The Hmm’s Data Centre Tour

A walk along Google and Microsoft’s hyperscale data centres in the Wieringermeerpolder.

After last year’s sold-out Data Centre Tour, Hmm's decided to return to Agriport this year with an updated program.

This year, we’ll be looking at the energy consumption of AI, amongst other things. Over the past year, Microsoft for example has been implementing their Copilot AI in their software products, and tech companies’ carbon emissions as a whole have increased in order to keep up with the AI boom. After all, Shrimp Jesuses have to be processed somehow, somewhere.

For this very special field trip, we will take a tour bus from Amsterdam to the industrial park Agriport in the Wieringermeerpolder, home to Google’s and Microsoft’s hyperscale data centres. Data centres are a crucial part of our internet infrastructure, yet they remain black boxes in the landscape—highly invisible structures we don’t think about often enough.

During our hike along these huge constructions, we will take a look at how they came into existence, their infrastructures, and contemplate our relationship with data centres and the possible alternatives we could imagine taking place in these landscapes.

How do these data centres impact the places in which they are built and the communities that live there? What impact are data centres already having on the global environment? And what resources are necessary for our online infrastructures, and who gets to decide how they are implemented?

This event is co-organised with Marloes de Valk, a software artist, writer, and PhD researcher. She is a long-time follower of the development of the data centres in the Wieringermeerpolder.

Tickets at https://thehmm.nl/event/the-hmms-data-centre-tour-2/ : 35 euro/ 25 euro (students)