Cloud of Polyphony

"Guizhou, a mountainous region in Southwest China, has undergone significant terraforming processes and infrastructural development over the past decade to establish itself as a Big Data Hub, not without ethical and ecological costs.

Cloud of Polyphony is a multimedia installation featuring a parabolic projection wall shaped like a data receiver that displays documentary footage of the aftermath of the first Big Data Expo in 2013. The 5G cell tower has been inverted and reappropriated, shifting it from a device that captures and collects data into a speaker. Utilising a Lidar sensor to gather proximity data from visitors, it generates an unfolding soundscape based on onsite recordings in Guizhou, ranging from conversations in the local dialect to crumbling rocks, turbines, and electronic noise.

Through this multi-threaded narrative exploring the political and cultural dimensions of the data industry, Cloud of Polyphony highlights the material conditions associated with the ostensibly poetic concept of ‘the cloud’."