Worklab-(Un)sustainable?!
Sep 21-24, 2022
Table of Contents
¶> WORKLAB ABSTRACT
Research shows that as early as 2025, the IT industry will use up to 20% of the world’s energy, which corresponds to around 5.5% of Co2 emissions. Driven by the constant digitization of all areas of life, the Internet of Things and living habits that are increasingly hungry for energy and data, the energy consumption of the Internet is increasing rapidly. Our planet is experiencing unprecedented climate change, and the internet is both part of the problem and part of the solution. From websites to training artificial intelligence, creating crypto-art or mining cryptocurrencies, the Internet consumes large amounts of electricity in data centers, telecommunication networks and on our devices such as laptops and smartphones. Can digital technologies such as blockchain or machine learning even help us to avert climate change, ensure transparency in the fight against corruption and strengthen democratic action? How can we design approaches for a future worth living in - also with the help of sustainable infrastructures and new technologies? With the annual program for 2022, we want to explore ecological, systemic approaches and questions about diversity and sustainability in terms of technology and digitization. Following a proven method, we exploit the creative potential of mur.at by creating process-oriented collective work situations. Within the framework of worklabs and artist residencies, we bring together technophile creatives and critical spirits of social digitization.
Research shows that as early as 2025, the IT industry will use up to 20% of the world’s energy, which corresponds to around 5.5% of Co2 emissions. Driven by the constant digitization of all areas of life, the Internet of Things and living habits that are increasingly hungry for energy and data, the energy consumption of the Internet is increasing rapidly. Our planet is experiencing unprecedented climate change, and the internet is both part of the problem and part of the solution. From websites to training artificial intelligence, creating crypto-art or mining cryptocurrencies, the Internet consumes large amounts of electricity in data centers, telecommunication networks and on our devices such as laptops and smartphones. Can digital technologies such as blockchain or machine learning even help us to avert climate change, ensure transparency in the fight against corruption and strengthen democratic action? How can we design approaches for a future worth living in - also with the help of sustainable infrastructures and new technologies? With the annual program for 2022, we want to explore ecological, systemic approaches and questions about diversity and sustainability in terms of technology and digitization. Following a proven method, we exploit the creative potential of mur.at by creating process-oriented collective work situations. Within the framework of worklabs and artist residencies, we bring together technophile creatives and critical spirits of social digitization.
¶> PARTICIPANTS
César Escudero Andaluz (ES/AT)
César Escudero Andaluz is an artist focused on digital culture, interface criticism and their social and political effects. César’s research addresses issues such as dataveillance, algorithm governance, tactical interface and critical mining. His practices combine interfaces, electronics, images, interactive installations robotics with critical design, media archaeology and digital humanities.
Jessica Renfro (US/GER)
I create immersive participatory experiences using original music, narration, visual images and digital interactive techniques. My work explores the concept of the collective and what emerges when participants co-author new mythologies from a disidentified state. These social simulations use game engines (like Godot) and web platforms (like Django and Heroku) to explore alternative ways of being and being together.
Klimentina Li (AT)
Summarised in one word Klimentina’s primary focus lies on interaction. Her work ranges from stage-based concepts through audio-visual compositions to educational forms of social experiments. Klimentina’s narratives are researching on the common grounds of those fields while questioning the already known. Her background in theatre and pedagogy inspires her to observe new strategies for empirical communication and immersive experiences.
Marloes de Valk (NL)
Marloes de Valk is a software artist and writer in the post-despair stage of coping with the threat of global warming and being spied on by the devices surrounding her. Surprised by the obsessive dedication with which we, even post-Snowden, share intimate details about ourselves to an often not too clearly defined group of others, astounded by the deafening noise we generate while socializing with the technology around us, she is looking to better understand why.
She is a PhD researcher at the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at London South Bank University, in collaboration with The Photographer's Gallery, looking into the material and social impact of the networked image on the climate crisis, with special attention to the entanglements between greenwashing - the misdirection of attention and efforts in tackling the crisis - and the increasing energy and resource consumption associated with the circulation of networked images. Typical of those in the post-despair stage, she experiments with sustainable ways of publishing her findings.
Francesco Nordio (IT)
The most urgent and important goal of culture is to prevent humanity from destroying itself. In order to accomplish this goal, culture has to fight every form of inequality, exploitation and devastation. It is necessary for culture to help people live autonomously and think critically. For these reasons, culture inevitably has great responsibilities in political and social fields. Today, the structure of culture is inadequate; it must be critically revised and improved. My position as an artist is defined by my ability to help this transition form one cultural paradigm to another. I announce myself as an artist but my main focus is not in producing artworks. Conversely, I’m interested in producing cultural operations which act with and on ideology and reality, where their value is measured in their effectiveness to elaborate thought. This fundamental parameter of cultural operations is never defined or outlined by verbal rules or a canonized structure. To respect intelligence as a Common my works are not my works are not protected by copyright.
Nejc Trampuž (SLO)
Trampuž is a photographer and intermedia artist - he often presents social, technological and environmental criticism in form of interactive installations and collages. They explore the boundary conditions of the photographic medium, go beyond it and move into other media and approaches. 2016 he received the ALUO Award for his master's thesis entitled „Error as a Transformative Method“ and the PS37 Award of the Simulaker Gallery. Several solo and group exhibitions and festivals amongst others +MSUM, MAO, Cirkulacija2, Simulaker, Alkatraz, City Gallery Nova Gorica, Layer House - street gallery Kranj, DLUM, Animateka, etc. He received an honorable mention for his solo exhibition at OFF_Festival in Bratislava.
Davide Bevilacqua (IT/AT)
I am a media artist and a curator interested on one side in network infrastructures and technological activism, and on the other in curatorial and artistic research about the framework condition in which artistic practice is presented and transmitted to the audience. My current topics of research are the internet sustainability and environmental impact of technologies, digital greenwashing practices and platform capitalism.
I am part of the artist collective qujOchÖ, I collaborate with the sound art gallery bb15, and I work with servus.at, association dealing with open source internet infrastructure and online art and culture. I organize the community festival AMRO Art Meets Radical Openness.
César Escudero Andaluz (ES/AT)
César Escudero Andaluz is an artist focused on digital culture, interface criticism and their social and political effects. César’s research addresses issues such as dataveillance, algorithm governance, tactical interface and critical mining. His practices combine interfaces, electronics, images, interactive installations robotics with critical design, media archaeology and digital humanities.
Jessica Renfro (US/GER)
I create immersive participatory experiences using original music, narration, visual images and digital interactive techniques. My work explores the concept of the collective and what emerges when participants co-author new mythologies from a disidentified state. These social simulations use game engines (like Godot) and web platforms (like Django and Heroku) to explore alternative ways of being and being together.
Klimentina Li (AT)
Summarised in one word Klimentina’s primary focus lies on interaction. Her work ranges from stage-based concepts through audio-visual compositions to educational forms of social experiments. Klimentina’s narratives are researching on the common grounds of those fields while questioning the already known. Her background in theatre and pedagogy inspires her to observe new strategies for empirical communication and immersive experiences.
Marloes de Valk (NL)
Marloes de Valk is a software artist and writer in the post-despair stage of coping with the threat of global warming and being spied on by the devices surrounding her. Surprised by the obsessive dedication with which we, even post-Snowden, share intimate details about ourselves to an often not too clearly defined group of others, astounded by the deafening noise we generate while socializing with the technology around us, she is looking to better understand why.
She is a PhD researcher at the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at London South Bank University, in collaboration with The Photographer's Gallery, looking into the material and social impact of the networked image on the climate crisis, with special attention to the entanglements between greenwashing - the misdirection of attention and efforts in tackling the crisis - and the increasing energy and resource consumption associated with the circulation of networked images. Typical of those in the post-despair stage, she experiments with sustainable ways of publishing her findings.
Francesco Nordio (IT)
The most urgent and important goal of culture is to prevent humanity from destroying itself. In order to accomplish this goal, culture has to fight every form of inequality, exploitation and devastation. It is necessary for culture to help people live autonomously and think critically. For these reasons, culture inevitably has great responsibilities in political and social fields. Today, the structure of culture is inadequate; it must be critically revised and improved. My position as an artist is defined by my ability to help this transition form one cultural paradigm to another. I announce myself as an artist but my main focus is not in producing artworks. Conversely, I’m interested in producing cultural operations which act with and on ideology and reality, where their value is measured in their effectiveness to elaborate thought. This fundamental parameter of cultural operations is never defined or outlined by verbal rules or a canonized structure. To respect intelligence as a Common my works are not my works are not protected by copyright.
Nejc Trampuž (SLO)
Trampuž is a photographer and intermedia artist - he often presents social, technological and environmental criticism in form of interactive installations and collages. They explore the boundary conditions of the photographic medium, go beyond it and move into other media and approaches. 2016 he received the ALUO Award for his master's thesis entitled „Error as a Transformative Method“ and the PS37 Award of the Simulaker Gallery. Several solo and group exhibitions and festivals amongst others +MSUM, MAO, Cirkulacija2, Simulaker, Alkatraz, City Gallery Nova Gorica, Layer House - street gallery Kranj, DLUM, Animateka, etc. He received an honorable mention for his solo exhibition at OFF_Festival in Bratislava.
Davide Bevilacqua (IT/AT)
I am a media artist and a curator interested on one side in network infrastructures and technological activism, and on the other in curatorial and artistic research about the framework condition in which artistic practice is presented and transmitted to the audience. My current topics of research are the internet sustainability and environmental impact of technologies, digital greenwashing practices and platform capitalism.
I am part of the artist collective qujOchÖ, I collaborate with the sound art gallery bb15, and I work with servus.at, association dealing with open source internet infrastructure and online art and culture. I organize the community festival AMRO Art Meets Radical Openness.
