critical infrastructure lab

At ThingsCon Fieke Jansen, Kars Alfrink, and Sunjoo Lee will be holding a workshop on ‘Building and imagining people’s AI infrastructures via Mud batteries’. December 12th

Find out more: https://thingscon.org/events/things-2025/program#workshops

Date: 8 December 2025
Time: 10:30 – 16:30
Location: Wageningen Campus, Omnia (Quantum)
Registration deadline: 24 November → Sign up here

We are pleased to invite you to the seminar “Infringing Infrastructures: Environmental Justice and Inequality in the Urbanising World,” jointly organised by Wageningen University and the University of Amsterdam under the SSH Sectorplan Social Inequality and Diversity.

This interdisciplinary event explores how infrastructures—whether designed for sustainability, mobility, or adaptation—can unintentionally deepen existing inequalities or create new forms of marginalisation. From tidal parks and green corridors to renewable energy systems and smart technologies, the seminar asks: Who benefits, and who bears the costs of infrastructure-led change?

The day will feature presentations and discussions with leading scholars including Kei Otsuki (UU), Sumit Vij (WUR), Milan Babic (UvA), Jannes Willems (UvA), Karen Paiva Henrique (UvA), Stephanie Ketterer (WUR), Robert Coates (WUR) and Fieke Jansen (UvA).

The seminar is organised within the Urbanscapes cluster of the Centre for Space, Place and Society (CSPS) at Wageningen University and Research and the Amsterdam Centre for Inequality Studies (AMCIS) at the University of Amsterdam.

The event is free and open to all—students, PhDs, and staff interested in infrastructure, inequality, and environmental justice are especially encouraged to join. Lunch is included.

Register by 24 November

Organisers:
Martijn Koster (WUR) | Sumit Vij (WUR) | Wouter van Gent (UvA) | Milan Babic (UvA)

Rethinking Cloud and AI Infrastructure — Environmental, Technical, and Governance Challenges

The 1st INFRASTRUCTURE Workshop brings together researchers from Computer Science, Science and Technology Studies (STS), and related fields to critically examine the material, environmental, and socio-technical foundations of today’s computing systems. It addresses:

• The growing environmental impact of datacenters and AI infrastructure,
• The illusion of infinite scalability and its socio-technical consequences, and
• The centralisation and governance of cloud infrastructure

The workshop emphasizes interactive discussion between communities, aiming to generate open questions and dialogue among participants.

Fieke Jansen will deliver the keynote address Governing infrastructures: keeping compute infrastructures within planetary boundaries

https://infrastructure.web.deuxfleurs.fr/2025/program/#keynotes-9301045-cet

The afternoon is organised as a work session where participants are invited to collaborate and hack on experimental projects at the critical infrastructure lab, ranging from programming through electronics and software defined radio. We start with an overview of experiments at various stages of completion, discuss their heuristic, critical and constructive potentials and possible development directions. Self-selected work groups then spend time improving the projects, take notes in a shared document and report back towards the end of the session. No technical skills are necessary, only motivation to look under the hood, and all kinds of soft and hard skills are welcome.

• 5G network (software defined radio / software defined networks / telecommunications)
• Mapping the electro-magnetic spectrum (software defined radio / data visualisation)
• Moonshot messaging (software defined radio / physics / protocols)
• Mud battery monitoring (gardening / electronics / programming / data visualisation)
• Organic data centre (mud batteries / embedded development / networking)
• Power consumption measurements (physics / electronics / data visualisation)
• Publication pipeline (programming / style sheets / automation)
• Reticulum community network (embedded microcontrollers / mobile development / packet radio)
• Telecommunications standards research (machine learning / data analysis / standardisation)
• Alternative option: Qiudanz Technique workshop with txiemonks
  (see https://compudanzas.net/qiudanz_technique.html)

https://www.jboy.space/nias-workshop

A community evening about regenerative technologies, permacomputing and symbiotic energy systems.

An evening full of talks | Thursday, November 27 | 20:00–22:30 | Tolhuistuin

What if we could power computer systems in collaboration with living organisms? Are there ways to reimagine energy production, data storage and the re-use of waste streams through experimental regenerative art and design? 

If these questions spark your interest and longing for alternative digital futures, you are warmly invited to join the evening programme (De)Growing Infrastructures on Thursday November 27 at WarmingUp Festival. Presented by Amsterdam-based FIBER and Waag Futurelab, various makers and thinkers share their work and how they experiment, build and dream about new computational futures.

Computing infrastructures and their daily use have a damaging carbon and material footprint across the planet. Yes, this includes your daily ChatGTP searches. These systems are extractive by design; they depend on huge amounts of coal, water and land. The rapid expansion of digital ecosystems is only made possible by exploiting natural resources, pushing the planet further into uninhabitable states.

Linked to the WarmingUp festival theme The Art of Coexisting, we come together to learn and share how to imagine, prototype, build, store and grow together with others (human and non-human) on regenerative digital futures. Can we collectively grow a new vision on computation?

Speakers: Leo Scarin, Mark IJzerman, Ola Bonati, Sunjoo Lee, The Critical Climate Computing Group (Wesley Goatley & Mariana Marangoni), Fieke Jansen, Rein van der Woerd, Marina Otero Verzier. Moderated by: Abdo (Abdelrahman) Hassan

Why should I join?

Expect an evening with short talks by artists and a more in-depth panel conversation, where various artists and researchers will shine their light on regenerative modes of computation through the application of microbial metabolism, permacomputing, waste energy and digital composting. In other words: redesigning digital infrastructures to operate in a kinder, less destructive way. And while doing so, prepare ourselves for an adapted form of computation, separated from Technofeudalism, within the reality of a climate emergency. The programme is open for everyone: newcomers and experts, we’ll make sure you will be introduced and get a good understanding of who is doing what (and why?!).

In addition to the talks, a workshop on the theme of Permacomputing will take place on 24 November, organised by Waag. More information here 

FIBER is supported by the Amsterdam Fund of the Arts and the Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie. This programme is part of FIBER’s nomadic Reassemble Lab series

Background info

In late 2024, FIBER and the broader Permacomputing Community organized the first Dutch symposium on permacomputing and environmentally conscious media and networking technologies at the Tolhuistuin. Titled Practising Permacomputing, we explored how the theory of permacomputing can be put into practice by a wide variety of artists, designers and activists. Now, one year later, we return to Tolhuistuin with as many contributors as possible for one dynamic evening to pose the question: where is everyone at? What has happened in the meantime and which art and technology projects are currently underway?

Event Information

• Thursday November 27
• Tolhuistuin, Zonzij
• 20:00 – 22:30 (Drinks till 23:00) | Door 19:30

Tickets: https://shop.paylogic.com/d203f4cd12fe489db1f327cc65cc668f/