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Title: About Virtual Residency |
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Author: Inari Wishiki |
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<p id="colophon_title">Colophon</p> |
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<div class="colophon"> |
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<p>A Nourishing Network is a peer-to-peer publishing experiment starting from the feed as a potentially multi-directional circulation device.</p> |
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<p>A Nourishing Network is initiated by servus.at (Davide Bevilacqua) in collaboration with varia.zone (Alice Strete & Manetta Berends) and is published in the context of AMRO 2020 (Arts Meets Radical Openness). </p> |
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<p> Editing: Davide Bevilacqua <br> Design and development: Manetta Berends, Alice Strete <br> Paper: xxxx <br> Typeface: Gnu Unifont, White Rabbit, Ansi Shadow <br> Print and production: Varia <br> This project is produced with Free Software tools. The feeds are made with Pelican & Weasyprint. |
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</p> |
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<p> Davide is an artist and curator working is the blurry area between media and contemporary art. </p><p> Manetta Berends is a designer working with forms of networked publishing, situated software and collective infrastructures. </p> <p>Alice Strete is an artist and researcher interested in the intricate relationship between humans and the technologies they surround themselves with. </p> <p>Many thanks to our partners, collaborators, authors and the AMRO community. </p> |
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<p> Published under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.</p> |
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</p></div> |
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<div class="first-page"> |
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<div id="title_edition"> A Nourishing Network - December 2020</div> |
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<div id="title">About Virtual Residency</div> |
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<div id="author"> by Inari Wishiki</div> |
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<p id="subtitle">Defining our current network scenario: from “Telephone/Fax”, through “Early Internet”, to “Virtual Touring Software”, towards “a Slow-Speed Virtual-Physical Residency” </p> |
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</div> |
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<header id="pageheader-issue">A Nourishing Network</header> |
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<header id="pageheader-theme">About Virtual Residency</header> |
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<div class="essay_content"> |
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<p><pre id="first_letter_mel"> |
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</pre> |
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s soon as the COVID-19 pandemic severely started to kick in Europe in March 2020, many of the local cultural events were switched to online. Like many others, It took me sometime to get accustomed to proprietary online meeting environments such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet (all of which I only use on the Windows side of my dual-boot Linux-base ThinkPad [Jitsi is an exception]). While I enjoyed the vibe of “anyone could attend anything from anywhere in the world”, I felt the novelty of “at home” or “remoteness” had quickly disappeared. These days, I still do book interesting-looking online events, but can barely get motivated to actually show up in front of the screen. When “online” has been rendered almost completely flat by the surge of repetitive Zoom conferences and streaming events, perhaps it is time to look back some of the first virtualization efforts of art in history. In fact, “available from home” was nothing new.</p> |
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<p> |
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In 1991, the Project InterCommunication Center (ICC), founded by the Japanese telecom giant NTT, hosted an event titled “The Museum Inside The Telephone Network” by inviting almost 100 artists ^[^1]^. Literally, it was an experiment to set up an invisible museum using telephone/Fax which were back then the most common and fastest ways to transmit audiovisual data. In the early 90s, telephones were mostly available from home and the level of mobility only stretched as far as a cordless landline phone. However, they managed to offer five different “channels”: Voice & Sound channel where prerecorded audio-based pieces could be listened to, Live channel through which you could attend live performances and talks, Interactive channel which involved interactions by physical telephone buttons, Fax channel by which you could print image-based pieces in black and white, and Personal Computer channel that allowed you to view computer graphics-based pieces on the computer screen. Some of the artists found optimal uses of the media: e.g. for Fax channel, the Japanese painter Tadanori Yokoo selected 1080 images from his extensive waterfall postcard picture collection and made them available to print at home ^[^2]^. As a result, a cascade of images incessantly came out of a Fax machine as though a real waterfall.</p> |
