The research project proposes to investigate the hidden infrastructures that sustain contemporary artificial intelligence systems, focusing on the material, human, and geographic realities behind technologies often presented as immaterial or autonomous. Rather than treating AI as a purely technical innovation, the project approaches it as part of a global assembly line connecting energy use, resource extraction, data processing, and automated decision-making.
The project will focus on two interconnected sites within this system. One is the Philippines, which has become a global hub for data annotation, where workers contribute to the training of AI systems through repetitive and largely invisible tasks. The other is Palantir, a company whose AI tools are used by governments and institutions to automate and predict decisions. Although these positions appear distant, the research considers them as structurally linked within the same technological economy.
Through planned field visits, interviews, and on-site recordings in places such as Manila and Denver, the project seeks to connect AI technologies to the physical locations and people that sustain them. Video, sound, and spatial recording methods, alongside experimental uses of AI-generated imagery, will be explored to examine how labour, infrastructure, and power leave their traces in this data economy.
The project will lead to the development of artistic methods and installation forms that can bring these questions into a public space. Rather than aiming for fixed outcomes, the project remains open, allowing its forms and results to evolve in response to the research process itself.
(Image: Courtesy of Emmanuel Van der Auwera)