¶> TOOLS WE USE
- mur.at-Toolset https://mur.at/tool/ https://wiki.mur.at/Dienste
- Nextcloud Wolke: https://www.wolke.mur.at
- Pads for collaborative writing: https://etherpad.mur.at
- Whiteboard: https://wbo.dev.mur.at/
- BBB/Jitsi for Videochat: https://www.wolke.mur.at , https://jitsi.mur.at
¶> TIMELINE
Wednesday Sep 21, 2022
Thursday, Sep 22, 2022
Friday Sep 23, 2022
Saturday Sep 24, 2022
Sunday Sep 25, 2022 (No official program)
Wednesday Sep 21, 2022
- During the day: Artists arrival,
- 1800: relaxed get-together & dinner at KIG
- 1930: online talk by Marloes de Valk
- Afterwards discussion and outlook on the next days
Thursday, Sep 22, 2022
- 1000: morning session at mur.at project room, Davide Bevilaqua introducing servus.at and self-hosting as a temporary local sharing platform.
- 1300: lunch jause at KIG
- 1400: César Escudero Andaluz on Guerrilla NFT, Blockchain and his residency project Metamanteros
- 1600: Departure to Steirischer Herbst opening to bring Metamantero into the public space
- 1900: Dinner at Brandhof
Friday Sep 23, 2022
- 1000: Morning session at KIG: Klimentina Li: Digital Humanism in Building Interfaces of the Future
- 1300: Lunch jause at KIG
- 1400: Afternoon session at KIG: Jessica Renfro: Designing sustainable (sur)realities: Dream City and collective creativity
- 1900: Dinner at GINKO
Saturday Sep 24, 2022
- 1000: Morning session at KIG: Nejc Trampuž: SavingTheWorld.exe / 20XX
- 1300: Lunch jause at KIG
- 1400: Afternoon session at KIG: Davide Bevilaqua: Greenwashing & Eco-pornography
- 1630: Wrap up
- 1900: Dinner at Scherbe
Sunday Sep 25, 2022 (No official program)
- 1030: Clean up at KIG
- Afterwards: Return materials to mur.at office
- All day: Individual departures of guests
¶> WORKLAB NOTES
¶Wed. Sep. 21, 2022
¶ Marloes de Valk - Refusing the Burden of Computation (online talk)
Full Title: Refusing the Burden of Computation
Thinking in Pictures at Edge Computing and Sustainable ICT
This paper asks what we can learn from edge computing about the commit-ment of Big Tech to diminish its ecological footprint. The text starts with the COVID-19 pandemic being framed as opportunity for more sustainability and unpacks edge computing as one of the elements proposed as a solution, next to working from home. It interrogates the discourse behind these solutions, one of the technological fixes that allow 'business as usual' to continue, undisturbed by government regulations, outsourcing the burden of environmental responsibility to citizens.
published in: APRJA Volume 10, Issue 1, 2021ISSN 2245-7755CC license: ‘Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike’.
Link: https://aprja.net//article/view/128184/174364
Focusing Overconsumption prevents criticism towards Overproduction
Focus on the hi-tech consumer in the role of 'litterbug', placing blame on consumers to divert attention from the consumption of producers
Cloud calculation is too heavy - if SaaS is moving away from the end devices, with Edge Computing computation and its cost is again shifting to periphery. In video call this is because the needs is for HQ image, smooth image that have to be processed and encoded by computing.
5G has only 10% efficiency as opposed to 2G which was closer to 60%
At some point will be needed AI Accelerator in edge computing devices; image of "Datacenter in a box", IoT plans based on prediction.
Does Corporate sustainability mean outsource the computation to the others?
Google * Claims to bethe greeenest, but claims are twofold:
using renewable energy but stopped R&D because won't be winning against coal.
basically now partnering with cities and buying off all the energy from new windmillplants (eg delft?)
microsoft does the same.
Subsidies for green energy are being used to provide it to big tech (using public money)
moreover this is only happening with new datacenters.
Image of google * generates the believe in progress and sustainable tech, but 84% of google revenues come from advertisement .
Google claims to "disrupt the waste economy"
maximiying the sources
source says it is mostly about serverschrànke
Google uses custom built hardware running AI at the edge.
is this unique to google?
Green Computing (1992) -> Green ICT (2007) -> Sustainable ICT
1) GC sustainability of the devices themselves
2) GIT -> Garner 2% paper
ICT is not anymore the problem, but it is proposed as the solution.
Greening * Provide smart solutions *
servers, dematerialization
3) also claiming to address societal and other issues
Amazon 2014 * stops investments right after 2016, when prices come
within the logic of Green Growth criticism / natural capitalism, ecological crisis is seen as a market failure
'Sustainable ICT' has become equivalent to lowering the electricity bill
companies emphasize 'profit' and 'savings' as motivation for consuming less,
This is used also to boost corporate image as 'green'
Example: Keep america beautiful campaign "people start pollution, people can stop it" -> indian person impersonated by an italian actor.
"a better environments starts with yourself" in NL
QUESTION: do you see already another greenwashing twist with the war-induced increase in energy prices?
QUESTION: running alternative infrastructure -> how much are and can we disengage with the aesthetics of major services?
- not aiming for the same aestherics * lofi
- on the filesize * for videos creates ... small file media * Dr. Laura U. Marks
Discussion in Utrecht: how can we lower our impact?
Geeral discourse: demand more money for the development of these tools.
there should be more money for that!
screenless office brendan howeless?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3LwrUpFVPI
hypermodernism: is the ppl who is going to pay for the next move of capitalism
Full Title: Refusing the Burden of Computation
Thinking in Pictures at Edge Computing and Sustainable ICT
This paper asks what we can learn from edge computing about the commit-ment of Big Tech to diminish its ecological footprint. The text starts with the COVID-19 pandemic being framed as opportunity for more sustainability and unpacks edge computing as one of the elements proposed as a solution, next to working from home. It interrogates the discourse behind these solutions, one of the technological fixes that allow 'business as usual' to continue, undisturbed by government regulations, outsourcing the burden of environmental responsibility to citizens.
published in: APRJA Volume 10, Issue 1, 2021ISSN 2245-7755CC license: ‘Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike’.
Link: https://aprja.net//article/view/128184/174364
Focusing Overconsumption prevents criticism towards Overproduction
Focus on the hi-tech consumer in the role of 'litterbug', placing blame on consumers to divert attention from the consumption of producers
Cloud calculation is too heavy - if SaaS is moving away from the end devices, with Edge Computing computation and its cost is again shifting to periphery. In video call this is because the needs is for HQ image, smooth image that have to be processed and encoded by computing.
5G has only 10% efficiency as opposed to 2G which was closer to 60%
At some point will be needed AI Accelerator in edge computing devices; image of "Datacenter in a box", IoT plans based on prediction.
Does Corporate sustainability mean outsource the computation to the others?
Google * Claims to bethe greeenest, but claims are twofold:
using renewable energy but stopped R&D because won't be winning against coal.
basically now partnering with cities and buying off all the energy from new windmillplants (eg delft?)
microsoft does the same.
Subsidies for green energy are being used to provide it to big tech (using public money)
moreover this is only happening with new datacenters.
Image of google * generates the believe in progress and sustainable tech, but 84% of google revenues come from advertisement .
Google claims to "disrupt the waste economy"
maximiying the sources
source says it is mostly about serverschrànke
Google uses custom built hardware running AI at the edge.
is this unique to google?
Green Computing (1992) -> Green ICT (2007) -> Sustainable ICT
1) GC sustainability of the devices themselves
2) GIT -> Garner 2% paper
ICT is not anymore the problem, but it is proposed as the solution.
Greening * Provide smart solutions *
servers, dematerialization
3) also claiming to address societal and other issues
Amazon 2014 * stops investments right after 2016, when prices come
within the logic of Green Growth criticism / natural capitalism, ecological crisis is seen as a market failure
'Sustainable ICT' has become equivalent to lowering the electricity bill
companies emphasize 'profit' and 'savings' as motivation for consuming less,
This is used also to boost corporate image as 'green'
Example: Keep america beautiful campaign "people start pollution, people can stop it" -> indian person impersonated by an italian actor.
"a better environments starts with yourself" in NL
QUESTION: do you see already another greenwashing twist with the war-induced increase in energy prices?
QUESTION: running alternative infrastructure -> how much are and can we disengage with the aesthetics of major services?
- not aiming for the same aestherics * lofi
- on the filesize * for videos creates ... small file media * Dr. Laura U. Marks
Discussion in Utrecht: how can we lower our impact?
Geeral discourse: demand more money for the development of these tools.
there should be more money for that!
screenless office brendan howeless?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3LwrUpFVPI
hypermodernism: is the ppl who is going to pay for the next move of capitalism
¶ Davide Bevilacqua ~ challenging own workflows ~
mur.at and servus.at presentation, publications, server room
Thinking about sustainability within the digital realm, realizing how energy demanding, but also socially impactant are contemporary digital platforms, one might wonder how to start addressing these topics.
From the point of view of servus.at and mur.at, two sister associations dealing with self-hosting internet infrastructure, the quest for sustainability is often related to the independence from commercial platforms on the one side, and the labor and care required by running an own datacenter subsidised by membership fees and from arts&culture fundings.
"There is an elephant in the room". It is the growing dependency from cultural producers and proprietary, "free" online services. In the elephant letter https://constantvzw.org/wefts/elephant.en.html the radical media colletive Constant (BE) calls for institutional responsibility and invites everyone for a a more aware relationship with the used technologies.
Given that we agree on that, what is the next steps?
How can an individual, or even worse a group/collective/association take concrete steps to free itself from extractive platforms? In fact, it is easier to say it that to do it. And moreover: it's hard to migrate everything at once - the multi-purposed, digital suite platform are built with the intention of finding everything you need in the same place. The mainstream internet is moving strongly in that direction. Interesting to note is the discourse around super-apps, examples of platforms "fitting every need", particularly established in Asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-app.