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<p> |
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Following this, there was another virtualization attempt by ICC called “on the Web -The Museum Inside The Network-” in 1995 ^[^3]^. By this time, the Internet was becoming partially available at some homes and pieces of artwork were accessible through websites from personal computers. Some of the art projects foresaw the age of social media: Kazuhiko Hachiya presented “Mega-Diary” where the links to diaries written by 100 people were gathered and updated on a daily basis ^[^4]^, Kouichirou Eto made “Real Panopticon”, a web platform that worked on top of the exhibition website and allowed the viewers to observe what other visitors were currently looking at online ^[^5]^. I have always been thrilled by ambitious remarks made while speculating on the future of the Internet from 90s. One of the committee members of the project, theorist Toshiharu Itoh left a quote that lets us reflect on where we are today ^[^6]^:</p> |
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<blockquote>The technology of information communications is a “technology of consciousness” that belongs to the realm of the spirit and the senses more than to the realm of practicality and function. Bearing this in mind, I hope to immerse myself within the fabric of the network.</blockquote> |
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<p> |
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My question now is: What is our current state of consciousness and how should it be expressed through the network available? As an example of a pandemic-ready practice, Norwegian visual artist/musician Lars Holdhus a.k.a TCF comes into my mind.</p> |
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<p> |
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I met TCF physically for the first time in 2016 at TodaysArt, an audiovisual electronic art festival hosted in The Hague, the Netherlands. I got to know him through a mutual friend and went to see him performing some compositions based on the same algorithms used for cryptocurrency mining ^[^7]^. At that time, TCF was already well-established both in the fields of contemporary art and music, often touring around Europe and beyond. Then he, such a talented musician, somehow stopped making music a couple of years ago and relocated himself back to Norway where he is originally from. Not having heard anything of him for quite some time, TCF, after the COVID-19 pandemic, suddenly appeared on the Internet radio run by Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art. He said he just picked 50kg of mushrooms last month (at the time of the interview) ^[^8]^.</p> |
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<p> |
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TCF said he is trying to localize his practice as much as possible, be self-sufficient, and lower his impact on the environment, while keeping himself as an active agent in the field of contemporary art. TCF apparently does not tour any more and instead distributes a piece of software in which his 3D avatar learns how to walk/run through machine learning and the AI composes music on the fly.</p> |
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<p> |
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TCF presented “Awne” at Unsound Festival hosted from Kraków, Poland in October 2020 ^[^9]^:</p> |
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<p> |
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Awne is a system where natural farming, permaculture and biomimicry meets music and art. In recent years TCF has worked on setting up a way to compose art and music that draws inspiration from biological processes, natural farming techniques, the twelve design principles of permaculture, our understanding of nature, microclimates and how to lower your impact on the environment... It will be built around the software (Unity + Machine Learning) that TCF is currently using in parts of his live performances.</p> |
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<p> |
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It was live streamed from YouTube and was embedded in the festival website. Someone commented on the video: “I don’t exactly know exactly how my awareness of agricultural processes is increased if I watch plasticky looking 3D models of mushrooms bounce on other objects 😅. Nevertheless some of the animations and sounds were fun to look at / listen to. ^[^10]^”</p> |
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<p> |
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I see our present network scenario to be somewhere between the following: reduced travel, an ever more powerful set of online tools, and environmental emergency (and urgency). Although Awne was a streaming event, I could still feel enough “flesh” of TCF, even compared to his live performance back in the day.</p> |
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<p> |
