Cloud Emissions

Propelling the Micro-Processors Industry Across Geography and Time

2021

This project aims at depicting the material reality of digitalisation. New technologies often appear as the answer to couple sustainability and accelerated growth, but the reality is that the global micro-processor ecosystem is running on a fossil-based industry and supply chain. We are witnessing a race of carbon emission cut from an industry that develop technologies to decarbonise itself.

Such diagrams are some of the rare clues for one to make their own idea regarding the future path of technological development. Indeed, the making of micro-processor happens in dimension which nano scale can’t be grasp by the human’s brain. On the other side, the global supply chain implies a macroscopic worldwide economy that is as unrelatable. The digital construction is then only mediated by abstract tools that can be manipulated to not reveal all it actually means, leaving decision power to the markets – that are said to aggregate the wishes and beliefs of the society and thus function as a distributed intelligence that can make sense of the global situation.

Cloud Emission aims at exposing the material reality behind silicon hardware manufacturing. It proposes a view of its supply chain where accountability leaves it place to strong visual symbols that people can make sense of. From the sand-based of the silicon production, to the key step of ASML building machine to laser-engrave transistor architectures designed by foundries that then distribute their chips to computers manufacturers; the microscopic hardware travel the world many time before giving birth to the devices that allow scientist to calculate the environmental impact of the human economy.