Agnes is currently closed. We look forward to welcoming you back in 2027. More Information
Agnes is currently closed. We look forward to welcoming you back in 2027. More Information
Wednesday 14 October
15°C and Overcast Clouds
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Speaker series on digital arts and culture
Portraits of Kevin T. Day and Dr Anne Pasek. Courtesy of the artists.
The infrastructures that underpin today’s digital technologies are often out of sight and out of mind, and they are ostensibly invisible, immaterial and borderless. “The cloud” has been marketed as a utopian and emancipatory technology with the ability to offer seemingly endless storage and compute on demand. However, this corporate narrative estranges us from the real and material costs that computation carries on our societies and environment. The cloud is inextricably built upon resource extraction—from the minerals and metals needed for computer chips to the water needed to cool down data centres. These systems are also entangled with broader social and environmental impacts, including carbon emissions, labour conditions, supply chains, e-waste, and the growing resource demands of artificial intelligence. Far from being ephemeral, the cloud is profoundly material, with consequences that are unevenly distributed across communities, landscapes, and ecosystems.
In this conversation, artist and researcher Kevin T. Day and professor and researcher Dr Anne Pasek discuss the material, environmental, social, and political dimensions of digital infrastructure. Bringing together artistic practice and critical research, they reflect on how to make visible the hidden infrastructures of the cloud and AI, while imagining and putting into practice alternative technological futures.
Agnes Bytes is an online speaker series featuring conversations between Canadian and international artists, media scholars, and software engineers across topics related to critical themes in digital art and culture. The series asks audiences to think across disciplines and alongside artists to imagine digital futurities that are liberatory, communally responsive and expansively inclusive.
Agnes Bytes offers an opportunity for each speaker to share about their practice and for a Q&A period with the audience. Each talk will be recorded and made available on Digital Agnes and will be accompanied by a collaboratively generated resource/activity sheet to further deepen engagement with the themes discussed.
The Agnes Bytes series is curated by Danuta Sierhuis, Digital Development Coordinator.
Kevin T. Day is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of data-driven media art, critical information studies, and philosophy of technology. Taking the form of interactive media installations that often utilize data, video, sound, haptic, and kinetic components, his practice and research examine the socio-political issues of the digital economy. He received his MFA and PhD from the University of British Columbia and is currently based in Vancouver. He teaches digital art in the UBC Bachelor of Media Studies program and the politics of algorithmic and information systems at the UBC School of Information.
Anne Pasek is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Media, Culture, and the Environment at Trent University. Her work explores the cultural politics of climate change with a particular focus on the tech sector. She is a professional AI hater and is spending a lot of time thinking with data centre resistance efforts in Canada.
Portrait of Anne Pasek. Courtesy of the artist.