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Based upon the above mentioned network components, I am currently in the process of setting up a “slow-speed” virtual-physical residency program between The Hague and Minamisanriku, a small municipality in Japan known to be one of the areas most affected by the 2011 Tsunami. It is an ethereal attempt to connect the two coastal regions beyond two vast oceans and one continent while setting “water management” as the common theme. “Virtual does not need to be fast” is the tag line and we are aiming to leave a “physical” trail in Minamisanriku through which the local residents can gradually shed the abominable image of a disaster-stricken area.</p> |
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</div> |
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[^1]: https://www.ntticc.or.jp/en/exhibitions/1991/intercommunication-91-the-museum-inside-the-telephone-network/ |
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[^2]: https://monoskop.org/File:InterCommunication_91_The_Museum_Inside_the_Telephone_Network_1991_hires.pdf |
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[^3]: https://www.ntticc.or.jp/en/feature/1995/The_Museum_Inside_The_Network/index-e.html |
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[^4]: https://www.youtube.com/embed/DIWKZhbr3VQ?start=1144 |
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[^5]: https://www.youtube.com/embed/DIWKZhbr3VQ?start=1481 |
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[^6]: https://www.ntticc.or.jp/en/feature/1995/The_Museum_Inside_The_Network/message/itoh-e.html |
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[^7]: https://soundcloud.com/liberationtechnologies/tcf-54-c6-05-1c-13-cc-72-e9-cc-dc-84-f2-a3-ff-cc-38-1e-94-0d-c0-50-5c-3e-e8 |
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[^8]: https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/sonia-312-lars-holdhustcf |
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[^9]: https://www.unsound.pl/en/intermission/events/tcf-presents-awne |
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[^10]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQucsMWYVnI |
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Title: The Pandemic's Dark Cloud |
Title: The Pandemic's Dark Cloud |
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Author: Mél Hogan |
Author: Mél Hogan |
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<p id="colophon_title">Colophon</p> |
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<div class="colophon"> |
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<p>A Nourishing Network is a peer-to-peer publishing experiment starting from the feed as a potentially multi-directional circulation device.</p> |
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<p>A Nourishing Network is initiated by servus.at (Davide Bevilacqua) in collaboration with varia.zone (Alice Strete & Manetta Berends) and is published in the context of AMRO 2020 (Arts Meets Radical Openness). </p> |
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<p> Editing: Davide Bevilacqua <br> Design and development: Manetta Berends, Alice Strete <br> Paper: xxxx <br> Typeface: Gnu Unifont, White Rabbit, Ansi Shadow <br> Print and production: Varia <br> This project is produced with Free Software tools. The feeds are made with Pelican & Weasyprint. |
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</p> |
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<p> Davide is an artist and curator working is the blurry area between media and contemporary art. </p><p> Manetta Berends is a designer working with forms of networked publishing, situated software and collective infrastructures. </p> <p>Alice Strete is an artist and researcher interested in the intricate relationship between humans and the technologies they surround themselves with. </p> <p>Many thanks to our partners, collaborators, authors and the AMRO community. </p> |
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<p> Published under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.</p> |
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</p></div> |
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<div class="first-page"> |
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<div id="title_edition"> A Nourishing Network - December 2020</div> |
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<div id="title">The Pandemic's Dark Cloud</div> |
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<div id="author"> by Mél Hogan</div> |
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<header id="pageheader-issue">A Nourishing Network</header> |
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<header id="pageheader-theme">The Pandemic's Dark Cloud</header> |
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</pre>s the pandemic settled into consciousness across the globe, humans devolved. People in countries where the response to COVID-19 was most mismanaged started to snack a lot.^[^1]^ Pre-sliced packaged charcuterie. Ritz crackers. Oreo cookies. In their growing helplessness, people also sharply increased their consumption of alcohol, especially women in the US.^[^2]^ For some it was drugs. Those lucky enough to keep their job doubled down on work, staying at their stations or desks for longer hours – part avoidance and part stuckness into systems that could offer no other plan.</p> |
