WHAT IS THE (W)HOLE PROJECT?
A cooperative world-building exercise designed to uncover the often-overlooked world of digital infrastructures. It utilizes various media, languages, and realms to provide participants with the tools necessary to engage with and act upon these hidden systems. Through this (W)HOLE project, Clusterduck embarks once more on the endless journey of collective meaning-making, navigating the chaotic landscape we currently find ourselves in.
6 MANHOLE COVERS
Six casted manhole covers in Zürich feature allegorical designs that narrate the dynamics behind the six layers of digital infrastructure – symbolic gates to a hidden world.6 LOCATIONS
The placement of each manhole is no coincidence. Each site intertwines the stories of the city of Zurich with the ones told by the project and its six realms.6 AR EXPERIENCES
Every manhole functions as a portal to an augmented reality world that you can access with your phone. Once activated, the city’s hidden digital layers will rise from the ground.A (W)HOLE ATLAS
On this website, an Atlas reveals the symbolic meanings behind each manhole design, inviting visitors to delve deeper into digital infrastructure’s enigmas.A (W)HOLE REPOSITORY
Also on this website, a repository of initiatives, articles, and communities awaits, offering tools to actively explore, engage and question digital infrastructure.WHY DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE?
Infrastructure is the network of fundamental systems that move our data, energy, food and water. It shapes the way we live, work, consume, and communicate – although most of the time we forget about its existence. As digital technologies play an increasingly significant role in our daily lives, understanding the hidden paths of cables, servers, sensors, and algorithms that make our online world possible, along with the power and material resources they require to operate, has become a vital task. The interconnected architecture of digital infrastructure can be broken down into six main layers or realms:
Earth
Our elemental environment of minerals, oceans, and atmosphere: the source from which technology, infrastructure, and life itself emerge.
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Cloud
The physical ground where everything begins: minerals, oceans, atmosphere — the elemental matter from which technology, infrastructure, and life itself emerge.
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City
The urban layer where buildings, barriers, sensors, and digital signals trace invisible paths determining our daily habits, weaving together public life and private interests.
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Address
The system that assigns us a position and identity, while simultaneously exposing us, from postal codes and GPS coordinates to the countless IP addresses structuring the web.
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Interface
The surfaces and devices through which we see, touch, and control the digital realm – generating feedback loops that, in turn, allow the machines to influence us.
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User
Us: the human and nonhuman agents who feed, train, and are shaped by digital infrastructure, inhabiting both its physical substrate and virtual extensions.
HOW DOES THE (W)HOLE PROJECT WORK?
The (W)HOLE project begins in Zurich, but is meant to travel across many cities and locations.
For now, if you are in Zurich, we invite you to visit the six locations on the map.
If you’re not in Zurich, we hope to reach your city soon!
In the meantime, you can explore the symbolism behind the six worlds through The (W)HOLE Atlas, and write to us to contribute to the (W)HOLE Repository.
We hope that this curatorial work can also serve as inspiration and support for your own initiatives.
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Open your camera & scan the QR code
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Explore the AR experience & this Atlas on-site
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Clusterduck is an interdisciplinary collective working in the fields of new media studies, design, and transmedia, investigating the processes and actors behind the creation of Internet-based content. Clusterduck has developed Meme Manifesto, a transmedia project that collectively explores the occult meanings and communicative potentials of memetic symbology. Over the past seven years, Clusterduck has also created the participatory exhibitions #MEMEPROPAGANDA and #MEMERSFORFUTURE, which examines the role of memetics in post-truth times and the global climate justice movement.
A PROJECT BY CLUSTERDUCK
(W)HOLE was developed by the collective’s co-founders, who worked collaboratively on brainstorming, briefing, copyrighting, brand identity design, video editing, client management, content curation, photogrammetry, account management, location scouting, team coordination, executive production, UX design, social media planning, and whatever else artists are expected to do nowadays.
THE (W)HOLE TEAM
A special thanks to
Björn Alfers
Project management
Franz Alferz
AR support onsite
Cristina Bleuler
Location scouting
Gaia Cionnini
Jewelry development
Jules Durand
Symbol design, typography consultancy
Gabriele Guarisco
3D modelling
Gregorio Magini
Web technical support
Art Foundry St. Gallen
Manhole production
Nicolas Paries
Frontend development and web implementation
Pietro Parisi
3D World Builder and AR integration
Vlad Storm
AR integration and AR Consultancy
Miro Tiebe
Manhole’s Design and Project Illustrations
Beatrice Zito
AR support onsite
Matteo Zoppi
Sound design and composition