Melting and Infrastructure:
Indexing a deep entanglement

Introduction

In general the term melting describes a physical process that changes the state of aggregation of a substance from a solid to a liquid. This can happen due to an increase in heat or pressure. In a broader sense though, melting can be seen as a dynamic dialogue—one that dissolves the boundary between human action and so-called nature. Rather than existing in opposition, these forces interact in ways that can be cooperative, violent, or unpredictable. As in the examples of gold refining or Plastiglomerates, melting matter can erase or create long term traces, and create new realities.

While one might picture a smooth, linear flow when thinking of liquids, the truth is more complex: fluids, whether molten metal or liquefying ice, can reveal chaotic behaviors that are mostly shaped by and pushing against physical boundaries. Over the course of history this entanglement has increased immensely as the melting of natural resources became a more and more essential part of an industrialized, globalized, and digitalized world. On one hand, there was a quantitative boost in materials and applications for melting, but also an increase in scale and intensity. In the context of a global energy and cloud infrastructure, another aspect of melting becomes very important. Overheating components and accidental melting pose big risks, especially when acting at large scale. Therefore, new industries emerged to develop cooling systems for all kinds of scales. Consequently, these processes contribute to planetary overheating—global warming—concluding in an ongoing melting of glaciers and polar caps.

This shows that melting is an inherent part of global infrastructures not only due to its material variety, but also because it has a qualitative variety in size, temporality, and intensity. Sometimes melting is loud and immediate, as in the casting of iron rails or the high-heat forging of industrial components. Other times, it’s subtle and tiny—like micro-soldering computer chips—or ponderous, like a slowly shrinking glacier over decades.
At times, the concept of melting leaves physicality and is transferred to purely logical ideas like the “melting” of data into new formats in machine-learning pipelines or seeping into language and social metaphors—melting hearts, meltdowns, melting pots—where it conveys transformation, vulnerability, or unity.

In the context of this essay I am referring to infrastructures as parts of heterogeneous interdependencies and networks, that do not differentiate between digital and physical structures, but see them as intertwined ¹. Infrastructures, meaning large-scale, standardized systems, are connected by and with local systems that serve as gateways. In this sense, melting procedures are not only part of certain infrastructures, but also constitute their own infrastructural systems—like injection molding or gold refining facilities. The role of melting can be seen as closely connected to the development of Infrastructure. From homogenous Railway and Power Systems to Large Technical Systems (as defined by Thomas P. Hughes as heterogenous webs of Infrastructure ²) to infrastructure networks of entangled immaterial and material, systems, networks, and internetworks as defined by Paul N. Edwards ³.

“Statt eine […] Vorrangigkeit des Raums zu unterstellen, gilt es, die aktive Beteiligung von Infrastrukturen und das mit ihnen einhergehende Machtintreresse bei der Zurichtung von Räumen zu berücksichtigen” ⁴

These infrastructures are, in a way, immediately directed by the characteristics of the material, and are, at the same time, creating new material spaces. They push back, imposing conditions that dictate how—and if—systems can function. This manifests most starkly in scenarios where melting must be prevented, such as the cooling of nuclear reactors or data centers—revealing that not melting is often as crucial to global infrastructure as melting itself.

The following part of the essay proposes an index of systems that are connected to melting matter—organizing different materials and processes by their melting points rather than by a strictly linear or content-driven order. These sections stand as references to the agency of nonhuman actors, each illustrating an aspect of how melting permeates global infrastructure while also being interlinked and referencing each other. It is a possibly evolving index, not intended to be conclusive. Rather, it is an invitation to see melting as a concept that binds together the techn(olog)ical, ecological, and the cultural—constantly reshaping our understanding of how the world holds together—or might melt down.

Nuclear meltdown

Meltdown is both a material catastrophe and a metaphor for systems spiraling out of control. In a nuclear reactor’s core, metal alloys and uranium fuel rods literally melt when its cooling systems fail, causing a collapse of the entire system. Such events expose an infrastructure’s deep entanglement with nonhuman forces. The malfunction of a system or component inside an infrastructural network will therefore propagate and affect other seemingly unrelated infrastructures. A prominent example for that is Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which experienced a meltdown after a test failure, causing immense consequences—one of them being 6400 km² of land becoming unusable for humans due to high radiation ⁵.

The global energy infrastructure, which heavily relies on the burning of fossil fuels, is therefore a major cause for human-made climate change (→ Glaciers and Polar Caps). Thus, nuclear meltdown illustrates how melting destabilizes infrastructure and binds human fate to nonhuman matter. There is no idea of totally controlling the environment.

Iron Casting

In smelting furnaces and foundries, humans have long melted ores and scrap metal to cast cultural artifacts, weapons, coins, and jewelry. Solid materials (iron ore and coal) are transformed into liquid matter, then cooled into new solid forms with profound social consequences. Molten iron poured into molds later forms the iron rails, the heavy machinery, and the bridges that fueled the Industrial Revolution. In this sense, the evolution of casting has parallels with the spread of infrastructure, as this was initially connected to railroad networks providing a super- and an infrastructure (Zitat Infrastrukturtheorien).

