Data Body | kadambari-baxi

DATA BODY is a sonic spatial interface for live performance with improvisational and coded choreography. Replicating machinic sounds of a mega data center, remixed with recorded voices of offsite data workers, the interface tactically engages data, machines, movement and space. Suspended between analog and digital worlds where live and coded interactions reproduce alternate soundscapes, the project performs ways to reimagine the worlds within and outside data centers.

To work in or live near a data center is to encounter a constant low-pitched hum punctuated by pulsating roars. These sounds extend far beyond the building, seeping into the psyche. Workers fear long-lasting mental impacts, still not fully understood, while residents report sleepless nights, sensing vibrations as much as hearing the noises. DATA BODY replicates such machinic sounds – the hums of servers, cooling fans and generators – and allows performers to remix them through live interactions. A digital matrix of “laser beams” triggers layered sounds when intercepted: horizontal beams emit echoing machinic alarms, while vertical ones produce natural sounds, usually found outside a data center: from birds, rain, or river, etc. In between these vectors, still movement triggers pre-recorded voices of discussions between off-site data workers based in Kenya.

The images included here are frames from a video recording where a performer navigates this matrix, ambiguously. She may be a lone, hyper-sensitive, data center worker, assessing sonic impacts on her body and psyche. Or she may be an intruder, exploring a defunct, future data center, remixing the black-box sonics with outer frequencies. DATA BODY is almost entirely AI-Claude-coded, instructed by polite, occasionally angry, conversational human prompts. Its activation, however, depends on a living body—one that can virtually infiltrate, disrupt, and connect the data center’s interior, exterior, and remote worlds.

Credits: Kadambari Baxi, Guy de Lancey, NiNi Dongnier; Project Assistant: Jess Kuntz
Research Project: Movement Lab, Barnard College of Columbia University, New York