The Crab & the Cable
and the invisible web at the Earth’s seabed
Maren Mohn Kverneland
The first cable laid on the ocean floor was a telecommunication cable laid in the 1850s. Since then, the numbers of submarine cables have risen dramatically as they are crucial to the transmission of transoceanic data and electric currents. Today there are approximately 406 submarine cables in service. This concludes about 1.2 million kilometres of submarine cables on earth. Countries and developers are still expanding the infrastructure to physically connect continents and land through land and ocean. We are dependent on cables to transport electricity and information to co. Yet, this large infrastructure of submarine cables is unknown to most people. What are the impacts of these cables on the ocean floor and at land? Should the dependence on these long lines be a part of the common knowledge? The aim of this project is to visualize the extent of the crucial cable network constructed at and within the seabed. What are the challenges and consequences of these tunnels dug into the ground? What are our environmental responsibilities when these cables are constructed, and should we rethink our dependence of the interconnected world? It is easy to take for granted where our electricity and data is coming from, although it is something we depend on every day. This project explores the content of an infrastructure that is hidden away. It questions if we should be more critical to the expanding network, but how can we understand an infrastructure that we cannot see?