The invention—or better exploration—of iron casting is also tightly connected to colonial expansion, imposing foreign infrastructures on colonized regions and therefore enforcing new realities, restructuring land, and exerting power ⁶.

Plastiglomerates

The invention of thermoplastics—a set of plastic polymers that can be (re)shaped with the use of heat—enabled a new era of production of long-lasting, lightweight, and especially cheap goods. While Injection Moulding, the process of melting plastics into a desired shape, is the most common in large production, 3D printing also takes advantage of melting plastics on a smaller scale. One obvious consequence of the overproduction of plastic material is plastic waste: bottles, bags, packaging, and all sorts of trash ending up in the oceans, forming micro-plastics with devastating environmental harm (→ Glaciers and Polar Caps). Beyond these well-researched concerns, the thermoplastic characteristics of such material have also led to unintentional, non-human melting processes.

On a remote beach in Hawai’i, stones, coals, and ocean plastic converged to create a new geological hybrid: the Plastiglomerate. This odd material, first reported in 2012, is formed when discarded plastic debris melts and fuses with sand, rock, and organic detritus. In a bonfire’s heat, polypropylene ropes, bottle caps, and other plastic trash liquefy and seep into the structure of basalt stones or agglutinate with beach sand, later solidifying into a hard conglomerate of plastic and mineral. “[A]n indurated, multi-composite material made hard by agglutination of rock and molten plastic” ⁷.

Geologist Patricia Corcoran and artist Kelly Jazvac coined the term “Plastiglomerate” to describe these “indurated, multi-composite” stones composed of molten plastic and natural sediments. This phenomenon is interesting in that it shows a material agency that creates long-lasting traces of human interaction, without directly being made or intended by humans—but by the material itself.

(It exemplifies what Bennett would call the “vibrant matter” of pollution—plastic waste proving unexpectedly active, gluing together disparate materials. The resulting object has a kind of thing-power ⁸. Interestingly, the samples that were found made their way into art galleries and museums as a kind of ready-mades (Zitat e-flux Plastiglomerates), entering observation in cultural discourses. This by itself creates an alienation and distance from the exhibited, yet it demonstrates a certain fascination for traces of our own existence.)

Refining Gold

In Swiss Psychotropic Gold, melting is far more than just a technical step in gold refining—it becomes a metaphor for erasing, transforming, and neutralizing the metal’s violent origins.
The artist duo knowbotiq highlights in its research how Switzerland has a crucial role in commodity trade where “currently, more than 50 percent of the global gold is refined in Switzerland,” ⁹ and how its refining industries erase the problematic or exploitative histories of the metal’s journey:

“Switzerland has fashioned itself as a political and economic hotspot for neutralizing the origin of gold. Gold is quasi-alchemically cleaned of its violent and physical history and transformed into an ephemeral symbol of power, status, and purity—into condensed wealth.” ¹⁰

Historically, Switzerland traded and refined up to 75% of South African gold in the 1970s, effectively supporting the Apartheid regime’s economic survival ¹¹. In these refineries, “the moment when gold loses its stable form” becomes a point of systematic erasure, dissolving “any trace of colonial and postcolonial entanglements” ¹² through what has been called a “quasi-alchemical process.” The process of melting, which at first appears as purely physical re-shaping, becomes an act of power by relabeling the gold as pure and clean, therefore hiding its oppressive and violent origin. Following a material that is “psychotropically active, but physically, aesthetically, and morally silent” ¹³ highlights how infrastructure can hide or mask broader social, economic, and environmental impacts.

This dynamic resonates with Gabriele Schabacher’s perspective on infrastructural processes as an “ensemble of the practices of ‘purification’ that creates the separate spheres of human and non-human beings.” ¹⁴ A product that was previously directly connected to its extraction by human labor is “cleaned” and abstracted to become an artificial asset and symbol for wealth. In this case, melting does not only re-shape the material itself, but also the culture surrounding it.

Electronic Circuits

Soldering, a process that relies on carefully controlled melting points, is essential to making electronic components reliable and stable. When solder (often a tin-based alloy) is heated just beyond its melting point, it fuses circuit elements onto a board, forming tiny conductive bridges. This acts as the invisible backbone of digital and physical infrastructure, connecting everything from smartphones to large-scale industrial controllers.

Yet even at these micro-scales, melting is a powerful agent. The creation of each circuit board—whether in a factory for consumer electronics or in specialized aerospace labs—hinges on this deliberate liquefaction of solder, forging microscopic connections that collectively enable massive computational networks (→ Data Centers). In line with certain Scale Theories, this highlights how seemingly “small” processes, like micro-soldering, are integral to large global infrastructures. A solder joint failing (i.e., partial micro-meltdown) can bring entire systems to a standstill.