The horrific scenario of centralization of communication networks, individual data, but also financial and social information in only one service means that who has the keys can potentially access an extremely large amount of sensitive data - especially scary seeing the deep entanglements between governamental bodies and digital corporations. Nevertheless, adopting alternative, maybe self-hosted tools in this context does not necessarily require the luddist renounce to the comfort offered by contemporary software platforms. Yet, a specific shift in perspective is necessary, probably the most difficult one: observing the situatedness of the platform and accepting hence that there is not one tool that fits all needs.
In the workshops and discussions offered with Onur Olgaç, one of the two system admins at servus.at, in various events like the NØ SCHOOL NEVERS 2022 https://noschoolnevers.com/ or at at das weisse haus Vienna https://dasweissehaus.at/ we offer practical hints on how to start the journey in the alternatives. We try to keep in mind that each one might have a different workflow and also hope to break up the culture of elitism of sys admins and long time linux users - whose radical approach might generate the opposite result in pushing interested people away.
If your whole life is on one platform than it means a radical change, so it might mean seeing it as a step by step trying out alternatives. One approach is to discuss with the group/organisation and isolate "the weakest point" of the workflow, the step that is not very much used/crucial to your organization's workflow. A calendar sync which is not connected with other services could be an example to start with. Migrate this first and, once used to the change, repeat the conversation and continue with the next step of migration. Doing it one step at the time is crucial for the stability of the process, making shure that whoever is involved understand the motivations or at least agrees with the decision of the group.
The discussion on workflows makes also visible that not everything can be easily digitalized. Software tools force you some times in pre-structured functional workflows. For example Post-its -> transformation in digital notes is difficult & non satisfactory. Ambiguity & silences are also important communication vehicles in group dynamics, and are often lost if communication goes online. A healthy approach could read "post-media" in the sense of consciously adopting suitable tools and channels fulfilling the need of the specific situation. Not everything has to be high-tech to work well.
On the other hand, it is also important to demistify the complexity of cloud technology. In the workshop in Summer, Onur Olgaç turned an old DELL laptop into an experimental server to demonstrate how old devices might be still very useful in various contexts, especially working locally.
On Adelio (A Dell), Onur installed a local filebrowser that can turn out particolarly handy as a platform to exhange data in the network reacheable by one router. -> https://filebrowser.org/installation
The install process, which touches various components of the internet and therefore offers space to discuss their role, was documented in the form of a web2print fanzine available here: http://davidebevilacqua.com/challenge-workflows/
Beyond mur.at and servus.at there are many projects and communities practicing self hosting. Self hosting is a practice that is often based on
In pursuit of an intersectional, feminist, and ecological impetus, ‘A Transversal Network of Feminist Servers’ (ATNOFS) is a collaborative project that aims to explore alternative engagements with digital tools and platforms. ATNOFS seeks to develop new and inventive interactions between communities across our continent, bringing together existing efforts in the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Romania and Greece to create a network of solidarity addressing local contingencies through collective ventures. https://culturalfoundation.eu/stories/cosround4_atnofs
------------------
see also
Notes on Autonomy, a hypergenerated webscraping artist webzine by Format C
Made at mur.at residency 2021.
This is a WIP, thanks for bearing with us. :)
https://noa.mur.at/ -> 503 Service Unavailable :)
-------------------
uberspace - a space for resistance: https://uberspace.de/en/
Former community-run infrastructure projects gone commercial: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Server (Vienna)
Patents? : ( Hate them!
Extending the Discussion ON LICENSES, OWNERSHIP
The use of alternative tools is finally also related to the ideologies of ownership behind them. Adopting Open Source or Creative Commons often intersects with the discussion on monetization of one's efforts - which at times hingers the potential of a patent-less world. In fact, a common association is the one of the "donation", meaning that one would work for free. The discussion continues stating the difficulty of dealing with the balance between open source and financial developments?
One approach tries to see how Public funds could inform research's output. The model Public Money / Public Code suggests that such results shoudl be made available as open source - the risk is that they are then adopted by a company and made profitable, but this is anyway something that happens with education and knowledge; the system of knowledge distribution is more interconnected. During COVID the interaction between private and public research and knowledge became very visible in the development of vaccines from Farmaceutical companies.
In the end Licenses are powerful tools to control the accessability and usage of a work. In the field of arts there is much discussion on that, also with interesting experiments of alternative&new licenses.
Artlicense Constant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Art_License
Mozilla Public License 2.0 (-> what is the difference by the Creative Common Licenses?)
Paolo Cirio produced vairous artworks dealing with the social impact of technological Patents, such as: https://paolocirio.net/work/sociality/
tist collective RYBN.ORG also made an exhibition about patents at Drugo More: http://drugo-more.hr/en/rybn-org/
Thu. Sep 22, 2022
mur.at and servus.at presentation, publications, server room
Thinking about sustainability within the digital realm, realizing how energy demanding, but also socially impactant are contemporary digital platforms, one might wonder how to start addressing these topics.
From the point of view of servus.at and mur.at, two sister associations dealing with self-hosting internet infrastructure, the quest for sustainability is often related to the independence from commercial platforms on the one side, and the labor and care required by running an own datacenter subsidised by membership fees and from arts&culture fundings.
"There is an elephant in the room". It is the growing dependency from cultural producers and proprietary, "free" online services. In the elephant letter https://constantvzw.org/wefts/elephant.en.html the radical media colletive Constant (BE) calls for institutional responsibility and invites everyone for a a more aware relationship with the used technologies.
Given that we agree on that, what is the next steps?
How can an individual, or even worse a group/collective/association take concrete steps to free itself from extractive platforms? In fact, it is easier to say it that to do it. And moreover: it's hard to migrate everything at once - the multi-purposed, digital suite platform are built with the intention of finding everything you need in the same place. The mainstream internet is moving strongly in that direction. Interesting to note is the discourse around super-apps, examples of platforms "fitting every need", particularly established in Asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-app.
The horrific scenario of centralization of communication networks, individual data, but also financial and social information in only one service means that who has the keys can potentially access an extremely large amount of sensitive data - especially scary seeing the deep entanglements between governamental bodies and digital corporations. Nevertheless, adopting alternative, maybe self-hosted tools in this context does not necessarily require the luddist renounce to the comfort offered by contemporary software platforms. Yet, a specific shift in perspective is necessary, probably the most difficult one: observing the situatedness of the platform and accepting hence that there is not one tool that fits all needs.
In the workshops and discussions offered with Onur Olgaç, one of the two system admins at servus.at, in various events like the NØ SCHOOL NEVERS 2022 https://noschoolnevers.com/ or at at das weisse haus Vienna https://dasweissehaus.at/ we offer practical hints on how to start the journey in the alternatives. We try to keep in mind that each one might have a different workflow and also hope to break up the culture of elitism of sys admins and long time linux users - whose radical approach might generate the opposite result in pushing interested people away.
If your whole life is on one platform than it means a radical change, so it might mean seeing it as a step by step trying out alternatives. One approach is to discuss with the group/organisation and isolate "the weakest point" of the workflow, the step that is not very much used/crucial to your organization's workflow. A calendar sync which is not connected with other services could be an example to start with. Migrate this first and, once used to the change, repeat the conversation and continue with the next step of migration. Doing it one step at the time is crucial for the stability of the process, making shure that whoever is involved understand the motivations or at least agrees with the decision of the group.
The discussion on workflows makes also visible that not everything can be easily digitalized. Software tools force you some times in pre-structured functional workflows. For example Post-its -> transformation in digital notes is difficult & non satisfactory. Ambiguity & silences are also important communication vehicles in group dynamics, and are often lost if communication goes online. A healthy approach could read "post-media" in the sense of consciously adopting suitable tools and channels fulfilling the need of the specific situation. Not everything has to be high-tech to work well.
On the other hand, it is also important to demistify the complexity of cloud technology. In the workshop in Summer, Onur Olgaç turned an old DELL laptop into an experimental server to demonstrate how old devices might be still very useful in various contexts, especially working locally.
On Adelio (A Dell), Onur installed a local filebrowser that can turn out particolarly handy as a platform to exhange data in the network reacheable by one router. -> https://filebrowser.org/installation
The install process, which touches various components of the internet and therefore offers space to discuss their role, was documented in the form of a web2print fanzine available here: http://davidebevilacqua.com/challenge-workflows/
Beyond mur.at and servus.at there are many projects and communities practicing self hosting. Self hosting is a practice that is often based on
In pursuit of an intersectional, feminist, and ecological impetus, ‘A Transversal Network of Feminist Servers’ (ATNOFS) is a collaborative project that aims to explore alternative engagements with digital tools and platforms. ATNOFS seeks to develop new and inventive interactions between communities across our continent, bringing together existing efforts in the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Romania and Greece to create a network of solidarity addressing local contingencies through collective ventures. https://culturalfoundation.eu/stories/cosround4_atnofs
------------------
see also
Notes on Autonomy, a hypergenerated webscraping artist webzine by Format C
Made at mur.at residency 2021.
This is a WIP, thanks for bearing with us. :)
https://noa.mur.at/ -> 503 Service Unavailable :)
-------------------
uberspace - a space for resistance: https://uberspace.de/en/
Former community-run infrastructure projects gone commercial: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Server (Vienna)
Patents? : ( Hate them!
Extending the Discussion ON LICENSES, OWNERSHIP
The use of alternative tools is finally also related to the ideologies of ownership behind them. Adopting Open Source or Creative Commons often intersects with the discussion on monetization of one's efforts - which at times hingers the potential of a patent-less world. In fact, a common association is the one of the "donation", meaning that one would work for free. The discussion continues stating the difficulty of dealing with the balance between open source and financial developments?
One approach tries to see how Public funds could inform research's output. The model Public Money / Public Code suggests that such results shoudl be made available as open source - the risk is that they are then adopted by a company and made profitable, but this is anyway something that happens with education and knowledge; the system of knowledge distribution is more interconnected. During COVID the interaction between private and public research and knowledge became very visible in the development of vaccines from Farmaceutical companies.
In the end Licenses are powerful tools to control the accessability and usage of a work. In the field of arts there is much discussion on that, also with interesting experiments of alternative&new licenses.
