FIBER: (De)Growing Infrastructures | Wwarming Up Festival
An evening of short talks and an in-depth panel discussion, where artists and researchers reveal how they incorporate regenerative computing into their practice.
Information technologies—and our everyday use of them—leave a harmful ecological and material footprint across the planet. Yes, this even applies to your daily AI conversations with ChatGPT. These systems are extractive by nature, relying on enormous amounts of coal, water, and land. The rapid expansion of digital ecosystems is only made possible through the exploitation of natural resources, steadily pushing the Earth closer to a hothouse future. It’s high time to work on alternatives.
But what if computer systems could be powered by living organisms? Could we reimagine energy production, data storage, and the reuse of waste energy through experimental regenerative art and design?
The program (De)Growing Infrastructures, presented by Amsterdam-based FIBER and partners, explores these questions. A group of visionary makers and thinkers share their work, showing how they experiment, build, and dream of regenerative computer systems. These artists and researchers use permacomputing, waste energy, and digital composting to create systems that are not extractive but regenerative. In other words: redesigning computers and electricity with mud, bacteria, algae, e-waste, and permaculture principles. The program is accessible to everyone—whether you’re a newcomer or an expert. We’ll make sure you leave with a clear understanding of who’s doing what (and why?!).
In connection with the Warming Up Festival theme The Art of Coexisting, we come together to learn from artists and designers working on alternative digital futures. Can we collectively grow a new vision of computation?
Alongside this panel discussion, a workshop on these themes will take place on 24 November.
This program is part of Warming Up Festival 2025: a month of art, culture, and science about living together in a warming world. Discover the full festival program at wearewarmingup.nl/programma.
At the end of 2024, FIBER and the wider Permacomputing Community organized the first Dutch symposium on permacomputing and ecological media and network technologies at Tolhuistuin. Under the title Practising Permacomputing, they explored how the theory of permacomputing can be put into practice by a wide range of artists, designers, and activists.
Now, one year later, they return to Tolhuistuin together with the symposium’s participants for a dynamic evening to ask: where does everyone stand today? What has happened in the meantime, and which art and technology projects are most exciting to share?
