SYLVIA H JANICKI

Rest Against The Machine

Sitting with (White) Noise of AI Data Centers

This audio-textile installation reflects on the infrastructural noise produced by AI data centers. Framed through the lens of disabled ecologies, which understands environmental destruction as inseparable from bodily harm, it examines how these disruptions are felt across thresholds of perception, and invites rest as a form of attunement—and subtle resistance—to the extractive, productivity-driven logics of rapidly expanding AI systems.

Sound recordings from hyperscale facilities in the Atlanta region are embedded in pressure-activated floor cushions, playing as ambient white noise that could be easily tuned out. As one rests, infrasound recordings from the same sites emerge, making perceptible low-frequency vibrations usually beyond human hearing. Cushions are wrapped in cyanotype textiles printed with plant materials gathered near data center sites. The collaged botanical patterns evoke more-than-human ecologies that endure environmental exposures from these technological infrastructures alongside their human inhabitants.