As territories flood and melt, dehydrate and erode, paradigms of environmental protection and conservation give way to those of management, engineering and strategic intervention. In this sense, as landscape architects Bradley Cantrell, Laura Martin and Erle Ellis argue, conserving wilderness has become more about maintaining autonomous ecological processes rather than the preservation of historic conditions. If new “wilderness” is the absence of explicit human intervention, what would it mean to have autonomous computational systems sustain wild places?

Credits

Concept and spatial design by Tega Brain. Networking by Andy Cavatorta. Software development by Sam Lavigne.

Exhibitions

• Earthbound — In Dialogue with Nature
  European Capital of Culture Esch2022, Luxembourg
  June 4th — August 14th, 2022
  
• Ti Zero,
  Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome,
  October 12, 2021 — February 27, 2022
  
• The Question of Intelligence
  Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery, Parsons School of Design, New York City February 07 — April 08, 2020
  
• The 6th Guangzhou Triennial: As We May Think- Feedforward
  Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou
  December 21st — March 10 2019
  
• Machines Are Not Alone, Device Art Triennial
  Chronus Art Center, Shanghai
  July 21st — October 21st, 2018
  

Asunder realizes an AI driven planetary manager that generates proposals for future alternations to Earth’s surface. It uses a state-of-the-art climate model to analyze each proposal by simulating its effects into the future. The work explores how geoengineering risks combining the hubris of Silicon Valley with the unaccountability and malice of the fossil fuel industry. Is this the perfect storm of technosolutionism and disaster capitalism? But at a time when many researchers assert that we can no longer ignore possible climate interventions that could buy us more time to cut emissions and avoid climate tipping points, should these schemes be explored and if so, how?

Credits

Tega Brain, Julian Oliver, and Bengt Sjölén.

Exhibitions

• UNCANNY VALUES: Artificial Intelligence and You, Vienna Biennale for Change
  Vienna Museum of Applied Arts
  May 29 — October 6th, 2019
  
• The Eternal Network, Transmediale Festival
  Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
  Jan 28 — Mar 01 2020
  
• Survival of the Fittest, Zum Verhältnis von Natur und Hightech in der zeitgenössischen Kunst
  Kunstpalais, Erlangen
  Feb 28 — May 24 2020
  
• How to make a Paradise
  Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt
  Mar 27 — Aug 16 2020
  
• Shenzhen New Media Art Festival
  Bay Arts Mall
  Dec 13 — Jan 15, 2021
  
• Shaping the Invisible World – Digital Cartography as an Instrument of Knowledge
  House of Electronic Arts (HEK), Basel
  March 3 — May 23 2021
  
• You and AI: Through the Algorithmic Lens
  Pedion tou, Areos Park, Athens, Greece
  June 25 — July 18, 2021
  
• Fotograf Festival
  National Museum of Agriculture, Prague
  Sept 2nd — October 17th, 2021
  
• There is No Planet B
  Ars Electronica Museum, Linz
  September 2021 — September 2022
  
• La Biennale des arts numeriques Némo 2021/2022
  Le Centquatre-Paris
  October 9, 2021 — January 2, 2022
  

In a post-broadcast media landscape, algorithmic advertising is the primary business model. News organisations generate revenue by selling impressions of ads that run alongside their stories, where the more attention a story receives, the more money it earns. This means automated media systems are reshaping our ecological and climate worldviews, imaginaries and actions. If ecology is shaped by the media, and media systems are automated by algorithms and optimised for attention, what opportunities exist for intervention? Can these platform logics be co-opted for more desirable atmospheric effects?

Credits

Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne.

Exhibitions

• Data Relations, Australian Center for Contemporary Art
  Melbourne, Australia
  December 2022 — March 2023
  
• Welcome to Planet B, Ars Electronica
  Linz, Austria
  7 — 11 September, 2022
  
• Sonar Festival
  Lisboa, Portugal
  07 — 10 April 2022
  
• STRP Festival
  Eindhoven, The Netherlands
  16 — 19 June 2021
  

Solar Protocol continues to explore how climate thinking could extend beyond the biophysical to also encompass the redesign of our media infrastructures and platforms. As a network of solar-powered servers, it is a fully realised implementation of a distributed, community-owned web hosting platform, powered by renewables. Decisions about network operations are automated by the availability of solar energy (sunshine) between servers and as such, the work envisages a system of digital infrastructure where automation occurs by a kind of “natural” rather than artificial intelligence.

Solar Protocol takes cues from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s analysis of the honourable harvest, a sophisticated Indigenous land management protocol for decentralised ecological governance. Inspired by this set of rules for ensuring that the regenerative capacity of a place is not exceeded, Solar Protocol defines a decentralised protocol to geographically distribute computational work according to the availability of solar energy.

Credits

Tega Brain, Alex Nathanson and Benedetta Piantella.

Thanks to all of our stewards Anne Pasek, Caddie Brain, Charlie Freedman, Brendan Phelan, John Samoza, Camilo Rodriguez Beltran, Daniel Ñuñez, Alejandro Rebolledo, Graham Wilfred Jnr, Tim Chatwin, Bridgit Chappell, Baoyang Chen, Denzel J. Wamburu, Cyrus K, Chris Stone, Jesse Li, Zoë Horsten and Jarl Schulp. Thanks to Sam Lavigne, Crystal Chen, Dan Phiffer, Mitchell Whitelaw, Sharon De La Cruz, the staff and fellows at Eyebeam for design support and advice.

Exhibitions and Workshops

• Reassemble Lab x Solar Protocol
  Fiber Festival, Eindhoven, Netherlands
  10 — 13 March 2022
  
• 3rd Asian Digital Arts Exhibition
  Beijing Times Art Museum, Beijing
  September 29 — October 1, 2021
  
• Refamiliarization
  Berkeley Center for New Media
  July 23 — October, 2021