North Atlantic Server Farm, 2011

The NASF was a speculative proposal for a free-floating array of swimming, wave-powered, seawater-cooled autonomous robotic server units.

The network would be linked together at hubs to undersea cable connections, and grow as new units were deployed, swimming until finding a point to attach. As the network scales, the reflectivity of its white surfaces could begin to offset the reduced albedo of Earth from the melting of polar ice.

The growth pattern, resulting from simple rules of search and attachment followed by new units, is inspired by the process of diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA). The project was developed in collaboration with Nicole Koltick, and presented at the symposium INPUT-OUTPUT: Adaptive Materials and Mediated Environments, at Temple University in 2010.