Gallery
foto: Bartosz Frąckowiak
Project overview
A performative lecture that turned abstract digital sustainability issues into a tangible, embodied experience. Through deliberate technical constraints and physical demonstration, the format exposed how everyday digital habits contribute to hidden environmental costs.
The presentation itself was intentionally hyper-minimal: a carefully designed file under 2MB, smaller than an average selfie, shown on a 12-year-old refurbished MacBook running Elementary OS Linux. This setup challenged dominant assumptions about technological necessity, performance and obsolescence.
Main objectives
The lecture addressed digital literacy and overconsumption through three performative interventions:
☀︎ Demonstrating circular computing by showing that a 12-year-old laptop can remain fully functional when paired with lightweight, open-source software, questioning the logic of constant device replacement.
☀︎ Creating cognitive dissonance through an interactive guessing exercise where the audience estimated the size of the presentation file, revealing how disconnected we are from the real scale of digital data.
☀︎ Promoting open-source alternatives by distributing USB drives with ready-to-install Elementary OS, making sustainable computing choices immediately accessible.
Achieved results
The audience consistently overestimated the presentation’s file size, exposing a widespread misunderstanding of digital scale and efficiency. This moment became a powerful collective realization of how inflated typical digital production has become.
Equally striking was the reaction to the refurbished laptop itself particularly when participants learned that key components like RAM modules were worth as little as one euro, despite their heavy environmental cost in production.
The symbolic act of gifting an Elementary OS installation drive to the participant with the closest estimate reinforced the message by transforming insight into potential action.
Main reflection
This lecture revealed how deeply perception shapes digital waste. The belief that “newer equals necessary” appears to sustain planned obsolescence as much as technical limitations themselves.
By grounding abstract sustainability concerns in physical objects and real-time interaction, the project created lasting cognitive anchors that proved more impactful than data or warnings alone.
The lecture also briefly situated personal computing choices within broader geopolitical power structures, referencing digital dominance and infrastructure control by global tech powers such as the US and China connecting individual decisions to systemic technological ecosystems.