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The dread by now is cumulative. Pick your pain: covid19, white supremacy, climate catastrophe. People are reaching new levels of “doomscrolling” on social media, playing online video games, and “binge-watching” Netflix as ways to pass the time, waiting on the virus to run its course, or for politicians to make a plan. As things shut down, Zoom quickly took over as the way to communicate at a safe social distance. Education quickly became clicking at screens. No more shopping in person meant ordering by way of interfaces. All of these screens more or less allowed things to continue, if not as normal, as a viable alternative in the meantime. It remains to be seen if this online world we’ve adopted so quickly is the new normal, and here to stay, or if it’ll reflect to us the inefficiencies of how we lived before and save us from ourselves. Or, maybe it will call into question the terrible inequities that are only made more evident by this pandemic.</p> |
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By April, the news media were already reporting that lockdowns had meant cleaner air and clearer water.^[^3]^ Satellite images showed less pollution over China and the US. Animals were found roaming freely in different parts of India.^[^4]^ “Nature is healing” became a popular meme celebrating the lessening of human impact and nature’s recovery.^[^5]^ But were the effects of lockdown, or quarantine, of humans being trapped in their homes, and of doing everything online, truly a more sustainable way of going about life? Had the turn to “the cloud” proven to be the weightless way forward? Social isolation and disinformation propagation problems aside, could the internet become a tool to inadvertently save the environment?</p> |
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In thinking of the internet and the many devices connected to it, these account for approximately 2-4% of global greenhouse emissions, which only promise to double by 2025.^[^6]^ Data centres and vast server farms (where data is stored and transmitted) draw more than 80% of their energy from fossil fuel power stations. Online video alone – porn, Netflix, YouTube, Zoom – generated 60% of the world’s total data flows before covid19 hit. A Google search uses as much energy as cooking an egg or boiling water in an electric kettle.^[^7]^ Yearly emails for work (and not accounting for spam) have been calculated to be equal in terms of CO2 emissions to driving 320 kilometres.^[^8]^ These numbers have likely gone up considerably since the pandemic.^[^9]^ This way of living wasn’t sustainable then, and it certainly isn’t now.</p> |
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There are search engines (eg. Ecosia^[^10]^) and add-ons (eg. Carbonalyser by The Shift Project,^[^11]^ green-algorithms.org^[^12]^) that help measure user impacts on the environment, but these miss addressing the bigger questions – such as moving away from confronting personal use to the systemic, material, and ideological issues baked into the internet. Why is the internet like this? The question is more political than it is purely technological. It’s more emotional, even, than it is political. Because we’ve drifted so far away from understanding nature as inherent to human and non-human wellbeing alike, towards unrelenting and exploitative capitalism and extractivism, it means we now have these massively entangled systems that reinforce one another, generate profit for the very few, but in the end benefit nothing and nobody.^[^13]^ These systems are harder to abolish or undo, so instead we turn to solutions that lessen their impacts, and we consider the rest inevitable – or worse, natural. We might, for example, shift data centers to cooler climates to save on cooling costs, we might develop more efficient software, we might offer carbon offsetting and plant trees, but none of these technofixes reach the heart of the our current predicament: our solutions and our problems originate from the same short-sighted, greed-driven, competitive, and market-driven agendas that caused this global deadly pandemic in the first place.</p> |
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In 2020, we are generating 50 million tons worldwide of electronic waste, with an annual growth of 5%.^[^14]^ This means that we produce e-waste at three times the rate that humans reproduce. Much e-waste is toxic and severely impacts land, water, plants, animals, and humans. This damage is permanent. At the other end of the supply chain, fields of wheat and corn have become lakes of toxic sludge to accommodate the rare earth mining industry.^[^15]^ From Mongolia to China to the Congo, people labour in dangerous conditions, mining through the ore-laden mud to find rare minerals to power our devices. Elsewhere, people work endless shifts to assemble computers, phones, tablets. It should be no surprise then that the internet that connects this all is toxic too, evidenced by both the work of content moderators who filter the internet, and the shady tactics used by Big Tech to evade taxes to get filthy rich off the backs of this global human-powered machine. As Ron Deibert put it recently in his 2020 CBC Massey Lectures, “If we continue on this path of unbridled consumption and planned obsolescence, we are doomed.”^[^16]^</p> |
