Group Hug: Endless Data Forests and the Solar Web

Group Hug: Open to the public September 27 - October 20, 2024

1PM - 7PM, Thursdays through Sundays Only

A conversation about digital climate impact and alternative digital cultures, featuring Rhizome.org and Solar Protocol.

In Tale of Tales’s “Endless Forest,” on view as part of Group Hug, users are asked to explore alternative modes of relating to networked media – slow-paced, ambient, and meditative. While the “Endless Forest” encourages intentional and slow engagement, the infinite scrolls and swipes of today’s digital culture seem to demand constant engagement. And with each tap and swipe, networked devices relay signals to remote data centers, where powerful cooling systems keep seemingly endless arrays of CPUs on hardware life support. An infinite scroll requires infinite resources.

This infrastructure is hidden from sight, and it is rare for users to get any sense of the climate impact their digital lives may be having, or to be able to make choices about what kind of energy powers their digital lives. In this context, many users are considering alternative modes of engaging with digital culture on their own terms.

Created by Tega Brain, Alex Nathanson, and Benedetta Piantella, Solar Protocol is one example of such an alternative model – an international network of solar powered, lightweight servers. Requests to the network are automatically directed to wherever in the network is receiving the most sun, which they describe as a kind of “natural intelligence.”

For the past year, Rhizome.org has been researching digital climate impact. Lead developer Mark Beasley created a dashboard visualizing the climate impact of our digital programs. As part of this, we have established a West Coast node for the Solar Protocol network.

The implication of Solar Protocol goes beyond changing out the backend of the web – it suggests a different set of possibilities for digital culture itself, perhaps more in keeping with the Endless Forest than the infinite scroll.

About Tega Brain:

Tega Brain is an Australian artist and environmental engineer, born when atmospheric CO2 was below 350ppm. Her work addresses issues of ecology, data, automation, and infrastructure. She is an Industry Associate Professor of integrated Design and Media at New York University and her first book, Code as Creative Medium, is coauthored with Golan Levin and published with MIT Press. She lives and works in New York.

About Alex Nathanson:

Alex Nathanson is a designer, technologist, artist, and educator. His work is primarily focused on exploring both the experimental and practical applications of sustainable energy technologies, particularly photovoltaic solar power. He runs the design studio Energy Transition Design LLC and education platform Solar Power for Artists. His book A History of Solar Power Art and Design, was published by Routledge in 2021.

About Benedetta Piantella:

Benedetta is a designer turned educator and humanitarian technologist. She was involved in international development projects for the past twenty years, ever since her experience of surviving the Tsunami in Sri Lanka in 2004 and organizing relief efforts from the ground. She has been teaching for almost two decades in different disciplines and to different age groups, from STEM and Robotics courses to K-12 students to Ideation & Prototyping, HCI, Physical Computing and Global Engineering classes to undergraduate and graduate students. She founded two R&D companies focused on producing sustainable solutions to global problems and through partnerships with Governments, large international organizations such as the UN and UNICEF, research institutions such as The Earth Institute at Columbia University and multiple NGOs, she has designed, prototyped and deployed projects in many countries such as the Netherlands, United States, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

About Tales of Tales:

Tale of Tales was founded in late 2003 by artists Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, who had been working together as Entropy8Zuper! since 1999, marking a transition from net art to videogames. The “Endless Forest,” one of their first releases, exemplifies the duo’s intention to consider videogames as an interactive art form. The studio was active through 2015, concluding with the release of Sunset. Samyn and Harvey continue to work collaboratively as artist duo Song of Songs, while also maintaining solo art practices. Harvey’s survey exhibition My Veins Are the Wires, My Body Is Your Keyboard is on view at the Museum of the Moving Image.

About Rhizome:

Rhizome is an online arts organization that archives, commissions, and contextualizes digital art, with the unofficial motto “digital art everywhere, for everybody.” Founded by artist Mark Tribe as an email discussion list including some of the first artists to work online, Rhizome has played an integral role in the history of contemporary art engaged with digital technologies and the internet. Rhizome hosts the 7x7 art and technology initiative, and supports the legacy A partner of the New Museum since 2003, Rhizome’s programs take place on the web and in NYC and beyond.

About Group Hug:

Group Hug, a landmark exhibition of large-scale, site-specific video game installations. Presented by Onassis ONX with Water Street Projects in collaboration with curator Julia Kaganskiy, Serpentine Arts Technologies, and Rhizome, the exhibition invites visitors to play together and lose themselves in the sensorial worlds of each game through sight, sound, and touch.

Across each game, players must learn to communicate and cooperate in order to discover and survive unfamiliar worlds. Group Hug is inspired by the idea of radical collaboration, with each work elevating group play over individualistic game logic.

About Onassis ONX:

Onassis ONX is an Onassis Culture platform dedicated to new media art and digital experiences. It empowers creators with cutting-edge technologies, artistic excellence, and financial sustainability. The program offers capacity-building, incubation, seed funding, and showcase opportunities for artists worldwide. Founded in 2020 as ONX Studio, Onassis ONX is a field-building platform with strategic partnerships in the international new media art.

*Image: Rhizome’s Solar Web Server courtesy of Mark Beasley

Host or Publisher ONX Studio