Furthermore, electronic circuits commonly employ precious metals such as gold—albeit in tiny quantities—for reliable conductivity. This practice directly intersects with processes of gold refining (→ Refining Gold). Once gold is melted and purified, it can be turned into extremely thin coatings for circuit connectors and pins. In this sense, the refined metals become an essential, if nearly invisible, part of an ever-expanding digital infrastructure. The movement from raw ore to molten gold, from bars to circuit boards, underscores a cyclical transformation shaped by economic interests, material sciences, and global supply chains.

Data Centers

Data Centers are the infrastructural backbone of our technology-driven and cloud-based present. Contrary to what terminologies like cloud-based or virtual machines might suggest, all forms of computing are inherently physical processes, which consume energy, perform calculations, and, as a result, produce heat (→ Electronic Circuits). These massive server facilities—often located in rural areas—can contain tens of thousands of servers to store, manage, and process large amounts of data. When Amazon offered unused server capacities as a service in 2006, the industry of cloud computing was born. It was the first accelerator for an infrastructure of data centers, and nowadays AWS (Amazon Web Services) is the leading cloud provider with 1.4 million servers, powering a significant part of the internet.
By the time OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2021, the commercialization of AI applications—and a venture-capital-funded race to Artificial General Intelligence—made the availability of large computing infrastructure accelerate even more.

This immense scaling of computation also brings the need for a large infrastructure to prevent overheating. If components overheat, they can melt or degrade, leading to catastrophic failures (→ Nuclear meltdown). Consequently, cooling systems are almost equally important and energy-hungry as the computation itself: “In a typical [Data Center] IT equipment (e.g., servers) are the biggest electricity consumers accounting for around 44% of total electricity use and are followed by the cooling system of 40%.” ¹⁵ With fossil fuels still making up around 60% of the energy source in the United States in 2023, this energy consumption directly contributes to global warming (→ Glaciers and Polar Caps).

Intriguingly, in data workflows, there is also the concept of melt() in certain programming languages and data manipulation libraries, which “melt” data from a wide format to a long format—another metaphorical nod to how transformation can be seen as a melting or reshaping process, even at the level of data analytics. Though purely logical, these transformations connect to the underlying physical processes that keep servers cooled and powered, preventing literal meltdown.

Glaciers and Polar Caps

Beyond the deliberate melting of ores and plastics, there is a planetary-scale melting in play. Under the pressures of globalized capitalism, heavy fossil-fuel usage, and infrastructural expansion, vast quantities of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases have been emitted into the atmosphere. One of the most visible and dramatic consequences is the melting of glaciers and polar ice caps. Glaciers, which have existed for millennia, are now shrinking at accelerated rates, and this has no clear defined path of linear consequences. Melting in the Arctic and Antarctic is subject to complex feedback loops—ice reflects solar radiation, but open water absorbs it, leading to faster warming of oceans, which in turn speeds up the melting. Similar to the reference of (→ Plasiglomerates) this rebellious action of matter can be seen as a form of vibrant matter, where polar ice interacts with climatic forces across multiple timescales in chaotic behavior that is non-predictable.

As the ice recedes, new shipping lanes open in the Arctic, further enabling resource extraction and global trade, thus tightening the loop between infrastructure and environmental change. Ultimately, the ownership of action slips into the realm of the nonhuman: the physical properties of ice, water, and greenhouse gases set the stage for potential tipping points. In many ways, the melting of glaciers and polar caps call for infrastructural changes, or else enforcing infrastructural changes in the long run.

↩
Infr. Th. S. 38 ↩
Paul Edwards S. 12 ↩
Schabacher, G. (2022). Infrastruktur-Arbeit: Kulturtechniken und Zeitlichkeit der Erhaltung. In Infrastrukturen (p. 32). ↩
Ibid. ↩
Infr.th. p. 33 ↩
Corcoran, P. L., Moore, C. J., & Jazvac, K. (2013). An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future rock record. e-flux Journal, (46). ↩
Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press. (Referenced again for emphasis) ↩
Bandi, N., Jain, R., & knowbotiq (Eds.). (2017). Swiss Psychotropic Gold. Christoph Merian Verlag. (p. 451–675) ↩
Ibid., p. 460. ↩
Ibid., p. 496. ↩
Ibid., p. 586. ↩
Ibid., p. 632–660. ↩
Schabacher, G. (2022). Infrastruktur-Arbeit: Kulturtechniken und Zeitlichkeit der Erhaltung. (p. 34). ↩
Xiaolei Yuan, Yumin Liang, Xinyi Hu, Yizhe Xu, Yongbao Chen, Risto Kosonen,
Waste heat recoveries in data centers: A review, 2023, link ↩

Melting and Infrastructure: Indexing a deep entanglement