https://lenuageetaitsousnospieds.org/agenda/#festival-le-nuage-etait-sous-nos-pieds-deplier-la-tech

Dmitry Kuznetsov and Alex Gekker will present on Russia’s Sovereign AI strategy.

https://www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/research/statecraft-sovereignty-and-digital-government-

Generative AI and other AI applications are currently being added to our technology everywhere. From search engines and social media to office software and urban infrastructure: AI is everywhere, whether we like it or not. Our digital landscape is changing significantly, but our physical landscape is perhaps changing even more dramatically. The arrival of large data centres, known as hyperscalers, is putting considerable pressure on our power grid and water supply. Local residents are seeing their energy bills rise and their water supply become less reliable.

This year, we are looking at what lies behind our screens: what impact does the growing appetite for data centres and AI computing power have on our living environment, and what are the consequences for the world outside our screens? The possibilities of AI seem limitless, but our planet’s natural resources are finite.

About Fieke Jansen

This year the keynote lecture will be given by Fieke Jansen, co-principal researcher at the Critical Infrastructure Lab at the University of Amsterdam and co-lead of the Green Screen Coalition. Jansen investigates how the infrastructure of our digital world, data centres and AI influence the environment, raw material use and climate.

About Waag Futurelab

Waag Futurelab is engaged in regenerative technology by developing research and design methods that detach technology from purely extractive models and instead make it restorative and circular. In collaboration with the Critical Infrastructure Lab, Waag investigates how technical systems can be designed in such a way that they not only extract value from natural and social resources, but also give back: think of the use of biomaterials, a focus on repair and extending lifespan, and public values that strengthen local ecosystems and social initiatives. Through practice-oriented research and participatory design processes, Waag brings together knowledge from science, art and citizen initiatives to realise technologies that contribute to long-term regeneration rather than depletion.

https://www.waag.org/en/event/state-internet-2026-fieke-jansen

Artists and researchers Patrícia J. Reis and Stefanie Wuschitz investigate on alternative hardware from locally sourced materials, from a feminist perspective, to develop and speculate upon renewable practices. They call it Feminist Hardware!

Through these lenses, they researched on fair-traded, ethical, biodegradable hardware for environmental justice, building circuits that use ancient community-centred crafts encouraging de-colonial thinking, market forces to be disobeyed, and future technologies to be imagined.

In this lecture, they will share their research process behind Feminist Hardware, and present artistic alternatives that aim to reconnect technology with ecology, community, and care.

Join us on March 30th for the lecture and discussion on eco-feminist decolonial hardware with Patrícia J. Reis and Stefanie Wuschitz. The lecture will take place from 17.00 at the Bushuis in room F0.01.

Please RSVP here.

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About the speakers

Patrícia J. Reis (b. 1981, Lisbon, PT) is a Vienna-based media artist and researcher whose practice explores human and more-than-human entanglements with technology through feminist hacking, sensory interaction, and embodied interfaces.

Her installations investigate touch, consent, and care, often inviting intimate, activeparticipation. Reis studied Painting (ESAD, 2004), Media Art (MA, Lusófona University, 2011), and completed a Ph.D. in Art at the University of Évora (2016). She was a fellow of the FCT of Portugal (2011–15) and Assistant Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Beja (2006–12). From 2020–23 she was postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna within the project Feminist hacking: building circuits as an artistic
practice, and guest researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute, TU Berlin. Since 2015, she has lectured at the Digital Arts Department, University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she currently leads the FWF Elise Richter PEEK project Hacking the body as the black box.

Since 2012, she has been a board member of Mz Baltazar’s Lab*, Vienna’s feminist artist-run space. Reis has exhibited widely, received the Outstanding Artist Award in Media Art (AT, 2021), and participated in international programs and residencies, including IMPACT ART San Francisco, Banff Centre (CA), HWK Delmenhorst, and Edith-Russ-Haus (DE).

Find out more about Patricia: www.patriciajreis.com | https://www.instagram.com/patricia_j_reis/ | https://hackingthebody.org/

Stefanie Wuschitz (b. 1981, Vienna, Austria) is a data-research artist based in Vienna. Her scholarship generates data that shapes her artistic output. She investigates the entanglement of gender, technology and power. Within the young, Eurocentric field of data studies, her current projects focus on a blind spot of South East Asia: Indonesia’s position within fast shifting techno empires. Her degrowth inspired artistic method entails upcyling, salvaging sustainable, locally sourced materials to create ecofeminist interactive art installations. Her drawings and animations explore new forms of storytelling, knowledge transfer and documentary.

