A monitor displaying a digital acquarium framed by a plant and flower bouqet, along with knitting needles and yarn, microcassette recorder and an Ursula K Leguin booklet titled The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. This image is Creative Commons By attribution, Lee Tusman.
This is a starting collection of links on the concept of permacomputing to accompany a talk for Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin) in Generative Arts, November 2025.
In the talk, I spoke about my background in the arts, both at institutions and at DIY spaces. I also spoke about our role as artists working in digital spaces, in computational arts, new media, media arts, or however we define our practice. I’m interested in ways to reduce our impact on the environment. I’m also looking for ways to preserve our work, particularly due to the brittleness of digital media. Finally, I have a goal for community-owned spaces and infrastructure outside of corporate platforms. These interests have come together for me within this (at times speculative) realm.
Students brought up lots of their own ideas and experiences. We also talked about what it means to ground oneself in community, physically - I am part of the Flux Factory arts community - but also digitally in online space(s), and where these may overlap, converge or diverge.
Some of the discussion topics included: preservation, the language itself I am currently developing (L5), emulation, bootlegs, roms and fantasy consoles/workstations, music hardware, and building and using open source tools rather than commercial products. There was interest in the opportunities of creativity for permacomputing-based constraints prompted by Mansoux, Howell, Barok and Heikkilä’s paper on Permacomputing Aesthetics.
This is the starting list of resources I provided:
Permacomputing paper
from ➘Dig Archive
I’m very interested in how the term’s meaning will develop now that people are adopting it. The term resonates with a lot of people, it captures something that is very much wished for, a counternarrative to the rapid “upgradeordie” cycle promoted by the tech industry. It is also somewhat paradoxical, linking an environmentally lightweight practice such as permaculture with one that is as resourceintensive as computing, which doesn’t only weigh heavy on the planet due to energy consumption, but also through unethical and damaging practices in several parts of the supply chain, from mining to manufacturing. Most energy is used during the production and spectacularly wasteful endoflife phase. This is unequally affecting the Global South. The term permacomputing hints at wanting to do better without being naive about this paradox.
permacomputing wiki
from permacomputing.net
Permacomputing is both a concept and a community of practice oriented around issues of resilience and regenerativity in computer and network technology inspired by permaculture. ପໄଓ☾☼✫ -☆:*´
The Game She Wrote on a Boat Kept Her Afloat
from New York Times, unlocked article
Cuenen has been pulling the lime green Nintendo DS apart and putting it back together again for a decade, conceding that it might finally be dead. Her home is filled with secondhand goods. The table was bought at a thrift shop. So was the TV. Her speakers were hand-me-downs from her father.
Permacomputing 101
from Hundred Rabbits
This past August 12th Devine gave this light-hearted talk for Critical Signals 2025, taking place in New Zealand. This talk introduces some old, some new and some eccentric ideas for keeping computers and their software running for as long as we can. It was meant to try and teach tricks to fight planned obsolescence and also build new things that might survive the onslaught of corporate capture. This talk was streamed from aboard a little sailboat adrift somewhere in the Pacific. No prior knowledge of computing required.
Permacomputing Aesthetics: Potential and Limits of Constraints in Computational Art, Design and Culture (PDF)
from Computing within Limits, hosted by Monoskop
In this paper, we argue for the potential of permacomputing as a rich framework for exploring creative design constraints building on a long history of applying constraints in art, design and cultural practices. Because of the need to reconfigure the modes of production and organisation within computational practices, this calls for a different understanding of aesthetics, one that goes beyond the formal evaluation of how things look, but addresses how aesthetics can also be systems of relations, sensing and making sense that are already present in the process of making. We will also discuss the challenges faced by permacomputing practitioners, such as the complicated link with retro-computing, post-digital culture and nostalgia, as well as the problem of constraints in relation to the aesthetisation of poverty, and more generally what it means to work with self-imposed limits in a more privileged socioeconomic context.
Damaged Earth Catalog
from bleu255.com
We are humans and might as well get used to it. So far, remotely done power and glory—as via government, big business, formal education, church—has succeeded to the point where gross profits obscure actual loss. In response to this dilemma and to these losses a realm of intimate, community power is developing—power of communities to conduct their own education, find their own inspiration, shape their own environment, and share their knowledge with others. Practices that aid this process are sought and promoted by the DAMAGED EARTH CATALOG.
LOW←TECH MAGAZINE
from LOW←TECH MAGAZINE
This is a solar-powered website, which means it sometimes goes offline
Solidarity Infrastructures
from commoninternet.net. also see infrastructures.us
How do we cultivate infrastructures of solidarity with each other, especially under conditions of crisis, protest, and systemic inequity? Beyond corporate data clouds and monopolistic service providers, this class offers a critical space to reframe technology from a grassroots perspective in relation to other components of day-to-day societal infrastructure.
Servers with Personality
from Caolan McMahon
These oddball machines are rare on the public internet. But I occasionally bump into them. Like the little servers below that convert sunshine to HTML or squeeze a website from a conference badge.
compost.party
from compost.party
compost.party is a repurposed smartphone running on solar power. It’s a web server pieced together from scraps, humming in the attic of an apartment building.
Berlin Permacomputing Meet-Up
from permacomputing.net
Even if we are extremely serious and feel some urgency about our work, our meetings generally have a low-key, participation-oriented format. We strive to include interested participants of all knowledge and experience levels. Some of us are rather “techie” but non-nerd-identified and perma-curious people are especially welcome.