Despite their ubiquity and relevance, data collection practices remain opaque and their carbon footprint has rarely been investigated. What is more, data collection is a key resource in the global supply chain of AdTech, the primary business model of the data economy system. The Carbolytics project, developed by artist and researcher Joana Moll in collaboration with researchers from the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, is a way of understanding the collective existence of cookies and their role in the outsourced production of carbon dioxide. The interactive web-based installation shows the average global volume of cookie traffic in real time and demonstrates how cookies parasitize ...

Ever since 1990, computing has been opening up entirely new types of resources for extraction. In the digital context, the notion of extractivism points to the fact that “data is taken without meaningful consent and fair compensation for the producers and sources of that data.” Felix Stalder, professor of Digital Culture at the Zurich University of the Arts, points out that computing has boosted the great acceleration of human activities that has moved the Earth system into the Anthropocene. If we are to prevent the deeply authoritarian responses to the impending climate breakdown, we should unveil the colonialist character and ...

The works of US-based artist and programmer Ben Grosser have defined, revealed and defused how software activates the desire for more, as it follows the growth-obsessed corporate culture of Silicon Valley. His most recent project – presented at Aksioma Project Space – is the outcome of a new experiment that aims to generate “Software for Less”: less profit, less data and fewer users. It provides users with new tools to resist these tendencies and keep their agency in the digital era: a time where automated software systems increasingly take over every aspect of human existence, pushing the users to develop new ...

So far, many of the things we build on and with blockchains have presented themselves as new types of property enclosures. From cryptocurrencies to NFTs, decentralized ledger technology seems mostly dominated by the asset logic of financialization. But the landscape of blockchain-enabled digital culture is fantastically diverse and can encode much more than a desire for wealth and ownership. In this short essay, media theory and digital art researcher Martin Zeilinger explores what might become possible – for artists, activists or community organizers – when we reimagine blockchains not as property-oriented infrastructure, but as structures of belonging. Doing so may ...