DEFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOREST is a net based piece that shows the amount of trees needed to absorb the amount of CO2 generated by the global visits to google.com every second.
This project has been created with the aim to explore strategies able to trigger thoughts and actions capable to highlight the invisible connections between actions and consequences when using digital communication technologies.
Although it is intensively engaged in the logic of networks, the networked society has so far failed to transpose the logic of networking into daily life. We lazily assume that "everything is connected", but in fact we must remember that "everything is not connected", as Graham Harman stated. While humans are becoming increasingly machinelike and dependent on data, the connection between humans and their life giving natural habitats, is hastily fading away. We seem to have withdrawn into a machinic vacuum of reality which blinds us to the complexities of the world. Therefore, it is necessary to continuously trace the connections that exist between things in order to acquire a complex understanding of the world.
Google.com is the most visited site on the Internet. The site has an average of 52.000 visits per second [1] and weights around 2MB, resulting into an estimated amount of 500kg of CO2 emissions every second [2]. On average a tree can absorb 21,77kg of CO2 per year [3]. Thus, in order to counteract the amount of CO2 emissions derived by the global visits to google.com, every second, we would need an approximate amount of 23 trees/second.
The actual configuration of technology reinforces cultural dynamics (rituals) that stress disconnectedness. In our contemporary algorithmic decision-making society, ecosystems are being increasingly considered as mere economic externalities. How can we rearticulate our relationship with the world if we are unable to see the actual impact of our actions in the concrete world? What can be the role of media art in the reinforcement of such process? What fundamental shifts need to occur in the sphere of art in order to reveal the connections between actions and consequences, especially when those actions are mediated by technology?
I believe it is crucial to set the environment as a main political agent within the networked society art discourse and to create mechanisms that might stimulate and re-appropriate subjectivity, an essential process in the generation of critical thought about the true nature of technology, and in the imagination of alternative techno-paradigms which may coherently respond to our environmental and human conditions.
Special thanks to Ramin Soleymani
[On average, this projects emits 0,04gr of CO2 per visit]