Artlicense Constant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Art_License
Mozilla Public License 2.0 (-> what is the difference by the Creative Common Licenses?)
- https://fossbytes.com/open-sources-license-type/
- https://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Art_License
- https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/ <--Mozilla Public License 2.0
- https://e2h.totalism.org/e2h.php?_=comrade-license
Paolo Cirio produced vairous artworks dealing with the social impact of technological Patents, such as: https://paolocirio.net/work/sociality/
tist collective RYBN.ORG also made an exhibition about patents at Drugo More: http://drugo-more.hr/en/rybn-org/
Thu. Sep 22, 2022
¶ César Escudero Andaluz - Guerrilla NFT
This is a Workshop addressed to those who have concerns with NFTs, blockchain, the metaverse, media Art, digital culture, critical economy and hacktivism. Theoretically, it introduces concepts, examples, art-works and books in order to understand NFTs and Blockchain world in contemporary art. Practically this workshop is included in the ongoing art project Metamanteros, digital activist in Web3 and it proposes; a) to collaborate in a digital narrative, by creating an avatar able to sell pirate NFT in Second Life; b) to collaborate in a real life performance by selling pirated NFT in public spaces. The participant will get all the information to start a new “business”. No prior knowledge required. Please bring your computer and blanket.
“Manteros” (blanketmen) is the term used to refer to people who sell counterfeit goods on the street, such as music CDs, DVDs, video games, clothes, watches, etc. Manteros are migrants from countries such as Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, usually forced by mafias to work. They sell their products on the street on a blanket and pick up their goods as fast as they can and flee when they notice the police presence. The project, Metamateros consists in the creation of 3D avatars, to act as digital migrants capable to travel anonymously from metaverse to metaverse, (Mozilla hub, Decentraland, Sandbox, cryptovortex or Zuckerberg’s future metaverse) trading data and digital assets.
The Metamanteros avatars are provided with a blanket that is spread out on the floor, where they display digital products like clothes, bags, music or images, all of them digital fakes and copies, but also their manuals, because each Metamatero will includes manuals describing: a) Techniques for downloading/hacking digital assets, from Screenshots, NFTbay and web scraping; b) Strategies that help virtual migrations in different metaverses; c) a manual to report on DAOs, tokenisation and Web3, decentralisation and decarbonisation; d) tactics to sell products through parallel platforms such as e-bay, Willhaben, or barter IRL; e) a manual refusing to work for free and trade in virtual environments through unsustainable NFTs. (See crypto art WTF)…
The metamanteros have a function to collect their products and flee if the police appear. The avatars, manuals and digital products will be free download in a web.
Web3 instrumentalises the infrastructures and processes of digital artistic creation. Artistic value loses interest, as does the critical potential of digital artistic production and expression. Consequently, assets are the object of investor’s interest and the value of artworks is measured by their exchange, not by their artistic quality. (zeilinger)The artist loses dependency and profit from exhibiting the artwork, while at the same time distancing himself from the creative work linked to their production processes. Nevertheless, some artists have been able to analyse this situation, escape the clutches of artificial scarcity and speculative mercantilism and put forward creative proposals capable of criticising the medium itself and opening up questions.(Bria)
The precariousness of the artist can drive participation in these platforms and metaverses where ownership and tenure are totally illogical. Moreover, these platforms help to build the illusion that this is the future that all artists deserve. (Juarez)To avoid this situation it is important to prioritise collective cultural property over private property models, (Zeilinger) to think about the advantages of artistic production and research by addressing the blockchain as a medium and object of artistic practice. Now, more than ever, digital artists must develop tactics to resist the assimilation of creative practices into artificially scarce, autonomously controlled commodity circuits, and resist the large-scale financialisation of digital art itself. Generally speaking, contributing to these platforms is not a form of artistic liberation, but a return to regimes of control over creativity. (Zeilinger) It is important that activists and artists are treated as professionals whose work plays crucially important roles in exploring the socio-political, economic and aesthetic potentials of this technology.
FAKE NFT Certificate:
Notes from presentation talk:
WFT is NFT,
bitcoin genesis block (Raw Hex Version)
embedded information in blocks
in god we trust - in money we trust
Brangerbiz.com block number 30.000 visualizing informaiton in the blocks
monegraph.com 2014 verify digital assets , quantum considered the first created NFT
2018 Dapps (decentralized apps)
NFT gives you the possibility to trade eg pictures, make system reliable and proof to be hacked.
2020 Dapps overview plattform exploded in 2021
Moxie Marlinspike (Signal) created a marketspace to experiment and test functionalities
cryptopunk images from 2017 as collectibles
Martin Zellinger: Digital Art as ‘Monetised Graphics’: Enforcing
Intellectual Property on the Blockchain
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13347-016-0243-1.pdf
NFTs add layers of tech complexity and financial speculaiton to what already exists.
NFTs 2 Pirate
https://cryptopunks.app/cryptopunks/forsale
https://meebits.app/
https://opensea.io/
Practical part of the work session:
Bringing Metamanteros to public space:
This is a Workshop addressed to those who have concerns with NFTs, blockchain, the metaverse, media Art, digital culture, critical economy and hacktivism. Theoretically, it introduces concepts, examples, art-works and books in order to understand NFTs and Blockchain world in contemporary art. Practically this workshop is included in the ongoing art project Metamanteros, digital activist in Web3 and it proposes; a) to collaborate in a digital narrative, by creating an avatar able to sell pirate NFT in Second Life; b) to collaborate in a real life performance by selling pirated NFT in public spaces. The participant will get all the information to start a new “business”. No prior knowledge required. Please bring your computer and blanket.
- Link to performance video during opening of "Steirischer Herbst": https://vimeo.com/757618287
“Manteros” (blanketmen) is the term used to refer to people who sell counterfeit goods on the street, such as music CDs, DVDs, video games, clothes, watches, etc. Manteros are migrants from countries such as Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, usually forced by mafias to work. They sell their products on the street on a blanket and pick up their goods as fast as they can and flee when they notice the police presence. The project, Metamateros consists in the creation of 3D avatars, to act as digital migrants capable to travel anonymously from metaverse to metaverse, (Mozilla hub, Decentraland, Sandbox, cryptovortex or Zuckerberg’s future metaverse) trading data and digital assets.
The Metamanteros avatars are provided with a blanket that is spread out on the floor, where they display digital products like clothes, bags, music or images, all of them digital fakes and copies, but also their manuals, because each Metamatero will includes manuals describing: a) Techniques for downloading/hacking digital assets, from Screenshots, NFTbay and web scraping; b) Strategies that help virtual migrations in different metaverses; c) a manual to report on DAOs, tokenisation and Web3, decentralisation and decarbonisation; d) tactics to sell products through parallel platforms such as e-bay, Willhaben, or barter IRL; e) a manual refusing to work for free and trade in virtual environments through unsustainable NFTs. (See crypto art WTF)…
The metamanteros have a function to collect their products and flee if the police appear. The avatars, manuals and digital products will be free download in a web.
Web3 instrumentalises the infrastructures and processes of digital artistic creation. Artistic value loses interest, as does the critical potential of digital artistic production and expression. Consequently, assets are the object of investor’s interest and the value of artworks is measured by their exchange, not by their artistic quality. (zeilinger)The artist loses dependency and profit from exhibiting the artwork, while at the same time distancing himself from the creative work linked to their production processes. Nevertheless, some artists have been able to analyse this situation, escape the clutches of artificial scarcity and speculative mercantilism and put forward creative proposals capable of criticising the medium itself and opening up questions.(Bria)
The precariousness of the artist can drive participation in these platforms and metaverses where ownership and tenure are totally illogical. Moreover, these platforms help to build the illusion that this is the future that all artists deserve. (Juarez)To avoid this situation it is important to prioritise collective cultural property over private property models, (Zeilinger) to think about the advantages of artistic production and research by addressing the blockchain as a medium and object of artistic practice. Now, more than ever, digital artists must develop tactics to resist the assimilation of creative practices into artificially scarce, autonomously controlled commodity circuits, and resist the large-scale financialisation of digital art itself. Generally speaking, contributing to these platforms is not a form of artistic liberation, but a return to regimes of control over creativity. (Zeilinger) It is important that activists and artists are treated as professionals whose work plays crucially important roles in exploring the socio-political, economic and aesthetic potentials of this technology.
FAKE NFT Certificate:
Notes from presentation talk:
WFT is NFT,
bitcoin genesis block (Raw Hex Version)
embedded information in blocks
in god we trust - in money we trust
Brangerbiz.com block number 30.000 visualizing informaiton in the blocks
monegraph.com 2014 verify digital assets , quantum considered the first created NFT
2018 Dapps (decentralized apps)
NFT gives you the possibility to trade eg pictures, make system reliable and proof to be hacked.
2020 Dapps overview plattform exploded in 2021
Moxie Marlinspike (Signal) created a marketspace to experiment and test functionalities
cryptopunk images from 2017 as collectibles
Martin Zellinger: Digital Art as ‘Monetised Graphics’: Enforcing
Intellectual Property on the Blockchain
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13347-016-0243-1.pdf
NFTs add layers of tech complexity and financial speculaiton to what already exists.
NFTs 2 Pirate
https://cryptopunks.app/cryptopunks/forsale
https://meebits.app/
https://opensea.io/
Practical part of the work session:
- Browse through NFT market plattforms
- Pirate NFTs you like or get creative and produce your own gifs/Memes etc.
- Safe them on a floppy disk together with the fake NFT certificate
- DONE! Repeat the process if you like, pirate more NFTs, start a limited edition of floppies
Bringing Metamanteros to public space:
- The plan was to use the opening of the Steirischer Herbst in order to make a public performance of Metamanteros in the streets of Graz. Cesar brought blankets and we arranged the pirated floppies on them. During the opening walk in the downtown area from Hauptplatz (Main Square) to Joanneumviertel, Cesar setup his blanked and even sold a floppy to an interested customer.
