carbon technostructure
- Guillaume Slizewicz
- Gijs de Heij
A modified plotter, glass panel, and steamer work in concert to render visible what typically remains unseen: the environmental cost of computational processes.
Steam condenses on glass, creating an ephemeral drawing surface. An empty marker moves across this temporary canvas, inscribing patterns derived from real-time energy data. These marks exist only as disruptions in condensation, fading as quickly as our attention to digital infrastructure’s environmental impact.
For this iteration, we run a GPU hosting an open-source language model. We prompt it to hallucinate representations of its own energy consumption—a recursive gesture that produces both poetic output and measurable load. The installation monitors this consumption, cross-referencing it with the carbon intensity of the local electrical grid and subsequently plots it.
Each vanishing drawing offers a glimpse of the carbon technostructure we’ve built, one calculation at a time.
Guillaume Slizewicz joined a group of a group of international experts on sustainable robotics, AI and automation gathering in Brussels over the course of five months at the Brussels Institute for Advanced Studies to learn, exchange & experiment. During this residency Ohme supported him in developing his own research project on robotics.
Created by
Guillaume Slizewicz
Guillaume Slizewicz is a designer and digital artist whose work stands at the intersection of technology, environment and societal issues. Through his practice, he explores the tensions between innovation and sustainability, using technology in poetic, evocative and critical ways. His approach builds connections between ancestral craft practices and contemporary digital tools.
With degrees in Political Science, Philosophy and Economics (Kent University) and Production Technology (Copenhagen School of Design and Technology), Guillaume Slizewicz founded his studio in 2021 to explore these relationships through digital art and collection design. His works often combine physical materials - metal, wood, clay - with digital processes such as algorithms, artificial intelligence and computer-aided manufacturing. Guillaume Slizewicz's artistic thinking goes beyond materials, expressing itself through a collaborative and experimental methodology. His work is often developed within collectives and in collaboration with other designers.
https://guillaumeslizewicz.com/
Gijs de Heij
Gijs de Heij is a Brussels based designer and programmer. He is a member of the collective Open Source Publishing which exclusively uses free and open source software (F/LOSS). Through his work he questions the influence and affordances of digital tools to make design and to enable different modes of collaboration.
Credits
Concept & development: Guillaume Slizewicz
Technical Development : Gijs de Heij
Technical support: Raoul Sommeillier & Andrew Karam, Ohme
