SYLVIA H JANICKI

Rest Against The Machine

Listening to Data Centers Noise as Critical Reflection on AI Infrastructure

The rapid expansion of AI systems depends on material infrastructures, including hyperscale data centers, whose environmental impacts are becoming increasingly pressing. Among these impacts is noise. Rest Against the Machine is an audio-textile installation that brings data center noise into an embodied and social setting, inviting participants to pause, listen, and collectively sit with the mingling of restful and restless sensations. Grounded in a two-month sound ethnography around hyperscale data centers in Atlanta and draws from critical and feminist concepts of perception, listening, and rest, this work explores tangible, embodied design for critical data center literacy and highlights listening as a method for studying infrastructure.

We embedded sound and infrasound recordings from multiple hyperscale facilities into pressure-activated floor cushions. Once embedded and looped, these recordings emitted a steady drone similar to white noise. As a participant rests on the cushions, the sounds change dynamically as infrasound recordings grow louder, making perceptible the low frequency sound waves which typically lie beyond audible range.

Cushions are wrapped in cyanotype textiles created with the plant materials gathered near data center sites. The collaged botanical patterns evoke the more-than-human landscapes that endure the environmental exposure of these new and expansive infrastructures along with human communities.