Beneath The Beach, The Cloud explores the convergence of infrastructure, communication and simulation technologies through mapping the histories of telegraph cables in Porthcurno Beach. Composed of three elements, it traces how submarine internet cables are not only rewiring our planet, but our labour relations as well, giving rise to a new form of global capitalism.




                     

 Ground Truth  traces the constant remaking of Porthcurno Beach. The film relates different mappings of the beach in the form of LiDAR scanning, archival material and collage, establishing these competing cartographies as all simultaneously true. This reveals how, despite being a heavily fortified military location, the beach is remade over and over again to look natural. This echoes narratives used to present the pervasive logic of techno-capitalist commodification as the natural progression of the world, while complicating the didactic nature of Adam Curtis documentaries. The form of the film draws on research by Luciana Parisi and John May about the origins of machine vision.



 Virtual War With Virtual Weapons For Virtually No Money  extrapolates outwards from the beach, responding to the film describing what the cables are by establishing what the cables do. It follows how these novel technologies converge to rewrite labour relations and accelerate capitalism beyond our ability to question it. The book takes the form of found government documents and news articles overlaid with redactive black boxes with the text filling in for the omitted details. The form of the book critiques the secrecy of government documents and responds to the often exaggerated claims within fields of technology by constructing non-linear counterhistories. The experimental form develops arguments informed by Frazin Lotfi-Jam, Monika Domman, Hannes Rickli and Max Stadler.


                                  We Sweat In Peace   relates history to the present through the reenactment of a celebratory chorus commemorating the laying of the Atlantic Telegraph Cable in 1858. Through embodying the workers, the live intervention highlights the labour intensive process of producing the cable and serves as a counterpoint to the presented immateriality of this heavy infrastructure.



                     

With their titles taken from a 1983 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency report detailing applications of distributed multi-agent simulations, the three elements of the project mirror and critique the militaristic logic of computer simulations, which have since permeated every facet of our lives from advertising through city planning decisions to policing. Together, they trace a history of convergence of previously separate technologies that when brought together enable a new form of production.



                     

Through the  process  of mapping both physical and philosophical  terrains, Beneath the Beach, the cloud offers an incomplete mapping of our rewired world, bringing together remote ideas, methods and places.


Aron Weber 2023