The Cloud, perhaps one of the most misleading metaphors in computer history, is becoming increasingly more important. Much of our personal data that forms a reflection of our identity is stored in Clouds. But the Cloud is not an actual cloud, it is real locations in the real world and in real computers. Thankfully the data centers of the Cloud giants (Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft & Co) are shrouded under the guise of the cloud metaphor. But they can’t hide the data centers: they are giant halls weighing several tonnes swallowing up 50 megawatts – gigantic monuments of the Internet age that tower up between bean fields in Quincy and rise out of the snow-covered landscape in Finland.

The “Mostly Cloudy” installation is aimed towards delocalisation and non-transparency on the part of the user. In the installation videos are played, among other things: A hybrid structure of clouds and data centers fly over a city. The shadows that these data center clouds cast over the city are, contrary to our experience, angular and oblong: they represent the floor plans of the data centers. Both the illustration of the data center located in the Cloud as well as its shadow are on a scale identical to the aerial view of the city beneath it. The viewer can thus conceive of and assess the size of the data centre. In addition, in a shorter sequence information on the geographical location and the size of the currently visible data centre is displayed. The data clouds flying over different cities represent geographical freedom and at the same time convey the actual size of the data centre. Whole rows of houses, stadiums and villages disappear beneath them. The lost, gone materiality of the computer in products such as Google Glass, modern smartphones and wearables such as smartwatches is reproduced by the personal identification and records of the datacenters via the installation.