She graduated in the MFA program Transmedia Arts in 2006 (Brigitte Kowanz) and completed her Master’s at NYU 2008 at Tisch School of the Arts in NYC. In 2009 she founded the hacklab and collective Mz* Baltazar’s Laboratory. She completed her Doctorate on Feminist Hackerspaces at TU Vienna in 2014. Since then she has held post-doctoral positions at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, TU Vienna, Universität der Künste Berlin, and TU Berlin. She conducted several arts-based research projects as PI (titled Feminist Hacking, Salon of Open Secrets, Coded Feminisms in Indonesia). Her artwork was featured in solo exhibitions, film festivals and international venues.

Find out more about Stefanie: https://stefaniewuschitz.cargo.site/ | https://www.instagram.com/stefanie_wuschitz/

We are investigating alternative hardware from locally sourced materials, so-called ethical hardware, to develop and speculate upon renewable practices for the benefit of both nature and humans.
We are exploring different materials, sentient, low-impact, non-toxic, fair traded, recycled and urban mined means of production.

We aim to challenge the common PCB (printed circuit board) economies in an artistic, creative, positive and responsible way applying feminist hacking as an artistic methodology and critical framework.

https://feministhackerspaces.cargo.site/Clay-PCB-Tutorial – a workshop in partnership with the critical infrastructure lab and Waag from March 30 to April 2, 2026.

Running your own communications infrastructure has obvious benefits.  We live in a world of increasing digital censorship, and are rarely completely in charge of our communications.  Even if we choose to use “better” alternatives to WhatsApp, Instagram, etc., we are still always completely reliant on the one underlying network, i.e. “The Internet”.  With the push of a button, “The Internet” may all of a sudden become unavailable.  In places with oppressive regimes, this has not been uncommon.  In the current political climate, it would not be surprising if any political system all of a sudden became repressive.

In this workshop, we will explore the possibilities for setting up a decentralized off grid communications system using the Reticulum communication protocol stack.  We choose to focus on Reticulum because it is designed for heterogeneous networks built from various cheap devices, to be deployed in a bottom up way by small communities.  More information is found on the Reticulum Community website.

The mesh network stack runs on various platforms.  You can run it on your desktop, your home server, your mobile phone.  In the workshop, we will focus on using Reticulum on three scales: (1) as a Bluetooth network for mobile phones messaging in small groups; (2) building some standalone nodes, based on a low power ARM board, that you we can deploy around Amsterdam to build out an autonomous communication infrastructure; (3) and we will also look into connecting cities with more long-range radio links.

Operating the network stack on various scales is possible because it can run on top of different transport layers.  It can run on normal IPv4 networks.  However, for us the interesting part is that it also runs on high latency, low bandwidth radio links.  These can be Internet of Things networks like LoRa, Bluetooth networks made of mobile phones, WiFi access points or packet radio systems using cheap handheld VHF radios.  (One such radio is the infamous programmable Baofeng UV-5R.)

We will look at some applications that were build on top of the Reticulum communication protocol stack.  There is a simple graphical chat application called Meshchat that can be run locally on your computer.  There is also a BBS style forum implementation, called NomadNet that also works over the terminal on servers.  Finally, there is a user-friendly Android mobile phone app called Columba.  The current services include text, photo, voice and video messaging – as well as audio calls and publishing website-like content called “mu sites” in the “micron format”.  No prior experience is needed, but you might benefit from looking into the Reticulum Manual.

The March workshop is hosted by Internet Archive Europe and facilitated by the critical infrastructure lab.

The next (April 2026) workshop will be in Den Haag, hosted by the Anarchist Library Opstand.

What could you use SLM for? Some researchers want to organise and sift through years of data they’ve been collecting on their own device, maybe to link different research projects together. Other researchers might want to automate part of their workflow. Research institutes or project managers might want to standardise templates and automate research-related tasks. Still others might want to play around with AI, but want to keep the data local, to avoid sharing data through large corporate entities, or to better control what data is being processed by AI.

What to expect  

The goal of finding, installing, and effectively using a SLM is wise, if you want to use it in research, but it is massively difficult to achieve in practice. This workshop therefore provides a communal space where we share knowledge. The workshop facilitators will walk participants through some of the steps involved, discuss the benefits and challenges, and then present and demonstrate a physical SLM set-up we have developed. Participants can then connect to this SLM online or offline to test it out.

While it doesn’t look like much, this vacant piece of land is extremely valuable, as it holds the permits to build three data centre towers. After 10 years of financial speculation, the site was purchased by British data center developer Pure DC, with Microsoft as the intended and sole tenant of a hyperscale data center consisting of three towers. In this walk, we will learn more about this piece of land and discuss the allocation of scarce land, computing power, and electricity supplies to an American hyperscale data centre, which ends up coming at the expense of residents, nature, and local businesses. 

Registration is closed 

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

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)