Earth Computing

Abstract

Following up on the seminal work of late 1990s/early 2000's Silicon Valley theory collective "C5 Corporation", Stalbaum will discuss a a number of legacy projects that speculated on the literal return of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data to the actual landscapes from which that data was derived, in order to produce new kinds of co-agency between big data and human experience as performance art "in the wild". Under the banner of "Earth Computing", the walkingtools.net laboratory (UNIFESP/UCSD) is exploring how today similar data may return to that landscape in an even more literal way: through distributed computing and the property of "data locality" inherent in contemporary compute platforms such as Hadoop. Indeed, not only through data locality, but through solar power and the literal placement of compute power in the landscape itself, all as a way to explore new options for land art and performance art. Brett Stalbaum is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego where he coordinates computing related courses of study (majors) and teaches computer programming and the histories of computing in media art. Stalbaum is a founding member of the Electronic Disturbance Theater (1997), which is known for its activist projects such as FloodNet and the Transborder Immigrant Tool. In 2013 he released the Gun Geo Marker Android app, a pro gun rights gesture that nevertheless confused and outraged radical right-wing gun locos in the United States. (Which is not hard to do.) Currently he is working on the concept of "Earth Computing" in the bi-national UNIFESP/UCSD Walkingtools.net laboratory (with co-PI Cicero Silva.).