Solar Politics

2025

Sunlight lands upon photovoltaic wafers, chaotic energy transformed into electricity, flowing into algorithmic black boxes to fuel artificial intelligence. The uneven distribution of sunlight across geography embodies a natural energy inequality, while computational civilization simultaneously surges forward, powered by cheap electricity. Who enjoys the light, and who bears its residual heat? How much power does our information civilization consume, and how much waste heat must it release to sustain the illusion of “progress”? The series "Solar Politics" traces the sun across Arizona, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia, the Atacama Desert, and Bangalore—regions that are both highlands of clean energy and cradles of information capital.

Within the series, “Phoenix: Into the Mouth of Computation” draws on a decade of ecological, energy, and information data from Phoenix, Arizona (2014–2024). Dry climate, low electricity costs, and vast open land have made it a nexus for photovoltaic infrastructure and energy-intensive computation. The inner solar ring is driven by solar generation and data center consumption; the outer flows respond to sunspot activity and temperature fluctuations. When heatwaves and haboobs strike, power fails and communications are cut, leaving only a darkened center and a blazing periphery. Here, the outer solar flames and the inner black-box cold light contend and devour one another. The sun becomes a colossal screen—reflecting the fevered dream of computation across the desert.