For the past ten months I’ve been working as a research assistant for Inhabiting & Interfacing the Cloud(s), A joint design research project (HES-SO) between ECAL, HEAD, EPFL-ECAL Lab & EPFL. We just finished setting up the scenography for Poetics and Politics of Data at H3K, presenting the work done so far. Below is a short introduction taken from our site, where all the project is documented: iiclouds.org
The design research I&IC (Inhabiting and Interfacing the Clouds), explores the creation of counter-proposals to the current expression of “Cloud Computing”, particularly in its forms intended for private individuals and end users (“Personal Cloud”). It is led by Profs. Patrick Keller (ECAL) and Nicolas Nova (HEAD) and is documented on this site as a work in progress, 2014-2017.
I&IC is to offer an alternative point of view, a critical appraisal as well as an “access to tools” about this iconic infrastructure of our modernity and its user interfaces, because to date their implementation has followed a logic chiefly of technical development, mainly governed by corporate interests, and continues therefore to be paradoxically envisioned as a purely functional, centralized setup.
However, the Personal Cloud holds a potential that is largely untapped in terms of design, novel uses and territorial strategies. Through its cross-disciplinary approach that links interaction design, the architectural and territorial dimensions as well as ethnographic studies, our project aims at producing alternative models resulting from a more contemporary approach, notably factoring in the idea of creolization (theorized by E. Glissant).
image credits: Google datacenters
