Permacomputing and beyond; resilient skills for a less harmful digital future. 🌿💻
A symposium unpacking the challenges of sustainability and re-use within computation through art and design.
SYMPOSIUM, DECEMBER 2, TOLHUISTUIN (AMSTERDAM)
What does it mean to practise resilience and regeneration within digital societies? How does this relate to art, design and cultural works? Artists, designers, coders, activists and researchers working in, and beyond computation and network technology are invited to join the free symposium Practices of Digital Resilience & Permacomputing on December 2, at Tolhuistuin. The programme will explore permacomputing, inspired by the principles of permaculture, and related fields of expertise.
A selection of speakers will offer different perspectives on countering the extractive and harmful nature of big-tech technologies and how they translate their principles into work. What room is there for tech in a world where humans actively contribute to the well-being of the biosphere? How can we actively change our relationship with technology? This one-day meeting place is hosted by digital culture platform FIBER, the Unsustainable Research Group of the Willem de Kooning Academy and members of a growing permacomputing community.
As our reliance on digital technology and network infrastructures deepens, the pressing issue of the environmental impact of our digital lives is gaining prominence. In a time where computing equals huge amounts of industrial waste and various forms of extraction, permacomputing encourages the maximising of hardware lifespans, minimising e-waste and energy use, supporting energy literacy, and focusing on the use of already available computational resources. It’s exploring good relations with the Earth by learning from ecological systems and experimenting with new ways of ecological-driven computation and aesthetics.
The symposiumPractices of Digital Resilience & Permacomputing aims to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue through artistic research and the exchange of knowledge with neighbouring communities, like free software activism, solar punk and art/design making use of electronics recycling. Today, all these groups form a decentralised and multifaceted critique that materialises itself in new practices, and tries to make itself heard.
The symposium will also provide insights to makers & thinkers how to transform their own practice. It welcomes newcomers, professionals and students working at the intersections of art, design, critical infrastructure studies, data studies, new media studies, and informatics, who seek to enhance their understanding of the intricate connections between technology, society, and the environment through collaborative exploration.
SPEAKERS Marloes de Valk (NL), Marie Verdeil (BE), Sunjoo Lee (NL), Raaf (Unbinare, BE), Danny Tirthdas van der Kleij (Varia, NL) en Michal Klodner (CZ) | Moderators: Shailoh Phillips (NL) & Abdo Hassan (NL)
Marloes de Valk (NL) 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. De Valk is looking into the material impact of the networked image on the climate crisis and a rich diversity of practices that aim at a lower environmental footprint of information technology.
Marie Verdeil (BE) is a French designer based in Bruxelles who works with empirical and empathic research, which often results in creating tools, methods or experiences. She uses hacks and subversion in an attempt to shift our relationship with technology and draw attention to the ever growing resources involved in its production.
Sunjoo Lee (NL) is a media artist based in the Netherlands. Lee makes tools, sensory robots that respond to the environment, and video art installations, combining technology and ecology, among other things. Her works often explore topics such as; technology for more-than-humans, emergence, biomimicry, permacomputing and future forms of symbiosis.
Unbinare (BE) Raaf is an anarchist, hacker and reverse engineer. In 2020 they founded Unbinare, an e-waste reverse engineering laboratory which aims to reduce the increase of e-waste by finding ways to repurpose discarded electronic devices. Unbinare operates from an anarchist context and considers their research to be a form of direct action to counter state and corporate control of the environment. Prior to founding Unbinare, Raaf has been an artist, composer, architectural designer, security consultant and hardware security researcher.
Danny Tirthdas van der Kleij (Varia, NL) is a software developer, member of varia, radio DJ, and digital hoarder. His practice combines alternative and situational software with amateur electronic engineering. Currently this revolves around topics of computational frugality, divisions of (non)meticulous labour and the practicality ignored within politics of repairability. varia is a Rotterdam-based initiative and space for developing collective approaches around everyday technology, through maintaining and facilitating a collective infrastructure. At its core, varia aims to develop critical insights into the technologies around us. Varia experiments with different instruments and tools to develop physical and digital infrastructures in a collective way.
Michal Klodner (CZ) is moving from the field of audiovisual live performances and experimental film to forest gardening, building livinglab and back. With a background in information science and coding, he was among the founders and currently a curator of node9.org digital community server and online gallery. His practice involves writing on online activism, digital curation or postmediality, as part of creating networks based on trust in those fields. In the recent projects on the role of artistic research in sustainability he goes into computational aspects of media art in relation to ecosystems and more than human natureculture communities, trying to develop livinglab as an interdisciplinary method of nondestructive living-research in nature and wilderness.
PRACTICAL INFO
Symposium: Practices of Digital Resilience & Permacomputing
Date: Saturday December 2
Location: Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam | Room: Zonzij Time: 12:00 - 17:00 | Drinks: 17:00 - 18:00 More info symposium on our website. Tickets: Free (donations) | Registration here.
ABOUT THE LAB The symposium is part of the Practising Permacomputing Lab; a series of workshops and research activities happening in autumn and winter of 2023. This FIBER Lab programmeaims to reimagine, rebuild, and rewild our approach to computation, culture, and aesthetics. It’s part of the FIBER’s yearly Reassemble Lab series, which takes place between the annual FIBER Festivals and establishes connections between the arts, creative industry and science. Inviting makers and thinkers to develop knowledge, expand their network and work in relation to pressing societal issues. More information about the workshops can be found here.
ABOUT FIBER & PARTNERS
FIBER is an Amsterdam-based interdisciplinary platform and festival presenting new developments in audiovisual art, digital culture and experimental electronic music. Aymeric Mansoux is part of the The Unsustainable Research Group of the Willem de Kooning Academy. He’s an artist, musician and media researcher, with a background in economics, fine art, graphic design, and computer programming. Organising members of the permacomputing community: Ola Bonati, Lukas Engelhardt, Michal Klodner, Brendan Howell.
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Note for editors, not for publication: For more information about this event, FIBER or images please contact Maarten De Bruijn (communication) at maarten@fiber-space.nl For production and management Allegra Greher: allegra@fiber-space.nl
