It is widely known that smoking industrial plants, masses of cars, nuclear power plants and mountains of plastic are harmful to the climate. But what about digitalization, this supposedly invisible and immaterial hope-bearing technology?

The artworks by Simon Weckert and Ulrich Formann at NEW ECOLOGIES use data-based media art strategies to draw attention to overlooked climate impacts. Weckert’s artwork “Emission of the Cloud”, for example, emits smoke that symbolizes the amount of CO₂ that can be traced back to the hourly internet usage of all Chemnitz residents. Ulrich Formann’s sculpture “Slotmachine” calculates the empty flights in real time, which only serve to hold usage rights at airports, and displays them on a large display board. With his film “Brute Force”, artist Felix Lenz explores the effects of our data-based, digital age on ecology and landscape, while also demonstrating sustainable alternatives with his self-hosted and solar-powered website.

Ulrich Formann, Simon Weckert and Felix Lenz will present their work on the last evening of the exhibition and discuss the challenges and strategies of artistic engagement with the less visible effects of current digitalization and possible alternatives. The event will be moderated by Amelie Buchinger, who works as a research assistant at the Research Centre for Techno-aesthetics at the AdBK Munich and is doing her doctorate at Leuphana University Lüneburg with a thesis on the media cultural history of digital decarbonization

Between the contributions, there will be space and time to talk about the repressed effects of our current digitalization, but also about possible alternatives.