- Link to performance video during opening of "Steirischer Herbst": https://vimeo.com/757618287
¶Fri. Sep. 23, 2022
¶ Klimentina Li - Beyond the click
Digital Humanism in Building the Interfaces of the Future
As a beginning I always like to as myself always, why? Why I am talking on this topic and what brought me here.
I begin to study interface cultures in an enviorment of people who are way more advanced than me, in a time when I was absolute unaware of the nature of technologies. It took me very long time to shook myself of from the the idea that this is too complicated to understand. To overcome my personal "technolophobia" which I can see many people experience. Therefore the purpose in most of my research and work is to simplify theories and process in a easy to understand way.
On the other hand, when working in the filed with profesionals with years of experience, it is easy to get to the same patterns of thoughts and unsee unusual connects or relations we might have with techonologies. In this sense I like to re-question the already known and find hopefully atypical conncetions.
The workshop "Beyond the Click" - begins with a re-definition of digital terms and metaphors that are in
everyday use but often ambiguous. The outcome of this process aim to motivate a way of thinking to envision models and design beyond the corporate standards and established forms. To position the actual human needs in the center of innovation, play and experiment with new possible solutions.
Further, the relationship between digital technologies and socio-political topics are unraveled. Considering existing legislations and human rights, we will go deeper into different layers of digital injustices imposed by digitalization. The participants will be encouraged to propose a set of digital human rights. In order to find ways to empower the single "user" and give tools to enable them to challenge the forced terms and conditions of digital devices. The discussion will invite the participants to jump in with personal standpoints and reinforce
joined outcome. They will be presented with several exercises that will navigate a process enhancing each individual interface invention.
The focus starts from the mere individual perspective in the framework of our virtual existence, evolving in the collective digital expenditure with a particular emphasis on provocative and non-binary ideas in the search for possible sustainable solutions. Act on unlearning of internalized digital structures and narratives.
Bibliography ~
technophobia
fear, dislike, or avoidance of new technology.
"technophobia is slowly being eroded in our industry"
What causes technophobia?
Factors that can contribute to technophobia include: General anxiety about the future. Mass hysteria about technology unknowns, such as the Y2K scare. Media that portrays “doomsday scenarios” where technology goes wrong or overpowers humans.
what are the emotional relationships with "the virtual"?
"Free to Learn" Dr Peter Gray
https://thedadtrain.com/dr-peter-gray/
Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism
https://dighum.ec.tuwien.ac.at/dighum-manifesto/
The Digital Humanism Initiative
To access the Zoom conference, click here (Password: 0dzqxqiy). All talks will also be streamed and recorded on the Digital Humanism YouTube channel.
https://tuwien.zoom.us/j/96389928143?pwd=UU5YRkNuRmdoWHV4MFBwMWRCcUErdz09#success
The vita activa of Hannah Arendt
http://www.f.waseda.jp/sidoli/Arendt_Vita_Activa.pdf
Piaget's Theory of Knowledge:
Piaget's theory is based on the idea that knowledge acquisition is a process of continuous self-construction. Knowledge is invented and re-invented as the child develops and interacts with their surrounding world (Driscoll, 1994).
https://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/genetic-epistemology/
Interaction Design Sketchbook
http://billverplank.com/CiiD/IDSketch.pdf
Frameworks for designing interactive products and systems.
Attention economy - screen based domination and the idea of selling your digital data, knowing about the value of it
The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism Nick Couldry, Ulises Mejias
Just about any social need is now met with an opportunity to "connect" through digital means. But this convenience is not free--it is purchased with vast amounts of personal data transferred through shadowy backchannels to corporations using it to generate profit.The Costs of Connectionuncovers this process, this "data colonialism," and its designs for controlling our lives--our ways of knowing; our means of production; our political participation.
https://1lib.at/book/5233662/edfb96
Skins II . A.I. Biases
Cyberfeminism. Cyberfeminism is a term coined in 1994 by Sadie Plant, director of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at the University of Warwick in Britain, to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, and exploiting the Internet, cyberspace, and new-media technologies in general.
For example: Cyberfeminism can be a critique at equality in cyberspace, challenge the gender stereotype in the cyberspace, examine the gender relationship in cyberspace, examine the collaboration between human and technology, examine the relationship between women and technology and more.
https://conversations.e-flux.com/t/feminist-art-manifestos-100-anti-theses-on-cyberfeminism/1846
------------------------------------
#Glitchfemenism
Glitch Feminism, Legacy Russell, 2020
A new manifesto for cyberfeminism
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work.
https://www.are.na/block/8962006
Xenofeminism -- A Politics for Alienation -- Laboria Cuboniks
XF seizes alienation as an impetus to generate new worlds. We are all alienated – but have we ever been otherwise? It is through, and not despite, our alienated condition that we can free ourselves from the muck of immediacy.
https://laboriacuboniks.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/20150612-xf_layout_web.pdf
https://www.wisdomsfor.love/
The Stanley Parable on Steam
The Stanley Parable is a first person exploration game. You will play as Stanley, and you will not play as Stanley. You will follow a story, you will not follow a story. You will have a choice, you will have no choice. The game will end, the game will never end.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/221910/The_Stanley_Parable/
use twine as a sketchbook tool for game design
https://twinery.org/
Practical part of the workshop:
Fri. Sep. 23, 2022: AFTERNOON SESSION
Digital Humanism in Building the Interfaces of the Future
As a beginning I always like to as myself always, why? Why I am talking on this topic and what brought me here.
I begin to study interface cultures in an enviorment of people who are way more advanced than me, in a time when I was absolute unaware of the nature of technologies. It took me very long time to shook myself of from the the idea that this is too complicated to understand. To overcome my personal "technolophobia" which I can see many people experience. Therefore the purpose in most of my research and work is to simplify theories and process in a easy to understand way.
On the other hand, when working in the filed with profesionals with years of experience, it is easy to get to the same patterns of thoughts and unsee unusual connects or relations we might have with techonologies. In this sense I like to re-question the already known and find hopefully atypical conncetions.
The workshop "Beyond the Click" - begins with a re-definition of digital terms and metaphors that are in
everyday use but often ambiguous. The outcome of this process aim to motivate a way of thinking to envision models and design beyond the corporate standards and established forms. To position the actual human needs in the center of innovation, play and experiment with new possible solutions.
Further, the relationship between digital technologies and socio-political topics are unraveled. Considering existing legislations and human rights, we will go deeper into different layers of digital injustices imposed by digitalization. The participants will be encouraged to propose a set of digital human rights. In order to find ways to empower the single "user" and give tools to enable them to challenge the forced terms and conditions of digital devices. The discussion will invite the participants to jump in with personal standpoints and reinforce
joined outcome. They will be presented with several exercises that will navigate a process enhancing each individual interface invention.
The focus starts from the mere individual perspective in the framework of our virtual existence, evolving in the collective digital expenditure with a particular emphasis on provocative and non-binary ideas in the search for possible sustainable solutions. Act on unlearning of internalized digital structures and narratives.
Bibliography ~
- Bill Verplank, Interaction Design Sketchbook, 2009
- Golden Krishna, The Best Interface is No Interface: The Simple Path to Brilliant Technology, 2015
- VIENNA MANIFESTO ON DIGITAL HUMANISM, VIENNA, 2019
- Catherine D'Ignazio, Lauren Klein, Data Feminism, 2020
- Sherry Turkle, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, 1984
- Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI. The real Worlds of Artificial Intelligence, 2021
- Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection. How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and
- Appropriating It for Capitalism, 2019
- Ulises Ali Mejias, Off the Network.Disrupting the Digital World, 2013
- Clemens Apprich, Wendy Kyong Chun, Florian Cramer, and Hito Steyerl, Pattern Discrimination, 2019
- Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism. A Manifesto, 2020
- Laboria Cuboniks, Xenofeminism, A Politics for Alienation, 2018
- Sadie Plant, Zeros and Ones : Digital Women and the New Technoculture, 1998
technophobia
fear, dislike, or avoidance of new technology.
"technophobia is slowly being eroded in our industry"
What causes technophobia?
Factors that can contribute to technophobia include: General anxiety about the future. Mass hysteria about technology unknowns, such as the Y2K scare. Media that portrays “doomsday scenarios” where technology goes wrong or overpowers humans.
what are the emotional relationships with "the virtual"?
"Free to Learn" Dr Peter Gray
https://thedadtrain.com/dr-peter-gray/
Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism
https://dighum.ec.tuwien.ac.at/dighum-manifesto/
The Digital Humanism Initiative
To access the Zoom conference, click here (Password: 0dzqxqiy). All talks will also be streamed and recorded on the Digital Humanism YouTube channel.
https://tuwien.zoom.us/j/96389928143?pwd=UU5YRkNuRmdoWHV4MFBwMWRCcUErdz09#success
The vita activa of Hannah Arendt
http://www.f.waseda.jp/sidoli/Arendt_Vita_Activa.pdf
Piaget's Theory of Knowledge:
Piaget's theory is based on the idea that knowledge acquisition is a process of continuous self-construction. Knowledge is invented and re-invented as the child develops and interacts with their surrounding world (Driscoll, 1994).
https://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/genetic-epistemology/
Interaction Design Sketchbook
http://billverplank.com/CiiD/IDSketch.pdf
Frameworks for designing interactive products and systems.
- 1.SKETCHING – beyond craft to design – the importance of alternatives.
- 2.INTERACTION – Do? Feel? Know? Products, computers and networks.
- 3.DESIGN – motivation, meaning, modes, mappings.
- 4.PARADIGMS - brain, tool, media (toys, theater) life, vehicle, clothes
Attention economy - screen based domination and the idea of selling your digital data, knowing about the value of it
The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism Nick Couldry, Ulises Mejias
Just about any social need is now met with an opportunity to "connect" through digital means. But this convenience is not free--it is purchased with vast amounts of personal data transferred through shadowy backchannels to corporations using it to generate profit.The Costs of Connectionuncovers this process, this "data colonialism," and its designs for controlling our lives--our ways of knowing; our means of production; our political participation.
https://1lib.at/book/5233662/edfb96
Skins II . A.I. Biases
Cyberfeminism. Cyberfeminism is a term coined in 1994 by Sadie Plant, director of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at the University of Warwick in Britain, to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, and exploiting the Internet, cyberspace, and new-media technologies in general.
