Alison Marie Reilly and I received an EAGER grant from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to fund our research project, Geographies of Secrecy. We co-wrote this presentation in the spring of 2014 that we gave at the Shapiro Research Symposium. In a subsequent essay, we will be discussing the connection between the Hanford Site in eastern Washington and the National Security Administration’s Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah. In order to connect the two sites, we examine Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her, Timothy Morton’s book Hyperobjects, and John Gerrard’s simulation titled Farm (2015). In what ways are our digital devices actively affecting our world? How does storing a picture on the ephemeral “cloud” have an impact on water usage in Utah?
More information about the project can be found here.