Ready to dig deep into why Small Files are so important?
This list of resources is a great start into exploring the entangled relationship between streaming media and the environment.
Here’s the full report, evidence brief, and best-practices recommendations from Tackling the Carbon Footprint of Streaming Media, a year-long collaboration between ICT engineers Stephen Makonin and SFMF’s Laura U. Marks and Radek Przedpełski, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: “Streaming Carbon Footprint”.
STREAMING AND THE ENVIRONMENT
The Shift Project. “Climate Crisis: The Unsustainable Use of Online Video,” 2019.
https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/lean-ict-our-new-report/
Greenpeace. 2017. “Clicking Clean: Who Is Winning the Race to Build a Green Internet?”
Laura U. Marks, Joseph Clark, Jason Livingston, Denise Oleksijczuk, Lucas Hilderbrand, “Streaming Media’s Environmental Impact,” Media + Environment (2020) https://mediaenviron.org/article/17242-streaming-media-s-environmental-impact
Laura U. Marks, “Streaming video, a surprising link between pandemic and climate crisis,” Journal of Visual Culture and Harun Farocki Institut special issue on Covid-19
https://www.harun-farocki-institut.org/en/2020/04/16/streaming-video-a-link-between-pandemic-and-climate-crisis-journal-of-visual-culture-hafi-2/
Laura says: Since publishing these two, I’ve learned that we cannot calculate the carbon footprint of streaming media from the bottom up: we have to calculate electricity consumption of data centers, networks, and devices separately.
THE FUTURE IS SMALL FILES
Andrew Lison – Minimal computing Interview
https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/bitstream/handle/18452/26285/counter-n2022-lison.pdf
Stefanie Muschwitz – Decolonial Computing
Ger Zielinski, “Reflections on the Proliferation of Online Film Festivals during the COVID-19 Global Pandemic”https://www.zfmedienwissenschaft.de/online/open-media-studies-blog/sync-or-notonline?fbclid=IwAR1snpMlg57Bz4S5hIGcaP1ZH19qWv3V0MRiyc2i4UAwjvYP46yX44h84QY
Laura U. Marks and Radek Przedpełski, “Bandwidth Imperialism and Small-File Media,” in Post-45, special issue on “New Filmic Geographies” ed. Suzanne Enzerink (2020) https://post45.org/2021/04/bandwidth-imperialism-and-small-file-media/
Kris De Decker, Low-Tech Magazine, “Why We Need a Speed Limit for the Internet” (2015) https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/10/can-the-internet-run-on-renewable-energy.html
Laura U. Marks, “Let’s Deal with the Carbon Footprint of Streaming Media,”Afterimage,
https://online.ucpress.edu/afterimage/issue/47/2
Kris De Decker, Low-Tech Magazine, “Bedazzled by Energy Efficiency” (2018) https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/01/bedazzled-by-energy-efficiency.html
ICT ENGINEERING ARTICLES
Anders Andrae, “New perspectives on internet electricity use in 2030,” Engineering and Applied Science Letters 3:2 (2020):19-31. https://doaj.org/article/e7852aaee53e4ae8874b39ee23547305
Lotfi Belkhir and Ahmed Elmeligi, “Assessing ICT global emissions footprint: Trends to 2040 & recommendations,” Journal of Cleaner Production 177 (2018): 448-463.
Jan C.T. Bieser and Lorenz Hilty, “Assessing Indirect Environmental Effects of Information and Communication Technology (ICT): A Systematic Literature Review,” Sustainability (2018)
Simon Hinterholzer and Ralph Hintemann. “Videostreaming: Energy Requirements and CO2 Emissions Background Paper: The Most Important Points in a Nutshell.” Trans. Stephan Meinke. BorderStep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability. (2020)
Chris Preist, Daniel Schien, and Paul Shabajee. 2019. “Evaluating Sustainable Interaction Design of Digital Services: The Case of YouTube.” CHI 2019 – Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. (2019)
Renée Obringer, B. Rachunok, D. Maia-Silva, M. Arbabzadeh, R. Nateghi, K. Madani. “The overlooked environmental footprint of increasing Internet use.” Resources, Conservation & Recycling 167. (2021)
Norberto Patrignani and Diane Whitehouse, “Slow Tech: a quest for good, clean and fair ICT,” Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society 12:2 (2014): 78-92.
ON AI, CRYPTOCURRENCY AND CRYPTO-ART
Karen Hao, “Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes,” MIT Technology Review(2019) https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/06/239031/training-a-single-ai-model-can-emit-as-much-carbon-as-five-cars-in-their-lifetimes/
Alexandra Luccioni, Alexandre Lacoste, and Victor Schmidt, “Estimating Carbon Emissions of Artificial Intelligence,” IEEE Technology and Society Magazine (2020)
Alex De Vries, “Bitcoin’s Growing Energy Problem” (2018)
“Toward a New Ecology of Crypto-Art: A Hybrid Manifesto,” Flash Art (2021) https://flash—art.com/2021/02/episode-v-towards-a-new-ecology-of-crypto-art/
On Small-File Aesthetics
Laura U. Marks, “Video haptics and erotics,” Screen 39:4 (Winter 1998): 331-348.
CLICK HERE FOR PDF
Hito Steyerl, “In Defense of the Poor Image.” The Wretched of the Screen. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012. 31-45.
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/
Small File Media Festival 