For example: Cyberfeminism can be a critique at equality in cyberspace, challenge the gender stereotype in the cyberspace, examine the gender relationship in cyberspace, examine the collaboration between human and technology, examine the relationship between women and technology and more.
https://conversations.e-flux.com/t/feminist-art-manifestos-100-anti-theses-on-cyberfeminism/1846
------------------------------------
#Glitchfemenism
Glitch Feminism, Legacy Russell, 2020
A new manifesto for cyberfeminism
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work.
https://www.are.na/block/8962006
Xenofeminism -- A Politics for Alienation -- Laboria Cuboniks
XF seizes alienation as an impetus to generate new worlds. We are all alienated – but have we ever been otherwise? It is through, and not despite, our alienated condition that we can free ourselves from the muck of immediacy.
https://laboriacuboniks.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/20150612-xf_layout_web.pdf
https://www.wisdomsfor.love/
The Stanley Parable on Steam
The Stanley Parable is a first person exploration game. You will play as Stanley, and you will not play as Stanley. You will follow a story, you will not follow a story. You will have a choice, you will have no choice. The game will end, the game will never end.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/221910/The_Stanley_Parable/
use twine as a sketchbook tool for game design
https://twinery.org/
Practical part of the workshop:
- We want to discuss and create a "Map of Frustration" regarding our daily encounters with technologies and the resulting "Technophobia".
Fri. Sep. 23, 2022: AFTERNOON SESSION
¶ Jessica Renfro - designing sustainable (sur)realities
One of the key components of shaping a sustainable everyday is learning to act, think, and dream collectively. My practice explores different ways of being together, as a series of playful exercises in world creation, collaboration, and collective victory. In my current project, Dream City, collective participation shapes the reality it inhabits, even though interpretation resides with the individual. This platform makes apparent that the dynamic and collective shaping of reality occurs both despite and because of that individual interpretation. In the worklab, we explored some of the interdisciplinary concepts I use in my artistic practice like the psychology of gameplay and using game design to structure participation. We also played through a prototype of Dream City (https://www.jessicarenfro.com/dream-city).
We experimented with the Values at Play (Mary Flanagan) game design model using the deck of cards from Tiltfactor’s ‘Grow-a-game’ (https://tiltfactor.org/game/grow-a-game/). This was designed as a brainstorming tool for game designers in order to encourage conscientious, collaborative, and values-based design. We split into two teams and selected one card from each of the following decks: values, verbs, challenges, and atmosphere.
By the luck of the draw, we chose stoicism, finding, snobbery, and prehistoric. Teams had 30 minutes to design a game embodying these attributes. They then presented the game to the opposing team. After a quick play-through, players of the non-designing team were asked to define ‘stoicism’ based on what they had just experienced.
You can create your own sets by mixing values-verbs-challenges-athmospheres:
collective warm-up
Crisis of self-authorship in freelance/capitalist culture, this makes collective problems invisible
Learning to act collectively is one of our greatest and most pressing challenges
All protective solutions come at a cost which must be weighed against the value of what and who they are meant to protect (and who they may make more vulnerable)
Participatory art usually follows the three agendas laid out by Claire Bishop:
Use of Performance Studies, Game Studies, Game Design, and Psychology literature to accomplish this
Like in games, participatory art is a form of simulation -- a rule-based system that provides a 'meaningful' set of choices for participants. This is not comparable to a linear narrative that uses sequences of cause and effect.
Values @ Play Game Design model (Mary Flanagan and Helen Nissenbaum):
It is an inevitable that the choices made available to a player express a particular point of view (of the designer/artist)
Values are culture specific, and fall into categories of Ethical or Political
All stakeholders need to agree on the definition, because they can be broadly interpreted.
This involves iterative design cycles of implementation, verification & reflection
MDA (Mechanics/Dynamics/Aesthetics) Hunicke, Leblanc, and Zubeck
Engineers tend to think in terms of Mechanics (pre-programmed processes)
Artists tend to think in terms of Aesthetics (what emotions/affect should be provoked)
Dynamics are the unexpected confluences of this things that make the playing experience rich
GROW-A-GAME https://tiltfactor.org/game/grow-a-game/
We chose value of stoicism, challenge of snobbery, verb of finding, atmosphere of prehistoric
Participatory art is a social simulation
"Human beings are tied together by a certain sensory fabric, a certain distribution of the sensible, which defines their way of being together, and the politics (of participation) is about the transformation of the sensory fabric of 'being together'." Jacque Rancière, The emancipated spectator, 2021
Participatory art is a social exercise
that situates participant-subjects
inside a simulation in order to explore
alternative ways of being and being together.
It involves new shared experiences of subjectivity (player-subject, played-subject, playing subject)
Valuable as a conversation starter about big issues and a pedagogical tool
Dream City prototype demonstration followed by Q&A: https://dreamcity.mur.at/
One of the key components of shaping a sustainable everyday is learning to act, think, and dream collectively. My practice explores different ways of being together, as a series of playful exercises in world creation, collaboration, and collective victory. In my current project, Dream City, collective participation shapes the reality it inhabits, even though interpretation resides with the individual. This platform makes apparent that the dynamic and collective shaping of reality occurs both despite and because of that individual interpretation. In the worklab, we explored some of the interdisciplinary concepts I use in my artistic practice like the psychology of gameplay and using game design to structure participation. We also played through a prototype of Dream City (https://www.jessicarenfro.com/dream-city).
We experimented with the Values at Play (Mary Flanagan) game design model using the deck of cards from Tiltfactor’s ‘Grow-a-game’ (https://tiltfactor.org/game/grow-a-game/). This was designed as a brainstorming tool for game designers in order to encourage conscientious, collaborative, and values-based design. We split into two teams and selected one card from each of the following decks: values, verbs, challenges, and atmosphere.
By the luck of the draw, we chose stoicism, finding, snobbery, and prehistoric. Teams had 30 minutes to design a game embodying these attributes. They then presented the game to the opposing team. After a quick play-through, players of the non-designing team were asked to define ‘stoicism’ based on what they had just experienced.
You can create your own sets by mixing values-verbs-challenges-athmospheres:
collective warm-up
- "I think it would be nice if..."
Crisis of self-authorship in freelance/capitalist culture, this makes collective problems invisible
Learning to act collectively is one of our greatest and most pressing challenges
All protective solutions come at a cost which must be weighed against the value of what and who they are meant to protect (and who they may make more vulnerable)
Participatory art usually follows the three agendas laid out by Claire Bishop:
- Creates an active subject empowered by the experience of participation.
- Cedes/shares authorship in an egalitarian way with participants.
- Restores the social bond through a collective elaboration of meaning.
Use of Performance Studies, Game Studies, Game Design, and Psychology literature to accomplish this
Like in games, participatory art is a form of simulation -- a rule-based system that provides a 'meaningful' set of choices for participants. This is not comparable to a linear narrative that uses sequences of cause and effect.
Values @ Play Game Design model (Mary Flanagan and Helen Nissenbaum):
It is an inevitable that the choices made available to a player express a particular point of view (of the designer/artist)
Values are culture specific, and fall into categories of Ethical or Political
All stakeholders need to agree on the definition, because they can be broadly interpreted.
This involves iterative design cycles of implementation, verification & reflection
MDA (Mechanics/Dynamics/Aesthetics) Hunicke, Leblanc, and Zubeck
Engineers tend to think in terms of Mechanics (pre-programmed processes)
Artists tend to think in terms of Aesthetics (what emotions/affect should be provoked)
Dynamics are the unexpected confluences of this things that make the playing experience rich
GROW-A-GAME https://tiltfactor.org/game/grow-a-game/
We chose value of stoicism, challenge of snobbery, verb of finding, atmosphere of prehistoric
Participatory art is a social simulation
"Human beings are tied together by a certain sensory fabric, a certain distribution of the sensible, which defines their way of being together, and the politics (of participation) is about the transformation of the sensory fabric of 'being together'." Jacque Rancière, The emancipated spectator, 2021
Participatory art is a social exercise
that situates participant-subjects
inside a simulation in order to explore
alternative ways of being and being together.
It involves new shared experiences of subjectivity (player-subject, played-subject, playing subject)
Valuable as a conversation starter about big issues and a pedagogical tool
Dream City prototype demonstration followed by Q&A: https://dreamcity.mur.at/
¶Sat. Sep. 24, 2022
¶ Nejc Trampuž - SaveTheWorld.exe/20XX
Presenting projects
https://byebye.worldexe.net/
https://hello.worldexe.net/
Previous works are text-image generation works, pulling news and building collage image - images of extintion
Creative Commons material ? ** Whatever you like. Appropriation topic.
GOALS IN THIS SESSION
>>> Prepare an article (with a title & intro); I might use the results for my artwork.
>>> You will present us your experience and result (3 min).
>>> Optional: We will generate a visual in Midjourney - prepare a prompt.
Sample of Midjourney prompt: Permacultural garden with a person picking up the tomatoes. futuristic, ghibli studio style, bright, saturated --stylize 1250 --quality 1 --video
HOW TO PROMPT?
Environmental activism difficult commincated:
intangible and unimaginable issues
does not address those outside the bubble
often solutions are not in line with the values of ppl -> we deny and ignore
doubt in the possibility of a real solution
we should do it more collectively! Not possible that one person sacrifices for the wider public / everyone else beliefs and go on with their business!
north-south / developed vs developing countries ISSUE. It does concern, who is responsible?
polarization makes difficult wider discussion and engagement of wide populations, - difficult collective action.
it is important to create a general mindset.
Algorithms feed polarization, rather than "empathy".
-> 21st century: Visualizations, Stories.
