Gallery: 6 Stunning Photos of the Internet's Hidden Infrastructure
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Timo Arnall has documented the hidden architecture of the internet in his new project *Internet Machine*.
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Arnall gained access to Telefónica, a 65,700-square-meter data center in Alcalá, Spain that handles much of Europe’s cloud computing services.
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He wandered the halls for miles, capturing the sprawling IT rooms with a Canon 5D. “The server rooms felt like entering an intensive care unit at a hospital,” he says.
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Fiber optic connectors are routed through the labyrinthine building and connect to the greater web through holes in the concrete walls.
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“The thing that most surprised me about the data center was how much of the space was taken up by support systems, and how little space was actually used for servers,” says Arnall.
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So why bother photographing a data center anyway? “It’s very difficult to pay attention to and critique stuff that is invisible or hidden behind many layers of abstraction," he says. "Data centers are incredibly important yet invisible places, they demand more critical reflection and attention.”
