Studio 207 · 20 → 23 November, 10:00 am–5:00 pm & Screening Saturday from · 1:30 pm–3:00 pm
Computational Compost addresses the environmental impact of data storage and proposes a synergy between technology and ecology. It consists of a prototype using the heat emitted by computers running simulations of the universe’s origin to power a vermicomposting machine with live worms and microorganisms that thrive on this energy to create fertile soil that sustains life in its most primal form. Celestial and biological bodies are linked by processes of metabolism and fermentation, decomposition and regeneration, the metamorphosis that runs through all cycles of matter.
photo credit : Tabakalera
Marina Otero Verzier, an architect and researcher, is Lecturer at Harvard GSD. She also leads the Data Mourning clinic at Columbia University GSAPP. Her work focuses on infrastructures, ecologies, and new pedagogical models that question the politics of technology. In recent years, Otero Verzier has investigated the environmental impact of computation, looking at the material consequences of digital infrastructures and proposing ways of reimagining them through composting and circular strategies.
At Perma/Soils, she addresses the entanglement of soil and computation, showing how infrastructures of extraction and infrastructures of data are deeply interconnected.