ART + TECH ENCOUNTERS: Sustainability

NFTs. Economic inequity. Neural networks. Environmental disaster. As artists use, subvert and explore new technologies, these same technologies have enormous environmental impact. How do we make sense of minting an artwork into an NFT, when minting artwork on the blockchain has an enormous ecological footprint? What does it mean to use a neural network, when the carbon costs of running and using one are huge? How can we make sense of this art-tech landscape in relation to the environmental challenges we face, and what it means to be making digital artwork in a time of crisis?

Join Alice Yuan Zhang, Dr. Dominic Bednar, Zane Griffin Talley Cooper, and Xiaowei Wang for a discussion about the intersection of technology and susainability.

The event is part of NODES. ART + TECH ENCOUNTERS, a series of talks that brings together artists, technologists and researchers from the U.S. and Europe. The event is part of THE GRID and organized by the Goethe-Institut San Francisco.

Panelists:

Dr. Dominic J. Bednar is a community-engaged scholar and engineer. His research examines the institutional barriers of energy poverty recognition and response in the United States. In doing so, he explores the spatial, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic patterns of residential energy affordability, consumption, and efficiency. Dr. Bednar completed his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability concentrating on Energy Justice. Dominic holds a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Maryland and a MS in Natural Resources and Environment (Sustainable Systems) from the University of Michigan. Currently, Dr. Bednar is a Presidential Postdoctoral Scholar at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He has been recognized as an Imagining America Publicly Active Graduate Education Fellow (PAGE), Fulbright Scholar, Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Bouchet Graduate Honor Society member, Rackham Merit Fellow, GEM Fellow, and Forbes Under 30 Scholar.

Zane Griffin Talley Cooper is a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, and a doctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Research on Global Communication, where he is co-leading a transnational collaborative project on e-waste supply chains for the Internet Society Foundation. His research broadly concerns the intersections between big data infrastructures, energy production, and resource extraction, primarily in the Arctic. His dissertation is a multi-sited ethnographic study exploring the ideological, logistical, political-economic, and ecological entanglements between cryptocurrency mining in Iceland, and the emerging rare earth mining industry in South Greenland. Zane has a B.F.A. in Film Studies from the University of Colorado Boulder, and an M.A. in History from California State University San Marcos.

Stefan Kruijer has more than 20 years of experience in the IT business, ranging from software development to strategic consulting. During this time he has worked for various companies, most recently for Airbus in Hamburg. However, he has also always worked as an independent freelancer throughout this time. His scientific education as a physicist with a PhD in solid state physics in 1998 was the starting point for him to look at the IT world not only from the perspective of a developer and consultant, but also with a scientific claim. For the past four years, he has been increasingly involved in sustainable digitalisation and is looking for ways to make software more resource-efficient. As part of the Scientists for Future organisation he is supporting the actual efforts for a sustainable future.

Alice Yuan Zhang 张元 is a migrating artist, educator, and cultural organizer. She hosts socioecological entanglement in layered realities across digital browsers and AR as well as embodied exercises and in-person exchanges. Her research-based participatory practice traverses ancestral remembering, speculative pedagogy, and networked solidarity. Alice is the co-founder of virtual care lab, an open assemblage of people learning to trust each other in remote connection.  

Moderator:

Xiaowei Wang is an artist, coder and a writer. The creative director at Logic magazine, their work encompasses community-based projects on technology, ecology, and education. Their projects have been finalists for the Index Design Awards and featured by the New York Times, the BBC, CNN, VICE, and elsewhere.