'Panel'

Panel / Bending the possible (one pixel at a time). Small-file ecomedia for the Anthropocene

Authors: Radek Przedpełski, Laura U. Marks, Azadeh Emadi, Joey Malbon

Work: Driven by the concern that ICT (information and communication technologies) currently contributes 3.3% to 3.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions (Belkhir and Elmeligi 2018, Bordage 2020), surpassing the carbon footprint of the airline industry at 1.9% of global greenhouse emissions (Ritchie 2020), this dialogical and performative panel seeks to interrogate the question of "The Possible," Natures and Worlds from the point of view of green computing and sustainable experimental media production.

Typology:

Panel

Theme: sustainability, green ICT, experimental digital media, ecomedia, media philosophy, media ecology

More information: https://substantialmotion.org/profile/radosaw-maciej-przedpeski

Abstract: Driven by the concern that ICT (information and communication technologies) currently contributes 3.3% to 3.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions (Belkhir and Elmeligi 2018, Bordage 2020), surpassing the carbon footprint of the airline industry at 1.9% of global greenhouse emissions (Ritchie 2020), this dialogical and performative panel seeks to interrogate the question of “The Possible,” Natures and Worlds from the point of view of green computing and sustainable experimental media production. The panel responds to the problem of the pandemic rise in streaming media and its underlying capitalist articulation of the Possible by assessing the viability of the concept and practice of experimental small-file media as an sustainable alternative for the era of the Anthropocene. Small-file ecomedia are low-bandwidth experimental movies of no more than five megabytes in size and no more than five minutes in duration, which allows them to be streamed with no damage to the planet. Our proposal makes an intervention into the very concept of ecomedia and “nature.” Ecomedia is not simply a representation or visualisation of environmental problems but an immanent practice of responsible world-making indexical to the earth and the cosmos, as well an activist pedagogy and act of community-building. Our discussants will tackle small file media from a variety of perspectives: appropriate technologies in the global South; media philosophy, technical solutions for media sustainability, and a maker’s perspective on microcosmic media.

Biography: Radek Przedpełski is an artist and media philosophy scholar lecturing in interactive digital media at Trinity College Dublin. Radek co-edited a volume on Deleuze, Guattari and the Art of Multiplicity published Edinburgh University Press in 2020. Radek is a member of Substantial Motion Research Network founded by Laura U. Marks and Azadeh Emadi for cross-cultural investigation of media art, as well as a curator, together with Laura U. Marks, of the annual Small File Media Festival hosted by SFU’s School for the Creative Arts. Radek is interested in entanglements between the earth, the cosmos and artistic techniques.

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