Inestimable Module 12 | Cecilia Barreto

"The imaginary of power is housed in high-security buildings with uninterrupted electricity systems, communication networks, and refrigeration to house thousands of servers that store the accumulated narrative of human activities, whatever they may be. Data centers are computer cathedrals, hosting an omnipresent power that allows for the control of individual and social behavior by possessing the vortex of information generated by the conscious and unconscious exchanges of millions of users of virtual spaces. The enormous stained-glass windows that filtered the light of divinity have been replaced by sinister, intermittently flashing lights emanating from macrocomputers. The sublime of human connections is deposited in digital images and words that record an important part of our exchanges of material, natural, intellectual, and therefore political resources. Twelve oil paintings and a subtle climatic alteration condense the virtual elements of this computer frenzy, in an operation similar to that of economic exchanges. In recent decades, information technologies have been responsible for complicating the systematization of figures, analyzing communities on social networks, and developing connections and tools for financial markets. This data is confidentially filtered by specialized agencies that identify patterns and make predictions to offer sophisticated tools to investors. This information is disseminated in a cloud to return to a container in the form of rain and, later, as vapor of numbers and mathematical abstractions in the form of financial projections. These algorithms inhabit the abstraction of an ecosystem altered by the processes and developments of these technologies. The abundance of data modifies the nature of competition, by finding diverse assets, companies, and corporate giants competing for profitability, currency exchange, and trade, thus configuring a process analogous to the adaptation of species." -Cecilia Barreto