# Project Description Where is the Price Canhe Yang Summary Final work Awards Nominated | Maison/0 This Earth Canhe is a cross-media artist and researcher whose practice explores the entanglements between technology, power, and everyday life. Grounded in critical theory and technology studies, his work investigates how emerging technologies intervene in and reshape the daily experiences of ordinary individuals. He focuses on the shifting agency of citizens under dominant techno-narratives, aiming to visualize theory through multi-sensory media. Canhe is a cross-media artist and researcher whose practice explores the entanglements between te... College Central Saint Martins Course MA Art And Science Graduation year 2025 “Where is Price” is a research-based series of works that, through investigation, deconstruction, and re-mapping, repeatedly returns to a central proposition: the operation of artificial intelligence relies not only on the code built by a small group of highly skilled humans, but is fundamentally rooted in a deeply material and globally stratified system of unequal labor division. The three pieces of fabric in the work, serving as visualizations of research findings, expose the often-overlooked “invisible labor” and “resource extraction” underpinning AI systems. The trajectories of workers’ labor constitute a global supply chain that supports the material foundation of AI—from mining and refining to assembly and transport—ultimately converging into vast infrastructures of data centers, algorithmic engineering, and energy systems. Yet, the complexity of this material network is frequently concealed by the aesthetics of technology and dominant narratives that depict AI as immaterial and abstract. To emphasize the geographical center of this hidden system, the map in the work intentionally highlights the Global South’s critical role in the AI supply chain. At the same time, by adopting a north-south vertical orientation, the work raises a broader question: in an age when global technological labor is thoroughly entangled, does the traditional East-West dichotomy still hold explanatory power? Or do such spatial narratives obscure the real flows of capital and labor? The installation serves as a direct visual translation of technological theory. Once we recognize that AI is not an ethereal “brain in the cloud,” its visual representation should no longer be confined to the “friendly,” “evil,” or “digital” figures promoted by tech corporations. Instead, AI can appear clumsy, rough, even outdated—and it can also stand in solidarity with laborers, equally embedded in structures of oppression. The image of AI should be collectively redefined by its users and those affected by it. This act of reimagining is itself an artistic gesture of resistance—one that challenges mainstream tech discourses that dematerialize and over-humanize AI. It is particularly important to note that mainstream AI research today remains largely focused on technical breakthroughs, optimization, and scalability. In contrast, within the arts and humanities, critical inquiries into AI’s material foundations, ethical costs, and global responsibilities remain marginal. Public discourse is still preoccupied with questions like “Is AI-generated work plagiarized?” or “Can AI art be considered real art?”—with little attention paid to the resource regimes and labor structures embedded in these systems. This work emerges precisely within that fissure—as a provocative gesture intended to spark broader critical reflection and creative inquiry into the materiality of AI, global inequality, and the politics of technology. Final work A General Rendering (Due to Upload time Limited),Please check the actual photos on https://www.yangcanhe.com and upload them after July 2025. Maps play a crucial role throughout this series. In the visual order established by colonial geography and Cold War mapping traditions, the horizontally oriented world map not only silently disciplines our geographical imagination but also subtly constructs hierarchical narratives between center and periphery, and between North and South. Maps are, to some extent, a visual coding system of power and knowledge that profoundly influences how we perceive the world. This map employs a "De-urbanization" symbolic strategy: it intentionally removes human settlements and national borders found in traditional maps. Instead, it highlights supply chains and material flows, emphasizing the dynamic distribution of the techno-material complex . This symbolic stripping not only aims to dismantle the default geopolitical narrative but also seeks to create new conditions for spatial perception. It frees viewers from the traditional spatial paradigms shaped by nations and ethnicities, inviting a new way to reconsider the overall relationships within global space. This approach aims to offer a new way of understanding maps. It invites viewers to perceive the complex ecology formed by algorithms, energy, minerals, and logistics networks. It encourages a re-examination of the geographic structure where global resources, technology, and power are intertwined, revealing the hidden infrastructure that supports the modern world. On a deeper narrative level, we are now in a " techno-geological age "—a time when algorithmic technology and geological materials are deeply intertwined. Traditional maps were often drawn from east to west, and the conventional concept of dividing the world into "East and West" has been deeply ingrained, especially in globalization discourse. This has effectively obscured the increasingly important role of the Global South in global technology infrastructure networks. This is also why a north-south oriented world map is used as the base. In this new map, we can see that the Global South is no longer just a passive "resource provider" or an object in traditional geopolitical stories. Instead, it is becoming a core node for global computing networks, data centers, power facilities, and rare earth mineral supply chains. Therefore, choosing a vertical projection for the world map is not merely a design choice. It is an act of " cartographic reorientation " that brings renewed attention to the technological infrastructure and power networks long ignored by tech company narratives. It also challenges tech companies' longstanding claims of "cloud services" being immaterial. Regarding the information on Banner, the source file is on Google Drive and is free for all to download! https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pczM8LWcP8Zk4USNgO6LvWpchF0DLQZ1?usp=drive_link View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery Share this project Where is Price“Where is Price” is a research-based series of works that, through investigation, deconstruction, and re-mapping, repeatedly returns to a central proposition: the operation of artificial intelligence relies not only on the code built by ... A link to this page has been added to your clipboard Browse related work Beyond Human Data Privacy Realities AI Supply Chain Sculpture Critique