The Cloud is More Than Air and Water

Client: The People’s Cloud

Year: 2014

Director: Matt Parker

Brief: Film Production, Sound Design and Composition

What is ‘The Cloud’ and how is it affecting our lives? The Cloud is more than Air and Water is a project investigating the acoustic ecology and impact of cloud computing on the lives of those who use it, the places it is physically located in and the people who work to maintain it.

Internet enabled computers and mobile devices are ubiquitous within the western world but not too long ago computers were humongous machines, occupying vast spaces and generating a great deal of noise; the noise of spinning fans and disks. As technology has evolved, ‘cloud computing’ has become prevalent and today’s smartphones sit silently in our pockets, no longer making the noise of computers of old. Or are they?

As we transfer our data across the internet, where is it going? Most people have no idea where their ‘online’ data is once it’s uploaded onto ‘the cloud’, but it is definitely not in the sky. The Data Centre, an often huge building filled with computers, heat, spinning fans and disks has enabled us to transfer the noises of computing and locate them somewhere else, somewhere unknown, and somewhere on a mass scale.