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Long abstract:

„They just want to cuddle their servers”, the university data centre operators told us. “They” are the scientists who are reluctant to install their servers in the new “operator-less” data centre and to exclusively supervise and operate their servers remotely.

Data centre studies have repeatedly shown and problematized the serious planetary effects of these vastly power consuming, water spending and rare and precious metal extractive data processing plants (e.g. Edwards, Cooper & Hogan, 2024). It remains, however, difficult to experience the planetary relations of data processing.

Feminist server projects are a key inspiration to generating such experiences. They develop a visceral, kinetical experience of servers by assembling the hardware (e.g. Mauro-Flude & Akama, 2022). Rather than a distant ocular and consuming view of servers’ hard, smooth, and shiny surfaces, they explore servers’ inner parts by touching the metal of circuit boards and assembling servers. Touching the metal is a bodily experience of servers, and of their planetary matter.

With inspiration from feminist server projects, the presentation discusses a speculative project developing a virtual reality (VR) application to experience the “cuddling with servers”. Contrary to making generating rational awareness or moral sensitivity towards the planetary harm of data centres, the VR application experiments with generating bodily experiences of the planetary matter transformed into sound of processors and fans, and the whirling of disc drives. The presentation discusses processes and potential of generating experiences of the planetary relations of data processing through a VR application.