Reimagining the data center as mycelium
2021 – 2024

VR (virtual reality), video, 3D scanning, luminescent 3D printed sculptures, riso-printed bilingual publication, digital print on vinyl, variable installation.

Greenlight Triennial (Skiens Kunstforening) 2021
Vårutstilling (Fotogalleriet) 2022
Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center (Chicago) 2022
Kunstmuseet KUBE (Ålesund) 2024

This work reimagines and draws lines between a proposed Google data center in a forest in Grenland and complex underground webs of mycelium, both of which are simultaneously gargantuan yet hidden from view and thus difficult for humans to grasp the sheer size of.

How do our fleeting online experiences and highly perishable mushrooms connect to each other? What is the history and biodiversity that is lost when a multinational company comes in and replaces nature with infrastructure that is alien to the locals?

The work installed as part of the group exhibition The Tragedy of the Commons by Solfrid Otterholm at the KUBE contemporary art museum in Ålesund. In this installation, a custom floor was created by collaging images of the (now demolished) forest owned and being currently developed by Google outside Skien to make way for what will be one of the largest data centers in Europe.

A modified version of the VR maze, developed by Henning Grøttebø-Skar (Encircle Games), was customised especially for this exhibition to fit the dimensions of the old bank vault in which the work was displayed.

Installed at the 2022 Vårutstilling. The VR work was accessible outside in a party tent. Documentation by Tor S. Simen / Kunstdok and Robin Mientjes.

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The work as it as originally installed in Skien, as part of the 2021 Greenlight Triennial. The video in the back of the first image is by Istvan Virag, who also made these documentation photos.

Inside the VR, the viewer is met by music by Pernille Meidell as well as forest field recordings, sounds from data centers, and snippets of interviews. The programming is by Henning Grøttebø-Skar (Encircle Games). There is no goal or reward within the VR experience. Rather you are invited to enter as the fungal tip into the dark heart of a data center and experience the servers being taken over by mycelium as you walk between rows in a seemingly endless maze — which is 50m² in reality.

The bilingual bright yellow reader holds interviews with Tom Erik Økland, Ingrid Burrington, Stian Mathisen, Bjørnar Løkstad, Dag Hareide and a fold-out reprint of "The Questions Concerning Technology" by L.M. Sacasas.

Only once have the 3D printed sculptures ever glowed multicolored. In both daylight and artificial light, their surface is a glossy striated white. The first image is a fluke: taken immediately after the lights were turned back on. Documentation by Robert Chase Heishman of the group exhibition down to earth curated by Kathy Cho at Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center (Chicago, USA).

These abstracted sculptures are based off of real (spore-less) oyster mushrooms that I cultivated, 3D scanned, ate, and digitally cut up before printing.