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So we can either become extinct from the repercussions of our centuries old destructive neoliberal colonial institutions, as the planet pushes back with more pandemics, storms, and violence, or we can get together and admit to our failures as colonisers. These failures tap into something profound, deeply broken, about what settlers have historically valued and continue to enact. We are living largely in the dark fantasies of ghosts – and these old, settler ideas haunt and break us. We can imagine better. We can make other decisions. We can tune our emotions to move from awareness to anxiety to action. We return public lands to Indigenous peoples. We defund police and dismantle white supremacy. We transform ourselves, and our communication systems will follow.</p> |
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[^1]: [[*https://www.convenience.org/Media/Daily/2020/May/1/6-Snack-Sales-Soar-During-Pandemic\_Marketing*]{.underline}](https://www.convenience.org/Media/Daily/2020/May/1/6-Snack-Sales-Soar-During-Pandemic_Marketing) |
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[[*https://news.italianfood.net/2020/04/02/pre-sliced-packaged-charcuterie-partly-offsets-pandemic-blow/*]{.underline}](https://news.italianfood.net/2020/04/02/pre-sliced-packaged-charcuterie-partly-offsets-pandemic-blow/) |
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[[*https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/16078-the-snack-trends-predicted-to-persist-post-pandemic*]{.underline}](https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/16078-the-snack-trends-predicted-to-persist-post-pandemic) |
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[^2]: [[*https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/americans-are-handling-coronavirus-pandemic-by-binging-on-snacks/*]{.underline}](https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/americans-are-handling-coronavirus-pandemic-by-binging-on-snacks/) |
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[[*https://www.herworld.com/gallery/life/wellness/overeating-binge-eating-covid19-pandemic-work-home/*]{.underline}](https://www.herworld.com/gallery/life/wellness/overeating-binge-eating-covid19-pandemic-work-home/) |
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[^3]: [[*https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/coronavirus-shutdowns-have-unintended-climate-benefits-n1161921*]{.underline}](https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/coronavirus-shutdowns-have-unintended-climate-benefits-n1161921) |
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[^4]: [[*https://www.planetofstudents.com/blog/social-awareness/effects-of-lockdown-on-the-environment/*]{.underline}](https://www.planetofstudents.com/blog/social-awareness/effects-of-lockdown-on-the-environment/) |
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[^5]: [[*https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanuelfelton/coronavirus-meme-nature-is-healing-we-are-the-virus*]{.underline}](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanuelfelton/coronavirus-meme-nature-is-healing-we-are-the-virus) |
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[^6]: [[*https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think*]{.underline}](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think) |
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[^7]: [[*https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jan/12/carbon-emissions-google*]{.underline}](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jan/12/carbon-emissions-google) |
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[^8]: [[*https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think*]{.underline}](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think) |
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and |
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[[*https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-55002423*]{.underline}](https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-55002423) |
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[^9]: [[*https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-online-video/*]{.underline}](https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-online-video/) |
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[^10]: [[*https://www.ecosia.org/*]{.underline}](https://www.ecosia.org/) |
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[^11]: [[*https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/carbonalyser/*]{.underline}](https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/carbonalyser/) |
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[^12]: [[*http://www.green-algorithms.org/*]{.underline}](http://www.green-algorithms.org/) |
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"The Pandemic\'s Dark Cloud" was written in November 2020 as a |
[^13]: [[*https://landback.org/manifesto/*]{.underline}](https://landback.org/manifesto/) |
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[^14]: [[*https://www.thebalancesmb.com/e-waste-recycling-facts-and-figures-2878189*]{.underline}](https://www.thebalancesmb.com/e-waste-recycling-facts-and-figures-2878189) |
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[^15]: [[*https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html*]{.underline}](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html) |
