端口 PORT


   是龙星如和贺子珂于2021年初发起的一个关于科技基础设施叙事的长期项目,它以贵州为第一站,从多层的时间感切入人在自然与技术中的栖居,讨论数字生活之下坚固的、不变的、平凡的、枯燥的、巨大的、不可见的/被忽视的基础之物(包括基础设施和地质环境)极其在深度时间尺度下的生命历程。项目糅合了科技艺术、科学技术史、社会学和科幻写作的视角,包含基础设施实地走访、展览、委任写作等一系列分支。

   is a project initialized by Iris LONG and HE Zike in 2021. Port investigates the narrative about techno-infrastructures in China, with Guizhou as its first stop. Through the lens of "temporal stack", we discuss the solid, invariant, mundane, deadening, colossus, invisible/ignored "fundamental beings" (from infrastructures to geological environments) and their lifespan against the backdrop of deep time. The project intertwines perspectives of art-tech, history of science and technology, sociology, and science fiction, and encompasses various forms ranging from site visits, exhibitions, commission writings, and so on...



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UNDER THE CLOUD






August 03 - 07, 2021

特邀参与者(按姓名排序):

毕昕、陈楸帆、陈玺安、郭城、高怡洁、刘昕、钱诗怡、王洪喆、王欢、杨北辰、张文心

Participants(in alphabetical order):


BI Xin, CHEN Qiufan, CHEN Zian, GUO Cheng, GAO Yijie, LIU Xin, QIAN Shiyi, WANG Hongzhe, WANG Huan, YANG Beichen, ZHANG Wenxin


走访机构 | SITES

国家喀斯特石漠化防治工程技术研究中心  贵州师范大学喀斯特研究院
State Engineering Technology Institute for Karst Dessertification Control, School of Karst Science, Guizhou Normal University

贵州省射电天文数据处理重点实验室  中科院国家天文台·贵州师范大学天文研究与教育中心
Guizhou Provincial Key Laboratory of Radio Astronomy and Data Processing

贵州华为云软件开发云创新中心
Huawei Guizhou Cloud Development Innovation Center

贵安华为云数据中心
Huawei Gui'an Data Center

中国科学院地球化学研究所
Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences

中国电建集团贵阳勘测设计研究院有限公司
Power China Guizhou Engineering Co, LTD

贵州省气象局,贵阳国家基准气候站
Guizhou Meterological Bureau

贵州数安汇大数据产业发展有限公司  
贵阳大数据安全产业展示中心
Guiyang Big Data Security Center

中国天眼基地
Five-hundred Meters Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope
“端口,物质流,数据山脉”是一次关于当代科技生产基础地貌的调查走访和委任创作项目,始发站“云下贵州”围绕贵州展开。项目试图邀请人文和社科领域的研究者和写作者,进入包括数据中心、智能工厂、环境监测站和FAST射电望远镜在内的“基础设施”内部,将它们视作科技地图上的诸多端口,以在地的方式,鼓励观察式报告、创意影像等形式的知识生产。

因大数据产业政策、数博会和“云上贵州”而名闻遐迩的贵州地区,在见证数据产业给经济带来的改变的同时,也见证了“大数据”、“云”、“方舟”这些带着科幻色彩的词汇,如何在数年间成为贵阳市民一知半解抑或如数家珍的常谈。“云上”的诗意和抽象,如何编织进“云下”的日常生活,是项目关注的起点。同时,项目聚集于数据中心、测绘基建和一系列可以自我控制、自我调节、精准决策的自动化系统,将折射出何种我们对技术力量重构生产关系、文化乃至科技政治的想象。

在一张1940年的照片中,英国的旅游者们围绕在美国胡弗水坝的发电机前,历史学家David Nye将这个画面描述为对“技术崇高”的迷恋——“技术崇高”或许并非唯一的视角。技术产业“基础设施”从背景中的显现,它们之所以让人知觉其“存在”(有时以事故的方式),也根源于我们和基础设施之间关系的不确定、困惑和若即若离。地理学家Stephen Graham和Simon Marvin将基础设施视为“人类曾发明过的,最为庞大复杂的技术物。”社会学家Susan Leigh Star和Geoffrey Bowker则将有关基础设施的讨论延展为智性和机制的运作,包括如何设计基础设施所必须的测量标准、命名传统、分类系统、技术协议等。在诸多论述中,也有一些写作者细心地捕获了人们对这些退至视线之外之物所投射的,如面对无名物种一般的情绪共鸣。Lisa Parks对基础设施似有主动的“隐藏”(concealment)展开论说,它们“无法检测和被注意,有时索然无味”,而Steven Jackson则推演了一种他称之为“崩坏世界思考”的认识转移,他认为今日对科技和新媒介的思考,并非在于“创新、发展或设计”,而是“崩溃,解散和变迁。”