- spread positive messages, utopian and speculative storytelling, present successful projects , showing examples of good practices (e.g. Solarpunk)
To a certain extend it confirms also the crisis of scientific thinking into communicating. We need to go spread positive messages to reach the masses. Utopia * it is so beautiful and so on. Solarpunk is the best kind of Utopia.
Need to "Deradicalize" the discourse and make the system easier.
You can't influence people's value, but you can influence their feelings.
How can technology can help change the perception of the environmental practice
- tech is part of hte problem, it has acceleratedenabled the degregation of the environment (industrial revolution)
- a more responsible use is needed and welcomed
- Jevon's paradox: efficiency increases the use of this technology and thus the environmental impact (also in energy).
Artificial intelligence: GPT-3 (not open source!) *is it possible to create an Anti AI license to avoid?
deep
++ large consumer of electricity ->
Luddism - Abandon Technology vs post-growth scenarios ** use technologies, turn back to the nature.
Current work:
AI: Ecologist // AI: CApitalism
Doom vs Utopia
We can use AI as a mirror of our ways of thinking, like a sort of image generation based on archetipes and stereotypes.
Midjourney (Discord)
Dall-E (Open-AI)
Stable Diffussion (PC friendly)
VQ GAN + CLIP (open source)
Wombo (mobile app)
AI used for illustrations, but generating the promt so that the character stay consistent over various images is a lot of work.
popular science article vs scientific perspective.
is it scientific legit? is it still legit to use it?
**
cross rethorics -> we need to address the other side
values are very culturally driven * but they are mostly culturally "Freedom and equality".
**
Workshop:
Some examples of generated images using the /imagine prompt on AI-midjourney bot:
Sat Sep 24, 2022: AFTERNOON SESSION
Presenting projects
https://byebye.worldexe.net/
https://hello.worldexe.net/
Previous works are text-image generation works, pulling news and building collage image - images of extintion
Creative Commons material ? ** Whatever you like. Appropriation topic.
GOALS IN THIS SESSION
>>> Prepare an article (with a title & intro); I might use the results for my artwork.
>>> You will present us your experience and result (3 min).
>>> Optional: We will generate a visual in Midjourney - prepare a prompt.
Sample of Midjourney prompt: Permacultural garden with a person picking up the tomatoes. futuristic, ghibli studio style, bright, saturated --stylize 1250 --quality 1 --video
HOW TO PROMPT?
- There are no rules. Experiment. Be creative and specific with instructions.
- Use your own sources to steer the AI.
- Give an example or begin the sentence/paragraph.
- Avoid banned words (violent etc.). Generate responsibly. (electricity/tokens/money usage)
Environmental activism difficult commincated:
- doom / too scientific,
- badly visualized
- agressive / extreme -> denial distancing
intangible and unimaginable issues
does not address those outside the bubble
often solutions are not in line with the values of ppl -> we deny and ignore
doubt in the possibility of a real solution
we should do it more collectively! Not possible that one person sacrifices for the wider public / everyone else beliefs and go on with their business!
north-south / developed vs developing countries ISSUE. It does concern, who is responsible?
polarization makes difficult wider discussion and engagement of wide populations, - difficult collective action.
it is important to create a general mindset.
Algorithms feed polarization, rather than "empathy".
-> 21st century: Visualizations, Stories.
- spread positive messages, utopian and speculative storytelling, present successful projects , showing examples of good practices (e.g. Solarpunk)
To a certain extend it confirms also the crisis of scientific thinking into communicating. We need to go spread positive messages to reach the masses. Utopia * it is so beautiful and so on. Solarpunk is the best kind of Utopia.
Need to "Deradicalize" the discourse and make the system easier.
You can't influence people's value, but you can influence their feelings.
How can technology can help change the perception of the environmental practice
- tech is part of hte problem, it has acceleratedenabled the degregation of the environment (industrial revolution)
- a more responsible use is needed and welcomed
- Jevon's paradox: efficiency increases the use of this technology and thus the environmental impact (also in energy).
- Defenition: In economics, the Jevons paradox (/ˈdʒɛvənz/; sometimes Jevons effect) occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost of use increases its demand, negating reductions in resource use.
Artificial intelligence: GPT-3 (not open source!) *is it possible to create an Anti AI license to avoid?
deep
++ large consumer of electricity ->
- How do you justify the use of AI Tools (known to be heavily needy of resources) to do environmental messages? maybe because it stimulates reflections and on a long run it lowers the impact. ask to activists: is it ok to pollute in order to fight pollution?
Luddism - Abandon Technology vs post-growth scenarios ** use technologies, turn back to the nature.
Current work:
AI: Ecologist // AI: CApitalism
Doom vs Utopia
We can use AI as a mirror of our ways of thinking, like a sort of image generation based on archetipes and stereotypes.
Midjourney (Discord)
Dall-E (Open-AI)
Stable Diffussion (PC friendly)
VQ GAN + CLIP (open source)
Wombo (mobile app)
AI used for illustrations, but generating the promt so that the character stay consistent over various images is a lot of work.
popular science article vs scientific perspective.
is it scientific legit? is it still legit to use it?
**
cross rethorics -> we need to address the other side
values are very culturally driven * but they are mostly culturally "Freedom and equality".
**
Workshop:
- https://etherpad.mur.at/p/Workshop_Nejc_Trampuz
- Prompt designer: https://trampuz-prompts-2.fly.dev/
- GPT-3 playground: https://beta.openai.com/playground
Some examples of generated images using the /imagine prompt on AI-midjourney bot:
Sat Sep 24, 2022: AFTERNOON SESSION
¶ Davide Bevilaqua - Unfuck nature with a click
A short journey from greenwashing to ecopornography to technopornography
Coming closer to the end of the worksession, in his presentation Davide proposed a reflection on the ways sustainability & environemental sensibility are exploited and appropriated against the original intention of harming nature less. All these practices fall around and within the definition of greenwashing, a terms that generally defines how companies make Making unsubstantiated or misleading claims about the environmental and social attributes of a product, service or the company as a brand. As an effect these companies set up campaigns to invite you to support them by buying their products - because of their low impact.
The practice of greenwashing never ages, it evolves over time, but its concrete strategy or language is something that lives in the specific contextual situation and evolves over time. Yesterday's environmental friendlyness might not work so nicely today. But sure thing is that yesterday's greenwasher might probably update its strategy today.
Two hilarious examples of contemporary greenwashing:
Ryanair: lowest fares - lowest emissions airline & Shell: High engine performance packed in a carbon neutral packaging.
This happens because there is a relevant tendency to consider nature as something valuable in the mainstream discourse. In a nutshell: Everyone loves Nature and therefore we are susceptible to various forms Ecopornography.
Bank Austria sujet of a woman kissing trees (anyway from gettyimages -> https://www.gettyimages.at/detail/foto/woman-hugging-and-kissing-tree-lizenzfreies-bild/1302316907)
An common solution is to plant trees attached to a specific product. "Buy a tshirt and we'll plant a tree", is not only an easy strategy, but developed into a proper own buiseness segment of planting trees to save the world through consumerism. https://treeera.com/
Beyond the simple outsourcing of responsability and costs to the consumer, throught digital communication tools the idea of contributing with a little action to the greater good became even more widespread. The search engine Ecosia collects money by intercepting the advertisement value generated by online searches, and most interestingly pornhub - save the bees, save the whales, plant a tree with the help of the remote but engaged online community.
--> Reference »Do yourself good for the good of the planet« : https://versorgerin.stwst.at/artikel/sep-3-2020-1530/%C2%BBdo-yourself-good-good-planet%C2%AB
The most interesting turn of Ecopornography is Pornhub's "Dirtiest Porn Ever", where viewing the sexual intercourse on a pollutet beach is the funny action claiming to save the planet but lacking impact. In the wider impact, such environmental jokes become a practice of normalization of pornhub's rethoric and language, strengthening the image of the company and on the very unconcentrated societal memory, on the long run obscuring problematics of lacking of control on video consent and under-age pornography, amongst others, on the pornhub platform.
The interesting aspect of the term Ecopornography, compared to Greenwashing, is its roots in the 70s activism, where the role of the image and the media play a big role. Franco La Cecla connects Ecopornography to the walt disneysation of nature, where the image of natural entities is taken and flattened out to the logic of "cartoons". This hides the real feral essence of the wild animal and transforms it into a "cute" animal.
Comparable strategies of simplification are also used by enviromental activism aimig to rise awareness and create emphatic connections with endangered species. In these cases, the aim is to save these species, and for the sake of the activist action, the flattening of the animal complexity can be justified, yet recognising the controversy of this practice and hopefully not over-strenghtening the current tropes.
From Ecopornography to Technopornography
With this in mind, when approaching the world of sustainable technology we notice similar patterns of simplification. Technological progress is in fact more often that not used as a perfect answer to *any* other project. The rheroric on progress and growth is namely very connected to technologies and sustainability, whose legimity is nevertheless arguably even less under dispute.
remember: think before you print.
Maybe printing the email that you have to retrieve 100 times, or downloading an mp3 version of your favourite album is in turn the most sustainable thing you can do.
"We see a real race emerging to build an Internet that is 100% renewably powered by a range of companies"
Gary Cook, Greenpeace Inc, 2017
As observed in the language of Google's, Microsoft's or Amazon's sustainability websites, these companies present themselves and normal datacenter optimization activities as the best and only way to make the internet sustainable again. In their marketing jargon the overlapping of growth, solutionism and optimization is so strong that it becomes a new argument towards the centralization of the infrastructure and the digitalization: "it's greener in the cloud".
In reality, the technopornographic uses the same images of digitalization and smart cities to flatten away the polluting core of datacenters and consistently support the idea that more data is better to reduce our impact.
How can we, as artists and activists continue developing our projects without leaving space for the corporate environment to squat our labour and turn our critical intentions against their own logic?
