Undergrown | drafting a hedge against existential risk exposure

Lukas Truniger

Artwork description:

The project is proposing a hacking kit for repurposing obsolete crypto mining hardware. Its goal is to retrieve their usable computing power for volunteering science projects by creating a cluster computer and a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) for its decision process. The setup is thus effectively helping to reduce our planetary existential risk exposure (in financial terminology: to hedge). Rows of ASIC miners symbolize a hedge bush, on which a plant communication process is mimicked. The installation creates symphonies of cooling fan noises, manifesting the cluster’s computing activity and the cooling needs of these technologies.

A projection of crystallographic visualizations further exposes the hardware's computational origins. The project is rooted in the observation that various plants, just like humans, have evolved a form of decentralized network technology and its necessary infrastructures in an independent and convergent manner. Completely different approaches have emerged, obviously. Nevertheless, they all form an entangled infrastructure of both energy and information. Our systems are based on electric signals with huge electronic power needs, while plants often apply a simultaneous redistribution system for information and nutrients. The installation’s narrative engages with this recent paradigm shift in the understanding of the convergent evolution of different species’ technological schemes. « Analogous alienation. » Vilem Flusser; Louis Bec « Vampyroteuthis Infernalis »