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[^16]: [[*https://munkschool.exposure.co/a-qa-with-ron-deibert*]{.underline}](https://munkschool.exposure.co/a-qa-with-ron-deibert) |
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</div> |
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<p id="summary"> The Pandemic's Dark Cloud was written in November 2020 as a |
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reflection on the relationship between the pandemic and environmental |
reflection on the relationship between the pandemic and environmental |
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media, with a focus on "the cloud" and its undergirding networked |
media, with a focus on "the cloud" and its undergirding networked |
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infrastructure. The central idea of this piece is to demonstrate the |
infrastructure. The central idea of this piece is to demonstrate the |
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interconnectedness of all things -- covid, care, community, nature, |
interconnectedness of all things -- covid, care, community, nature, |
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ewaste, racism, greed -- in both the making and undoing of our modern |
ewaste, racism, greed -- in both the making and undoing of our modern |
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communication systems. |
communication systems. |
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|
<br><br> |
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This piece is intended as a provocation, so your thoughts and feelings |
This piece is intended as a provocation, so your thoughts and feelings |
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are very welcomed! |
are very welcomed! </p> |
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|
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*Mél Hogan is the Director of the *[*Environmental Media Lab |
<div class="bio-mel"> |
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(EML)*](https://www.environmentalmedialab.com/)* and *[*Associate |
|
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Professor*](https://www.melhogan.com/)* at the University of Calgary, |
*Mél Hogan is the Director of the [[Environmental Media Lab |
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|
(EML)]{.underline}](https://www.environmentalmedialab.com/)* and [[Associate |
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|
Professor]{.underline}](https://www.melhogan.com/) at the University of Calgary, |
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Canada. She is also an Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of |
Canada. She is also an Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of |
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Communication. Career highlights so far include keynoting the 2020 |
Communication. Career highlights so far include keynoting the 2020 |
||||
McLuhan lecture at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin, and giving a plenary |
McLuhan lecture at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin, and giving a plenary |
||||
at transmediale 2020.\ |
at transmediale 2020.\ |
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\@mel\_hogan / melhogan.com / mhogan\@ucalgary.ca* |
\@mel\_hogan / melhogan.com / mhogan\@ucalgary.ca* </div> |
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|
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# The Pandemic's Dark Cloud |
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|
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As the pandemic settled into consciousness across the globe, humans |
|
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devolved. People in countries where the response to COVID-19 was most |
|
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mismanaged started to snack a lot.^[^1]^ Pre-sliced packaged |
|
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charcuterie. Ritz crackers. Oreo cookies. In their growing helplessness, |
|
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people also sharply increased their consumption of alcohol, especially |
|
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women in the US.^[^2]^ For some it was drugs. Those lucky enough to keep |
|
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their job doubled down on work, staying at their stations or desks for |
|
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longer hours -- part avoidance and part stuckness into systems that |
|
||||
could offer no other plan. |
|
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|
|
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The dread by now is cumulative. Pick your pain: covid19, white |
|
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supremacy, climate catastrophe. People are reaching new levels of |
|
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"doomscrolling" on social media, playing online video games, and |
|
||||
"binge-watching" Netflix as ways to pass the time, waiting on the virus |
|
||||
to run its course, or for politicians to make a plan. As things shut |
|
||||
down, Zoom quickly took over as the way to communicate at a safe social |