(a brilliant smart imagery well representing the walt-disneyzation of smart cities. Retrieved on telekom.com)
Saturday Sep 24, 2022:
A short journey from greenwashing to ecopornography to technopornography
Coming closer to the end of the worksession, in his presentation Davide proposed a reflection on the ways sustainability & environemental sensibility are exploited and appropriated against the original intention of harming nature less. All these practices fall around and within the definition of greenwashing, a terms that generally defines how companies make Making unsubstantiated or misleading claims about the environmental and social attributes of a product, service or the company as a brand. As an effect these companies set up campaigns to invite you to support them by buying their products - because of their low impact.
The practice of greenwashing never ages, it evolves over time, but its concrete strategy or language is something that lives in the specific contextual situation and evolves over time. Yesterday's environmental friendlyness might not work so nicely today. But sure thing is that yesterday's greenwasher might probably update its strategy today.
Two hilarious examples of contemporary greenwashing:
Ryanair: lowest fares - lowest emissions airline & Shell: High engine performance packed in a carbon neutral packaging.
This happens because there is a relevant tendency to consider nature as something valuable in the mainstream discourse. In a nutshell: Everyone loves Nature and therefore we are susceptible to various forms Ecopornography.
Bank Austria sujet of a woman kissing trees (anyway from gettyimages -> https://www.gettyimages.at/detail/foto/woman-hugging-and-kissing-tree-lizenzfreies-bild/1302316907)
An common solution is to plant trees attached to a specific product. "Buy a tshirt and we'll plant a tree", is not only an easy strategy, but developed into a proper own buiseness segment of planting trees to save the world through consumerism. https://treeera.com/
Beyond the simple outsourcing of responsability and costs to the consumer, throught digital communication tools the idea of contributing with a little action to the greater good became even more widespread. The search engine Ecosia collects money by intercepting the advertisement value generated by online searches, and most interestingly pornhub - save the bees, save the whales, plant a tree with the help of the remote but engaged online community.
--> Reference »Do yourself good for the good of the planet« : https://versorgerin.stwst.at/artikel/sep-3-2020-1530/%C2%BBdo-yourself-good-good-planet%C2%AB
The most interesting turn of Ecopornography is Pornhub's "Dirtiest Porn Ever", where viewing the sexual intercourse on a pollutet beach is the funny action claiming to save the planet but lacking impact. In the wider impact, such environmental jokes become a practice of normalization of pornhub's rethoric and language, strengthening the image of the company and on the very unconcentrated societal memory, on the long run obscuring problematics of lacking of control on video consent and under-age pornography, amongst others, on the pornhub platform.
The interesting aspect of the term Ecopornography, compared to Greenwashing, is its roots in the 70s activism, where the role of the image and the media play a big role. Franco La Cecla connects Ecopornography to the walt disneysation of nature, where the image of natural entities is taken and flattened out to the logic of "cartoons". This hides the real feral essence of the wild animal and transforms it into a "cute" animal.
Comparable strategies of simplification are also used by enviromental activism aimig to rise awareness and create emphatic connections with endangered species. In these cases, the aim is to save these species, and for the sake of the activist action, the flattening of the animal complexity can be justified, yet recognising the controversy of this practice and hopefully not over-strenghtening the current tropes.
From Ecopornography to Technopornography
With this in mind, when approaching the world of sustainable technology we notice similar patterns of simplification. Technological progress is in fact more often that not used as a perfect answer to *any* other project. The rheroric on progress and growth is namely very connected to technologies and sustainability, whose legimity is nevertheless arguably even less under dispute.
remember: think before you print.
Maybe printing the email that you have to retrieve 100 times, or downloading an mp3 version of your favourite album is in turn the most sustainable thing you can do.
"We see a real race emerging to build an Internet that is 100% renewably powered by a range of companies"
Gary Cook, Greenpeace Inc, 2017
As observed in the language of Google's, Microsoft's or Amazon's sustainability websites, these companies present themselves and normal datacenter optimization activities as the best and only way to make the internet sustainable again. In their marketing jargon the overlapping of growth, solutionism and optimization is so strong that it becomes a new argument towards the centralization of the infrastructure and the digitalization: "it's greener in the cloud".
In reality, the technopornographic uses the same images of digitalization and smart cities to flatten away the polluting core of datacenters and consistently support the idea that more data is better to reduce our impact.
How can we, as artists and activists continue developing our projects without leaving space for the corporate environment to squat our labour and turn our critical intentions against their own logic?
(a brilliant smart imagery well representing the walt-disneyzation of smart cities. Retrieved on telekom.com)
Saturday Sep 24, 2022:
¶ NOTES FROM FINAL DISCUSSION ROUND & WRAPUP
we conveyed that access to tools and knowledge is a very crucial aspect.
LICENSES / creative common / free art license
One interesting space for developing TECH & SUPPORT LIBRARY - "rent a programmer!" to go back to common resources.
Radicalize ideas & deradicalize activist discourse - language that is inclusive.
Widening up the community of people involved in critical art practices and technological activism.
NARRATIVES and VISUALIZATIONS: there is still a wide need to understanding the problems of climate change and the destruction ecosystems. It oftem seems an individualized problem, but a qualitative change can happen only when the problem becomes collective. We should try to break up social media bubbles, reach wider audiences. Create new target groups to engage with. Also do it in the public space.
It is important to be critical towards consumption, but overarching critical on "the big problem is capitalism" is something that has been heard many many times already. We might find solutions in other disciplines (public policies and psychologies...).
Limit of resources and so on. Nature will do fine or even better when human will be extincted.
We don't need to save the world, we need to save ourselves.
embrace the idea of Hyperobjects - Timothy Morton in relating to nature
Things are happening / but i cannot see it / perceive it
Stoicism
A stoic approach
Patents : ( Hate them! Authorship is also shit
(a less stoic ending)
we conveyed that access to tools and knowledge is a very crucial aspect.
LICENSES / creative common / free art license
One interesting space for developing TECH & SUPPORT LIBRARY - "rent a programmer!" to go back to common resources.
Radicalize ideas & deradicalize activist discourse - language that is inclusive.
Widening up the community of people involved in critical art practices and technological activism.
NARRATIVES and VISUALIZATIONS: there is still a wide need to understanding the problems of climate change and the destruction ecosystems. It oftem seems an individualized problem, but a qualitative change can happen only when the problem becomes collective. We should try to break up social media bubbles, reach wider audiences. Create new target groups to engage with. Also do it in the public space.
It is important to be critical towards consumption, but overarching critical on "the big problem is capitalism" is something that has been heard many many times already. We might find solutions in other disciplines (public policies and psychologies...).
Limit of resources and so on. Nature will do fine or even better when human will be extincted.
We don't need to save the world, we need to save ourselves.
embrace the idea of Hyperobjects - Timothy Morton in relating to nature
Things are happening / but i cannot see it / perceive it
- https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/climatechange/reading_list-copy/mortonendofworld.pdf
- https://www.academia.edu/30614296/Hyperobjects
Stoicism
- understanding what is our role in society.
- faith to our strength
- trusting others (maybe).
- sense of humor
A stoic approach
- Balanced view between frustrations, ideal solutions and existing solutions.
- multilayered tackeling: there is not a single solution, we should reach multiple layers.
Patents : ( Hate them! Authorship is also shit
(a less stoic ending)
¶> GENERAL INFORMATION
Arrivals to Austria currently (Sep. 2022) do NOT need "3-G" proof (vaccinated/recovered or tested). During your stay, the following rules apply:
Updated infos: https://www.austria.info/en/service-and-facts/coronavirus-information
Good to have with you:
Arrivals to Austria currently (Sep. 2022) do NOT need "3-G" proof (vaccinated/recovered or tested). During your stay, the following rules apply:
- FFP 2 masks are no longer mandatory in essential shops and when using public transport in all Austrian federal provinces except for Vienna.
- In Vienna only, FFP 2 masks remain compulsory on public transport and in pharmacies.
- Children under the age of 6 are exempt, those from 6 to 13 can wear a regular mask while FFP2 masks are mandatory from the age of 14.
- Since 1 August 2022, you do no longer need to quarantine if you have a positive Covid test provided that an FFP2 mask is worn indoors in public areas. Entry bans are only in place for particularly sensitive areas such as hospitals and health spas. Outdoors, a mask is not necessary if a 2 meter safety distance can be maintained. If the infection is not confirmed by the PCR test, the regulation does not apply. The regulation is generally valid for a maximum of 10 days from the time the sample is taken. If you can present a negative test result after 5 days, you can end the quarantine.
Updated infos: https://www.austria.info/en/service-and-facts/coronavirus-information
Good to have with you:
- Bring a printed copy of your European Green Pass Covid Certificate.
- Your European health insurance card (E-card). With this card you can get PCR and
- Anti-gen tests in pharmacies and test facilities: https://www.graz.at/cms/beitrag/10364755/10508864/Coronatests_in_Graz.html
- Bring your FFP2 mask and use it whenever you think it’s needed/appropriate.
¶ > GET AROUND IN GRAZ
Route Planner for GRAZ public transport
Buy tickets & route planner through the mobile app
GrazMobil - Bus & Tram ticket (Android / IoS)
or at ticket vending machines or at tobacco shops.
Further links:
Route Planner for GRAZ public transport
Buy tickets & route planner through the mobile app
GrazMobil - Bus & Tram ticket (Android / IoS)
or at ticket vending machines or at tobacco shops.
- https://www.holding-graz.at/en/public-transport-ticket-purchase-made-easy/
- https://www.holding-graz.at/en/mobilitaet/ticketshop/#weitere-tickets-und-aktionen
Further links:
¶ > COLOFON
Texts by: Notes written collaboratively by Worklab participants, or written by individual authors
Photo credits: Worklab participants
Editing & layout: Site generated by E2H-Etherpad hypermedia project by David Potocnik @dcht00
Texts by: Notes written collaboratively by Worklab participants, or written by individual authors
Photo credits: Worklab participants
Editing & layout: Site generated by E2H-Etherpad hypermedia project by David Potocnik @dcht00