Anna Niia Varfolomeeva

Tag: digital infrastructures

  • One bright Fulbright day

    Fulbright scholarship recipients often call themselves family. Before leaving Oulu for the orientation day with Fulbright Finland in Helsinki last week as a new grant recipient, I had been wondering whether this sounds too affectionate.

    After spending the day with them, I see that there is indeed a certain aura among Fulbrighters: openness to conversation, genuine interest in other cultures, ease and academic rigour, all combined. This is an atmosphere where I felt at home.

    My comparative project on data centres in post-industrial Arctic settlements recently received funding from Fulbright, and next spring I will be visiting Alaska for the first time ever, building collaborations with the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

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  • Hydropower and its silences

    Our research-art project “Tar, Power, Data” began in March, and yesterday Kati and I made our first joint visit to Leppiniemi, a former hydropower settlement close to the new Google data centre construction site. We walked around the settlement, took photos, and spoke with several residents about their sense of community and their perceptions of future changes. One of the houses in Leppiniemi even has its own Instagram account!

    We also toured the Pyhäkoski power plant museum, which recently reopened after renovation. The exhibition spans several floors and covers a variety of subjects, from the use of concrete in the plant’s construction to fish farming as an effort to compensate for the environmental impacts of hydropower.

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  • Unfolding digital futures

    The surface of the LUMI supercomputer looks like origami. This is a tribute to the paper mill on whose premises LUMI and several other data centres are situated. The UPM Kajaani paper mill was a reliable, long-term local employer in this northern Finnish region until it closed in 2008, leaving more than 500 people unemployed.

    Since 2012, the data centre industry has been occupying the former halls and storage areas of the mill. Its spirit is still felt here: in the deserted railway lines that once carried fresh paper out, in the wooden owl installation gifted to the mill by pupils of the local school, and in the old-fashioned chairs of the former factory café that now hosts data centre workers.

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