|
||||
distance. Education quickly became clicking at screens. No more shopping |
|
||||
in person meant ordering by way of interfaces. All of these screens more |
|
||||
or less allowed things to continue, if not as normal, as a viable |
|
||||
alternative in the meantime. It remains to be seen if this online world |
|
||||
we've adopted so quickly is the new normal, and here to stay, or if |
|
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it'll reflect to us the inefficiencies of how we lived before and save |
|
||||
us from ourselves. Or, maybe it will call into question the terrible |
|
||||
inequities that are only made more evident by this pandemic. |
|
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|
|
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By April, the news media were already reporting that lockdowns had meant |
|
||||
cleaner air and clearer water.^[^3]^ Satellite images showed less |
|
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pollution over China and the US. Animals were found roaming freely in |
|
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different parts of India.^[^4]^ "Nature is healing" became a popular |
|
||||
meme celebrating the lessening of human impact and nature's |
|
||||
recovery.^[^5]^ But were the effects of lockdown, or quarantine, of |
|
||||
humans being trapped in their homes, and of doing everything online, |
|
||||
truly a more sustainable way of going about life? Had the turn to "the |
|
||||
cloud" proven to be the weightless way forward? Social isolation and |
|
||||
disinformation propagation problems aside, could the internet become a |
|
||||
tool to inadvertently save the environment? |
|
||||
|
|
||||
In thinking of the internet and the many devices connected to it, these |
|
||||
account for approximately 2-4% of global greenhouse emissions, which |
|
||||
only promise to double by 2025.^[^6]^ Data centres and vast server farms |
|
||||
(where data is stored and transmitted) draw more than 80% of their |
|
||||
energy from fossil fuel power stations. Online video alone -- porn, |
|
||||
Netflix, YouTube, Zoom -- generated 60% of the world's total data flows |
|
||||
before covid19 hit. A Google search uses as much energy as cooking an |
|
||||
egg or boiling water in an electric kettle.^[^7]^ Yearly emails for work |
|
||||
(and not accounting for spam) have been calculated to be equal in terms |
|
||||
of CO2 emissions to driving 320 kilometres.^[^8]^ These numbers have |
|
||||
likely gone up considerably since the pandemic.^[^9]^ This way of living |
|
||||
wasn't sustainable then, and it certainly isn't now. |
|
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|
|
||||
There are search engines (eg. Ecosia^[^10]^) and add-ons (eg. |
|
||||
Carbonalyser by The Shift Project,^[^11]^ green-algorithms.org^[^12]^) |
|
||||
that help measure user impacts on the environment, but these miss |
|
||||
addressing the bigger questions -- such as moving away from confronting |
|
||||
personal use to the systemic, material, and ideological issues baked |
|
||||
into the internet. Why is the internet like this? The question is more |
|
||||
political than it is purely technological. It's more emotional, even, |
|
||||
than it is political. Because we've drifted so far away from |
|
||||
understanding nature as inherent to human and non-human wellbeing alike, |
|
||||
towards unrelenting and exploitative capitalism and extractivism, it |
|
||||
means we now have these massively entangled systems that reinforce one |
|
||||
another, generate profit for the very few, but in the end benefit |
|
||||
nothing and nobody.^[^13]^ These systems are harder to abolish or undo, |
|
||||
so instead we turn to solutions that lessen their impacts, and we |
|
||||
consider the rest inevitable -- or worse, natural. We might, for |
|
||||
example, shift data centers to cooler climates to save on cooling costs, |
|
||||
we might develop more efficient software, we might offer carbon |
|
||||
offsetting and plant trees, but none of these technofixes reach the |
|
||||
heart of the our current predicament: our solutions and our problems |
|
||||
originate from the same short-sighted, greed-driven, competitive, and |
|
||||
market-driven agendas that caused this global deadly pandemic in the |
|
||||
first place. |
|
||||
|
|
||||
In 2020, we are generating 50 million tons worldwide of electronic |
|
||||
waste, with an annual growth of 5%.^[^14]^ This means that we produce |
|
||||
e-waste at three times the rate that humans reproduce. Much e-waste is |
|
||||
toxic and severely impacts land, water, plants, animals, and humans. |
|
||||
This damage is permanent. At the other end of the supply chain, fields |
|
||||
of wheat and corn have become lakes of toxic sludge to accommodate the |
|
||||
rare earth mining industry.^[^15]^ From Mongolia to China to the Congo, |
|
||||
people labour in dangerous conditions, mining through the ore-laden mud |
|
||||
to find rare minerals to power our devices. Elsewhere, people work |
|
||||
endless shifts to assemble computers, phones, tablets. It should be no |
|
||||
surprise then that the internet that connects this all is toxic too, |
|
||||
evidenced by both the work of content moderators who filter the |
|
||||
internet, and the shady tactics used by Big Tech to evade taxes to get |
