The clean look of 3D-generated videos makes their abstraction seductive. This is especially true of corporate visualizations. They present machines in infinite white spaces, isolated from the real world. They reduce complex inner workings to crisply animated particles. Their richly detailed renderings invite admiration, but at the same time they obscure the environmental impact of the technologies they depict. This video essay, published by [in]Transition, turns those kinds of images against themselves. It reuses footage produced for data centers, engineering firms, chip manufacturers, and similar industries, and pairs these images with an audio track that critically examines the seemingly antiseptic reality they present.

Roc Albalat draws on virtual visualizations of data centers and their heat management systems. The heat maps and thermal images are visually striking, with their vivid rainbow color schemes, but this aesthetic quality is problematic. They say nothing about the environmental consequences of the infrastructure they depict. Most of the renderings show server racks in complete isolation from the outside world. They seem to exist in the digital equivalent of an infinite photo studio. Everything is in sharp focus, there is no depth of field to these renderings. The result is a false impression of objectivity, transparency, and clarity. In reality, these images conceal as much as they reveal.

Like the visuals, the audio is assembled from online sources, ranging from podcast episodes to conference keynotes. These voices could hardly be more different from the images. They are often emotional, sometimes searching, and always deeply concerned. Albalat weaves them into a powerful account of the environmental costs of data centers. The soundtrack provides the context the images lack: it introduces facts the visualizations omit and voices stark warnings the corporate footage carefully avoids. Albalat shows how videographic methods such as appropriation and remix can reclaim corporate imagery for activist ends.