Computational Compost
Tabakalera International centre for contemporary culture - Donostia-San Sebastián

“Computational Compost” addresses the environmental impact of data storage and proposes a synergy between technology and ecology. Humans and artificial intelligence produce so much data that soon there will be no capacity to store it; we are accumulating infinite information with finite resources. The film invites reconsideration on the relationship between data storage and collective memory, highlighting the urgency of critically rethinking narratives of the digital future.

In Computational Compost, the film takes Marina Otero’s research as a base for its narrative, following the thread of the real-world impacts of data storage and the digital infrastructure; in parallel, the visual simulations provided by DIPC present the knowledge frontier accessed only via supercomputers and complex processing power. We position the viewer somewhere in between these two opposite coordinates of the same vector, aiming to create a comprehensive representation of the problematics of data futures.

Computational Compost has the purpose of revealing how data centres and digital infrastructure, so often made invisible to​​ the common user, have the most real implications of our physical world. As phrased in the film “The Cloud does not float above the ground; it is built into its depths.” It is here that the Quipu embodies an important literal metaphor, as a functional object devoid of its function, it stands to represent both its own history as well as a symbolic comparative of a contemporary equivalent, reminding us of the human need and desire for data storage, as well as confronting what might happen when this data is lost.

directed and produced by: MARINA OTERO VERZIER + LOCUMENT
Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC): Txomin Romero, Silvia Bonoli, Raul Angulo, Jens Stücker
Project coordination and research: Claudia Paredes Intriago
additional cinematography (Chile): Diego Cabezas
3D animation: Claudia Paredes Intriago, Jacinto Moros Montanes, Caésar Arenas, Xabier Abel Martinez
sound design: Gaspar Cohen
Advisors: Ibai Zabaleta, David Pello