Digital Anthropology Presentation for UCL's FIGS Forum dedicated to "Material Properties" (Feb. 2014). What can we learn from dissecting and fiddling with cables?

1. Complex materials
The hidden fabric of digital life
through cables
Nadia Elmrabet, PhD candidate
(Material Culture & Digital Anthropology)
Anais Bloch, MA Design Anthropology
(MA Culture, Materials and Design)

2. Context
•
Presentation made for the “Material Properties” Friday Forum of
UCL’s Arts & Humanities and Social & Historical Sciences Faculties
Institute of Graduate Studies (Joint FIGS) - 28 February 2014 at the
Slade Research Institute
•
Panel : Methods of interrogation
 What kinds of research methods are used to investigate materials?
 How do these methods differ across disciplines and how can they
be applied in different contexts?

3. Ubiquitous at various scales
and yet… very often invisible

4. Unpacking this material « black box »
of digital life

5. Abstract
This presentation aims at focusing on the materiality of digital life. To illustrate this
topic we will turn to cables and postulate that they act as the hidden fabric of digital life.
Often represented as entangled, these crucial and dense artefacts encompass in
themselves, at micro level, intricate diverse materials (metal armour, glass optic fibers,
aluminum wires, numerous protecting layers of plastic, etc). At macro level they make up
the infrastructure of the “entangled web” of telecommunications and bind digital devices
together. In that sense, cables act as a fabric, connecting the different levels of digital
life: from the devices in your room to digital superstructures such as servers, urban grids,
telecommunication intercontinental or submarine cables.
The academic rationale here is to see how digital materiality is very often negated through
rhetorics of immateriality and how to re-materialize it. Drawing on Morin’s theory of
complexity and particularly the concept of emergence, we ask: what does the part has
to say about the whole? How do cables reflect the larger structure of the
Internet?
This exercise thus enable us to discuss the concepts of hybrid materials, the articulation
of materiality / immateriality in what can be described as “black boxes” of digital
culture, as well as the role of humans in relation to contemporary digital networks.

6. Our project
• Our main hypothesis / interrogation :
The negated presence and sealed materiality of cables as
symptomatic of the immateriality discourse of digital life :
How to re-materialize it?

7. 1st Activity - Observation
Curated collection from UCL (submarine cable) and grids in the streets
Early XXth century submarine
cable
Optical Fiber – model
Urban grid

8. 2nd Activity – Sensorial Exploration
We first wanted to make a secondary artefact or fabric, comprising discarded
cables found at UCL’s department of engineering: the latter were regular
cables (copper and foil) and optical fibers connecting digital devices /
computers and used for instance in server rooms.
We soon realized that weaving a new pattern would take more time and require
an expertise and tools we did not have. However, the sensorial exploration of
these artefacts proved sufficiently enlightening for the purpose of our rationale.

9. Origin of discarded cables: server
room at UCL.
Illustrations of server rooms

11. Twisted Pairs
“Twisted pair cabling is a type of wiring in which two
conductors of a single circuit are twisted together for the
purposes of canceling out electromagnetic interference
(EMI) from external sources […]
UTP cable is also the most common cable used in
computer networking. Modern Ethernet, the most
common data networking standard, can use UTP cables.
Twisted pair cabling is often used in data networks for short
and medium length connections because of its relatively
lower costs compared to optical fiber and coaxial
cable.”
(Wikipedia)

12. Backbone
“Backbone cabling is the inter-building and intrabuilding cable connections in structured cabling
between entrance facilities, equipment rooms and
telecommunications closets.”
(Wikipedia)
“Internet Backbone :
The National Science Foundation (NSF) created the first
high-speed backbone in 1987. [...] Backbones are
typically fiber optic trunk lines. The trunk line has
multiple fiber optic cables combined together to
increase the capacity. [...] Today there are many
companies that operate their own high-capacity
backbones, and all of them interconnect at various NAPs
around the world. In this way, everyone on the Internet,
no matter where they are and what company they use,
is able to talk to everyone else on the planet. The entire
Internet is a gigantic, sprawling agreement between
companies to intercommunicate freely.”
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/internetinfrastructure4.htm

13. Sharing
•
We finally chose diverse media representation gathered on a website (images, video,
animated GIFs) to share this exploration.
•
Our objective was to preserve the dynamic nature of this encounter between human
operators (us) and material artefacts, to convey resistance and plasticity, as well as
the playfulness and the ‘trial and error’ process in material explorations.

14. Conclusion
Extending the concept of « black-boxing » to a trivial, rarely questioned
artefact
•
• Revealing a complex and dense materiality in digital artefacts through
physical confrontation (bending materials) similar to concepts of bricolage
/ poaching.
•
•
Moving from uses and practices : « apparition » regime of digital screens
where everything seems to magically appear as well as showcasing a certain
« flatness »…
…Towards a material observation / experimentation with micro-structures
(media) and infrastructures.
•
•
Grasping levels and scales in complex structures.
Further question: degree of technical skills needed to understand
technology.

15. Thank you.
Nadia Elmrabet, PhD candidate
(Material Culture & Digital Anthropology)
nadia.elmrabet.10@ucl.ac.uk
Anais Bloch, MA Design Anthropology
(MA Culture, Materials and Design)
anais.bloch.13@ucl.ac.uk