Tír
Tír:
Timber Wooden Frame
iMac (27-inch)
Laser Engraved Steel Plate
Ireland is no stranger to land exploitation. Ireland for the past few hundred years has been battling with imperialists and capitalists over land. Land, since the Down surveys is a product which holds capital value, whereas the Ancient Irish Celts seemed to have a different, more sensitive relationship to the land. Evidence of a knowledge of astrology and also spiritual burial sites reflect a different way in thinking in regards to the earth we walk on.
Tír (referring to both translations of the word ‘earth’ and ‘country’) is an interactive mixed media installation which encourages visitors to engage with Ancient Ireland through capacitive touch. Data Centres occupy a lot of rural Ireland and are goldmines for tech companies such as Google and Microsoft. A grow in demand for large scale infastrucure and Ireland’s low corporate tax rates makes it an ideal candidate for massive data companies to buy and develop land into centres where large parts of the world’s internet usage is processed.
This work places these data centres alongside ancient Irish neolithic sites and speculates a future where the data infastructures becomes the land itself. By interacting with ancient Irish imagery through capacitive sensors and new technologies, the work asks the question: can we learn a new way of interacting with our environment and what will become of these rapidly built data centres once we are gone?