Carbonivore

Rows of black server racks, their slots glowing green and gold, stand half sunk in a trench of wet red-brown earth. Mud clings to the machines and pools in tire ruts between them, while a dark wall of forest rises in the haze beyond.
A tower of server racks flickers with white and green bars of light in a dark room. Tangled cables in red, blue, yellow and green spill from it like roots or veins and wrap around a glossy, rust-colored mass studded with silver crystals, all pooled in a glistening slick on the floor.
Title
Carbonivore
Artist
Asma Kazmi & Jill Miller
Date
2023–2025
Description
A speculative hybrid creature built from roughly 2,000 pounds of e-waste gathered around the Bay Area, staged by Jill Miller and Asma Kazmi, who work together as the Missing Object Library. Cables, server racks, monitors and cooling units recreate the look of a server farm, while animated video traces the materials back to the rare earth mines they came from; smaller 'offspring' forms made of lithium, cobalt and silicon appeared on lobby monitors. The work pushes back on the idea that the cloud, big data and AI are weightless, pointing to their energy demands, extraction and labor. A first version was installed in October 2023; the full installation filled the Gray Area Gallery in San Francisco from April 22 to July 20, 2025, commissioned through Gray Area's C/Change program with Goethe-Institut San Francisco and supported in part by the UC Berkeley Center for New Media and UC Berkeley Surplus.
Artwork Type
Installation
Sculpture
Materiality
Found / Salvaged Materials
Recycled Materials
Video / Digital Video
Climate & Ecology Themes
Extraction and Mining
Waste and E-waste
Labor and Livelihoods
Concepts
Speculative Futures and Imagination
Methods & Approaches
Speculative / Futures Practice
Audience / Engagement Type
Public / General Audience
Location
Gray Area, 2665 Mission St., San Francisco, California
Geographic Scope
International / Global
Rights
Rights held by artist or creator
Website
jillmiller.net/carbonivore
asmakazmi.com/carbonivore
Affiliated Organizations
UC Berkeley Center for New Media
Publisher
UC Berkeley, Department of Art Practice / Berkeley Center for New Media
Discipline / Field
Arts & Design
Item sets
California Art & Climate Archive
UC Berkeley
Media
Rows of black server racks, their slots glowing green and gold, stand half sunk in a trench of wet red-brown earth. Mud clings to the machines and pools in tire ruts between them, while a dark wall of forest rises in the haze beyond.Jill Miller and Asma Kazmi, Carbonivore 1 (still)
A tower of server racks flickers with white and green bars of light in a dark room. Tangled cables in red, blue, yellow and green spill from it like roots or veins and wrap around a glossy, rust-colored mass studded with silver crystals, all pooled in a glistening slick on the floor.Jill Miller and Asma Kazmi, Carbonivore 2 (still)