|
||||
filthy rich off the backs of this global human-powered machine. As Ron |
|
||||
Deibert put it recently in his 2020 CBC Massey Lectures, "If we continue |
|
||||
on this path of unbridled consumption and planned obsolescence, we are |
|
||||
doomed."^[^16]^ |
|
||||
|
|
||||
So we can either become extinct from the repercussions of our centuries |
|
||||
old destructive neoliberal colonial institutions, as the planet pushes |
|
||||
back with more pandemics, storms, and violence, or we can get together |
|
||||
and admit to our failures as colonisers. These failures tap into |
|
||||
something profound, deeply broken, about what settlers have historically |
|
||||
valued and continue to enact. We are living largely in the dark |
|
||||
fantasies of ghosts -- and these old, settler ideas haunt and break us. |
|
||||
We can imagine better. We can make other decisions. We can tune our |
|
||||
emotions to move from awareness to anxiety to action. We return public |
|
||||
lands to Indigenous peoples. We defund police and dismantle white |
|
||||
supremacy. We transform ourselves, and our communication systems will |
|
||||
follow. |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^1]: [*https://www.convenience.org/Media/Daily/2020/May/1/6-Snack-Sales-Soar-During-Pandemic\_Marketing*](https://www.convenience.org/Media/Daily/2020/May/1/6-Snack-Sales-Soar-During-Pandemic_Marketing) |
|
||||
[*https://news.italianfood.net/2020/04/02/pre-sliced-packaged-charcuterie-partly-offsets-pandemic-blow/*](https://news.italianfood.net/2020/04/02/pre-sliced-packaged-charcuterie-partly-offsets-pandemic-blow/) |
|
||||
[*https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/16078-the-snack-trends-predicted-to-persist-post-pandemic*](https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/16078-the-snack-trends-predicted-to-persist-post-pandemic) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^2]: [*https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/americans-are-handling-coronavirus-pandemic-by-binging-on-snacks/*](https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/americans-are-handling-coronavirus-pandemic-by-binging-on-snacks/) |
|
||||
[*https://www.herworld.com/gallery/life/wellness/overeating-binge-eating-covid19-pandemic-work-home/*](https://www.herworld.com/gallery/life/wellness/overeating-binge-eating-covid19-pandemic-work-home/) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^3]: [*https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/coronavirus-shutdowns-have-unintended-climate-benefits-n1161921*](https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/coronavirus-shutdowns-have-unintended-climate-benefits-n1161921) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^4]: [*https://www.planetofstudents.com/blog/social-awareness/effects-of-lockdown-on-the-environment/*](https://www.planetofstudents.com/blog/social-awareness/effects-of-lockdown-on-the-environment/) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^5]: [*https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanuelfelton/coronavirus-meme-nature-is-healing-we-are-the-virus*](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanuelfelton/coronavirus-meme-nature-is-healing-we-are-the-virus) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^6]: [*https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think*](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^7]: [*https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jan/12/carbon-emissions-google*](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jan/12/carbon-emissions-google) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^8]: [*https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think*](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think) |
|
||||
and |
|
||||
[*https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-55002423*](https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-55002423) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^9]: [*https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-online-video/*](https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-online-video/) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^10]: [*https://www.ecosia.org/*](https://www.ecosia.org/) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^11]: [*https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/carbonalyser/*](https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/carbonalyser/) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^12]: [*http://www.green-algorithms.org/*](http://www.green-algorithms.org/) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^13]: [*https://landback.org/manifesto/*](https://landback.org/manifesto/) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^14]: [*https://www.thebalancesmb.com/e-waste-recycling-facts-and-figures-2878189*](https://www.thebalancesmb.com/e-waste-recycling-facts-and-figures-2878189) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^15]: [*https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html*](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html) |
|
||||
|
|
||||
[^16]: [*https://munkschool.exposure.co/a-qa-with-ron-deibert*](https://munkschool.exposure.co/a-qa-with-ron-deibert) |
|
||||
|
|||||
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Reference in new issue