = randoms(2) End If wanderstep.Unitize wanderstep *= wander Floater += wanderstep
Do For i As Integer = 0 To 2 randoms(i) = (Random.NextDouble() - 0.5) Next If (randoms(0) ^ 2 + randoms(1) ^ 2 + randoms(2) ^ 2) < 1 Then Exit Do Loop
End If
Dim radial As New vector3d(randoms(0), randoms(1), 0) If threeD Then radial.X = randoms(0) radial.Y = randoms(1) radial.Z = randoms(2) End If
Dim distance As Double = Math.Sqrt(Floater.x ^ 2 + Floater.y ^ 2 + Floater.z ^ 2) Dim invdist As Double = 1 / distance Floater.x = Floater.x - Floater.x * pull * invdist Floater.y = Floater.y - Floater.y * pull * invdist If threeD Then Floater.z = Floater.z - Floater.z * pull * invdist Else Floater.z = 0 End If
radial.Unitize radial = radial * (outerdist + 1) Floater.X = 0 Floater.Y = 0 Floater.Z = 0 Floater = Floater + radial Exit Do Else
If spin <> 0 Then spin = spin * invdist Floater.x = Floater.x * math.cos(spin) - Floater.y * math.sin(spin) Floater.y = Floater.y * math.cos(spin) + Floater.x * math.sin(spin) End If
End If
Floater += wind
p += 1
If distance > outerdist Then Dim beyond As vector3d beyond = New vector3d(Floater.x, Floater.y, Floater.z)
Loop If show Then Floating = Floater Count = Counter Crystal = aggregated Filaments = lines outer = outerdist
beyond.unitize beyond *= outerdist Dim wrapround As vector3d wrapround = New vector3d(Floater.x, Floater.y, Floater.z) wrapround = wrapround - beyond Floater = New Point3d(0, 0, 0) Floater += (wrapround * 2) - beyond End If Dim p As Integer = 0 Do While p < aggregated.Count If Floater.DistanceTo(aggregated(p)) < proximity Then aggregated.Add(New point3d(Floater)) Lines.Add(New line(Floater, aggregated(p)))
End If End Sub â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;<Custom additional code> Dim Floater As Point3d Dim aggregated As New List(Of Point3d) Dim lines As List(Of Line) Dim Counter As Integer Dim outerdist As Double â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;</Custom additional code> End Class
outerdist = math.Max(outerdist, (2 * proximity + pull + Math.
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