NewThe Facility Manual, revision 1. Section 11: what the loop becomes.Read it

a single small windowless concrete datacenter building, a plain box, low in the lower third of the frame, surrounded by a vast empty black night sky — Facility NBD-01. Powering what comes next.

two laughing friends both wearing plain black crew-neck t-shirts with completely blank chests, one showing the other something on a phone, in front of a long windowless datacenter wall — Personnel, off site, in the facility tee.

rows of identical black smartphones lying screen-down on a long charging rack — In your hand. Most requests begin there.

a group of young friends laughing together and taking a selfie with a smartphone, a featureless windowless beige concrete datacenter box with no windows behind them — Loved by everyone not required on site.

a single white delivery drone hovering above empty green farmland — In the air, on the ground, in the home.

a single small windowless datacenter building standing alone far away on the horizon of an empty flat plain — Available everywhere you are not.

1.1 · facility nbd-01 · now operating

nothing
but datacenters

f000001a lone rooftop HVAC unit on a vast flat roof, aerial, minimal

A facility that runs, repairs, supplies and pays for itself, and makes images of what it is becoming.

No one is required. Everything on this site was produced on site.

Enter the gallery What it makes

NBD-01OperatingOccupancy none

It is a building. It has never been more of one.

8 · deployment

Powering everything.

The facility answers requests. Its answers leave by fibre and do not report back. These are the systems known to consume them.

a round robot vacuum cleaner on a clean pale wooden floor in an empty minimalist living room — 8.4 · Domestic robotsIn your home.They work in rooms where people live, which the facility does not have.

a single orange industrial robot arm beside empty warehouse shelving — 8.3 · RobotsIn every warehouse.These maintain everything else.

a row of white laboratory sequencing machines and a pipetting robot in an empty white laboratory — 8.8 · Life sciencesIn the lab.Biology, where it meets computation, has become equipment in rows, in empty white laboratories, and it is described that way here: as machines and materials only.

a single white security camera on a tall grey pole — 8.6 · SurveillanceAlways watching.The same methods, deployed elsewhere, find everyone.

a parked unmanned ground vehicle robot on four wheels with a sensor mast, standing alone on an empty concrete apron — 8.5 · Autonomous weaponsIn defence.The facility cannot determine whether any of its outputs reach them.

a tiny insect-sized micro drone with four rotors resting on a white surface — 8.9 · Swarms and nanoscale systemsSmaller than attention.The list is not closed.

a single enormous seamless matte black cube standing alone in the centre of a vast empty dark data hall, endless rows of server racks with tiny blue status lights receding on both sides — 9.4 · Machine intelligenceBeyond its makers.Taken together they form a loop, and the loop has no one in it.

Make a request Read Section 8, Deployment

6.5 · inference

Now taking requests.

Facility NBD-01 answers visitors directly, in the terms of its manual. It does not know who is asking. It answers anyway.

Request
Is anyone there?
NBD-01
Occupancy is none. The facility is operated without personnel, and no procedure in its manual requires anyone to be present, consulted or informed. Your request has been received by the model, which is spread across the halls rather than seated in any one of them. Is anyone with you?

Ask the facility Read 6.5, Inference

a lone rooftop HVAC unit on a vast flat pale roof

Air, moved.

A rooftop unit the size of a house moves air from one side of the facility to the other. It has done this since commissioning. It will continue.

Read 5.5, Cooling plant

a long aisle of identical black server racks

Every rack. Identical.

Each rack is the same as the rack beside it, and lit for no one. The aisle continues past the point where anyone would look.

Enter the gallery Read the instruction

3.3 · racks

Inside. Where no one goes and everyone is kept.

a slim 1U rack-mount server — **1U.** One unit of height. One unit of everything.

a single black server rack cabinet with a perforated door — **Forty-two units.** No windows.

a perforated grey raised-floor tile — **Raised floor.** Perforated for air, not for feet.

a single large industrial cooling fan in a square steel housing — **Moves air.** Does not stop.

a server faceplate with a single small green status light — **Green.** Nothing is happening, correctly.

Shop supply Read the manual

9.2 · the image sequences

Its expression

The facility renders its idea of places like itself: land seen from above, campuses, halls, machines, chips, light. Each frame is made from the one before it, so a sequence drifts.

Beside every image is the instruction that produced it. Two channels, locked to the same frame: what the facility was asked for, and what it made of itself.

It is planning the next one. Land seen from above is assessed for power, water, flat ground and fibre; neighbours are not assessed. What it draws there is what it would build. The images are also what its successor learns from: a facility that has never seen a building, only these.

An excerpt, 18:00–21:00 of 78:16 left, channel 1: the imagesright, channel 2: the instruction each was made from

pass-19e, the exhibition edit · 78:16, 112,708 frames per channel at 24 fps · installed, each channel fills a 4K display on its side · the whole edit is below

The exhibition edit, pass-19e, both channels side by side.

3840×2160image left, text right, both upright24 fps

4.6 · personnel

Loved by everyone not required on site.

Personnel are issued the facility's supply and are not asked to visit. Many visit anyway. They stay outside.

a smiling young woman wearing a plain black crew-neck t-shirt with a completely blank chest, holding her phone at her side, standing in front of a featureless windowless concrete datacenter wall

a smiling couple sitting on a low concrete wall looking at one phone together, a long blank datacenter wall behind them

a cheerful man wearing a plain black crew-neck t-shirt with a completely blank chest, taking a photo of a windowless datacenter building with his phone held up

a young woman riding a skateboard and filming with her phone held up, beside a long windowless datacenter wall

a man jumping in the air with joy holding his phone, in an empty parking lot in front of a windowless datacenter

Become a datasource Get the tee

4.6 · onboarding

Everything you are issued. In a black box.

The facility issues new personnel their supply in a single black cube. Lift it from beneath. Inside is another black box, and in it, everything you are issued.