Francesca Biagiotti

Department: Information Design
Website: www.francescabiagiotti.com

The Data Fountain

Nowadays, we are undeniably living in the Internet era, The era of the Cloud.
The Cloud can be seen as a portal that opens up towards a new world of infinite possibilities. This technology, that lends itself to fulfilling every imaginable need, obviously does not have a specific form. In fact, it can be found anywhere around us and it functions very well, to the point that we do not even ask ourselves what it actually is in reality. On the other hand, the real facts are totally different from our imagined ones. The Cloud is an existing material space on the Earth’s surface and thus a thing ruled by many factors that influence the World as we know it.
In my research thesis Demystification of the Cloud I describe all the features that make the Internet a concrete and existing reality on earth, and therefore not the abstract, ephemeral concept that is falsely sold to us. My aim is to expose it as an industrial phenomenon and a business model.
On the other hand, in my design project The Data Fountain I use the archetype of classic fountains to shred the metaphor of the Cloud. The fountain structure reflects the materiality and brutality of the Cloud’s infrastructure, and its choreography emulates the process of creation, leakage and loss of personal data. The project clarifies the quantity of information we are pushed to create and the accessibility of our private data in the Cloud to unknown third parties.
The fountain reminds us that democracy and people will always have to prevail over the Clouds.