Tentacular relations of data: Visualizing data centres through collage and the figure of the jellyfish
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Industry visualizations of data centres conceal the complex material and environmental relations that spread across continents, supply chains and local landscapes. Here I present another way to visualize a data centre, building on empirical material from Sweden in conversation with other scholarly examples to create a collage, allowing specific locations and materialities to take place in the visualizations of the data centre. The figure of the jellyfish is, I argue, the perfect creature for thinking about these places: elusive, illusive bodies with tentacles that reach out and touch, sting and change the landscapes and actors they encounter. Like data centres, jellyfish migrate to colder climates, change their environments and are difficult to grasp by researchers. Inspired by Donna Haraway’s notion of the tentacular, in which she urges collaboration with many different fields and actors, the jellyfish is a creature through which the idea of the tentacular can be applied to data centre infrastructures. In this context, the tentacular is not always about sharing and collaboration but uneven politics and transformative entanglements. The tentacular as a concept, and the jellyfish collage more specifically, allows us to delve into the specifics of data centres’ infrastructural reach and multispecies relations through which data infrastructures and algorithmic relations come into being, both as a method and as a new visualization to offer in contrast to the industry narrative.
Source: Journal of Environmental Media
Author: Flora Mary Bartlett
Institution: Linköping University
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7164733684