Guillaume Slizewicz in collaboration with Gijs de Heij

Installation - steam-based display

STWST workshop space
Part of exhibition: open throughout (except 01:00-06:00 night)

Carbon Technostructure traces the material weight of immaterial systems. 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 FOG, 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.

Carbon Technostructures is an iterative project developed thanks to Kikk Festival, CCN Namur, Ohme, MAD Brussels, and the Goethe Institut in Belgium.

Guillaume Slizewicz is a designer and digital artist whose work sits at the intersection of technology, the environment, and societal issues. Through his practice, he engages with the tension between innovation and sustainability, using technology in poetic, evocative and critical ways. His approach draws connections between ancient craft practices and contemporary digital tools. His works often blend physical materials—metal, wood, and clay—with digital processes like algorithms, artificial intelligence, and computer-aided manufacturing. https://guillaumeslizewicz.com/

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. https://www.de-heij.com/