about: university course where: Department of Interface Cultures, Linz University of Arts when: wintersemester, since 2021.

How much water does a Google search take?
Did you know how much electricity it takes to train ChatGPT?
How many fish are affected by water-cooled data centres?
Are you sceptical about the whole self-driving car thing?

So how do we resist the constant urge to go higher,\\
with more connectivity, more pixels, more data and more computing?

Within the course of Sustainable IT we developed artistic research in the field of information technology, with a focus on the sustainability – or lack thereof – of contemporary technology. We asked how complicit we are in the environmental impact of the internet, what models are there for grounding and imagining less impactful, or even regenerative, community-oriented network technologies. We looked at permacomputing and rural computing, as well as the right to repair, low-tech networks and the small-tech art world. And, last but not least, how we can make our own practice more sustainable and support the development of new forms of internet through our work.