Check the programme here. Convened by architect Marina Otero Verzier, Territorio Ectoplasma is a week-long critical studies programme that looks at the territorial dynamics and often overlooked spaces and bodies that sustain the activity of metropolitan centers. In particular, it focuses on the digital infrastructure making possible our datafied, urban life. In the last decade, the world has experienced unprecedented production and consumption of data. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), global data will grow by 23 percent annually from 2020 to 2025. The data-driven developments in planning, climate science, and healthcare, as well as the further implementation of AI, the Internet of Things, and the Metaverse, will only exacerbate this condition. Every byte of data has an impact. The carbon footprint of digital devices, the internet, and the infrastructures supporting them account for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, a percentage that, according to some estimates, will double by...

TERRITORIO ECTOPLASMA INTRODUCTION: WHO WANTS THE CLOUD IN THEIR BACKWARD? Many of us use phones, computers, streaming platforms, video games, and other services that increase data production and consumption. Many celebrate advances in climate science, healthcare and electromobility, or are excited about developments in AI, the Internet of Things, and the Metaverse. Consequently, we support the opening of new mines, extraction of more resources, constructing more data centers, the production of more batteries and development of more power plants that keep the promises of infinite growth alive. Contemporary digital infrastructures are only sometimes visible but always have an impact. Their functioning depends on sacrificial areas that take the burden for all; on communities whose bodies experience long-term impacts derive from changes in the quality of air, water and soil.The degradation of these site’s environmental, social and mental ecologies (in this seminar defined as Territorios Ectoplasma) is generally presented as the...