How do we visualize the impact of digital technologies on the built environment? To what extent can the digital be sensed materially? As digital technologies become increasingly pervasive, the logistics, labor, and material conventions that sustain them often remain hidden or elusive. Behind each touch on our smartphones lies a layered and interconnected system of devices and services, hardware and software: the cloud, large language models, data centers, fiber-optic cables, and more. Together, they shape a global dimension of connectivity—one that is not without conflict, tension, and vulnerability.

Data Materialities is an exhibition developed within the framework of the EU Horizon + project Increasing Corporate Political Responsibility and Accountability, emerging from the October 2024 residency Big Tech and Counter-Technologies. As part of this residency, practitioners were invited to develop projects that critically engage with the materiality of techno-capitalism across micro, meso, and macro scales. Questions of labor, logistics, infrastructure, and space run through each of the projects, collectively asking: What is the spatiality of the digital? And how can we propose and visualize alternative imaginaries? The result is a series of works that interpret the physical and spatial as phenomena intrinsically linked to data.

The exhibition features a series of interactive, participatory and multimedia installations that spatialize the material realities of digital connectivity and data across a range of scales—from semiconductors to cables, internet cafés, and speculative possibilities. The exhibition will also include a series of hybrid public talks and workshops aimed at students and the general public. Curated with Into the Black Box (Niccolò Cuppini, Maurilio Pirone, Mattia Frapporti. 

Exhibition Credits 

 

20 September – 12 October 

Sala d’Ercole, Palazzo d’accursio, piazza maggiore Bologna, IT 4010021

Curated by: Carmen Lael Hines and Into the Black Box(Niccoló Cuppini, Maurilio Pirone, Mattia Frapporti)

Public Programme: Ghost Platform Project, Superkilo Girls, Slutty Urbanism  and Lorenza Pignatti. 

With contributions by: EXTENTS(Cyrus Peñarroyo, McLain Clutter), Morgane Billuart, Rául Silva, and soju.studio 

Curatorial Assistance: Sara Marhuenda Barberá (Universitat Politècnica de València)

Horizon Europe project INCA 

(Funded by the European Union under G.A. Nº 101061653)

In collaboration with Fondazione IU Rusconi Chigi

 

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