贵阳市是一座“数字”的城市,这里有全球首个以大数据为主题的博览会,也有全国第一家以大数据命名的交易所。由政策和产业同构的鼎沸之势,架构在以多维贫困与生态脆弱性为人所知的地貌之上,在这个“三线建设”的后方,形成一种奇特的地貌。2020年,坐落在喀斯特“天坑”里的世界最大单口径射电望远镜(FAST),正式投入运营。同年年底,在波多黎各寂静的山谷中,阿雷西博(Arecibo)单碟射电望远镜倒塌,在不可见之处,基础设施也在经历另一时间线的命程,地质地貌、基础设施、城市和人,被压缩在宇宙尺度上的毫厘之间。在隐喻意义上,关于基础设施中人与非人叙事,可能流向感性的结局。而对基础设施的迷恋,如何逃脱架空式的、图式的想象,让实地经验和一手现场在研究中发挥更强的效力,也是项目试图回应的课题——我们偶尔可以从“云上”回归“云下”。




Port, Material Flow, Data Alleys is a site visit and writing commissioning project about the infrastructures of contemporary technologies. The first stop is Guizhou, China. The project invites researchers and writers from humanities and sociologies backgrounds to conduct site-visits to the "techno-infrastructures" ranging from data centers, "intelligent factories", environment monitor stations, radio telescopes and so on, considering them as "ports" on the map for contemporary technologies. The project encourages  creative writings and knowledge production based on in-situ investigations and experiences.

Guizhou is getting known for the big data policies (known as the "data capital" of China), China International Big Data Industry Expo, and row upon row of data bunkers constructed by tech giants. The "datafication" process boosts economies, while witnessing how terms such as "big data", "the cloud"and "ark", become embedded in daily life in Guizhou within a few years. How exactly did the poetry and abstraction of the "cloud" get interwoven with everydayness in Guizhou? This is the starting point of our project, furthermore, we focus on investigations on data processing centers, measurement facilitations and a series of automated systems that are self-controlled, self-regulated and equipped with precise decision making functions, and how these elements may reflect how technological energies shape our production relationships and imaginations on culture and techno-politics.

In a picture taken in 1940, British travellers surrounded the Hoover Dam - described as "Technological Sublime" by historian David Nye. Sometimes, "techno-infrastructures" emerge from the background in the form of accidents, partly because of our uncertain, confusing and aloof relationship with them. Geographer Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin describe infrastructures as "sophisticated technological artifacts ever devised by humans." Sociologists Susan Leigh Star and Geoffrey Bowker, meanwhile, expand the discussion about infrastructures to intellectual and mechanism operations, including its ecology, ethnography, and the sociology of classification system involved. Some writers, furthermore, acutely captures how infrastructures strike a sympathetic chord by receding from our eyesights as indefinable species in eerie silence. Lisa Parks elegantly concludes this process as "concealment" - relatively invisible and unnoticed. Steven Jackson offers a cognitive shift of what he calls "broken world thinking", highlighting erosion, breakdown, and decay, rather than novelty, growth, and progress in the use of nature.

Guiyang is a "digital" city, where the world's first "big data" themed expo was born, and where the country's first "big data exchange" was launched. The uproaring industry is architectured upon long-term poverty and ecological fragility, composing a unique landscape in the rear area of the "third line movement". In 2020, world's largest single segment radio telescope (FAST) was put into operation. At the end of the same year, in a silent valley in Puerto Rico, Arecibo collapsed in silence. Infrastructures endure their lifelines in places beyond our sight. Geologies, landscapes, infrastructures, cities and human, are compressed as an indistinguishable layer in the cosmic scale of time. Metaphorically, the human and non-human narrative entangling infrastructures, could flow into a sensorial postscript. Furthermore, how could the contemplation on infrastructures escape from aerial imaginations and in reverse, invite first-hand, on-site and in-situ experiences, is the underlying principle of Port, Material Flow, Data Alleys.