36C3 - The Internet of rubbish things and bodies

36C3 preroll music

Herald: Our next speaker Régine Debatty
will help you and explain you the Internet

of rubbish, things and bodies and
basically everything around e-waste. Thank

you very much and welcome. applause
Régine Debatty: Can I get ... can I get

less light to my face?
Herald: Slide in your face?

RD: Less light to my face.
Herald: Slide?

RD: Light. Can I get less
light in my face?

Herald: OK. A little bit less light for
the speaker.

RD: Yeah. Hello. Good evening, everyone.
First of all, I want to say thank you to

Nora, to Gregor and to everybody, at the
Chaos Communication Congress for welcoming

me again this year. So I've been tasked
with the mission, just like in 2018, to

present to you some of the most
interesting and exciting works in art and

technology of this past year. And just
like last year, I kind of went on my own

way and went on a tangent and started
adopting a tunnel vision. And for some

reason I realized I was obsessed with
e-waste. So you're going to hear a lot

about e-waste and nuclear waste in the
coming hour. But still, I promise it's

still going to be reasonably interesting,
hopefully. And most of the projects are

anyway from 2019. So why did I get
interested and why did I think it would be

a good idea to talk to you about e-waste?
First of all, there was the the theme of

this year's Congress "Resource
Exhaustion". I just decided to put some

more, let's say, ecological twist on it.
And then the second reason why I wanted to

talk about e-waste is that a couple of
months ago, I went to see an exhibition of

a Swiss photographer who has spent four
years, something like that, traveling

around the world and trying to understand
why transhumanists wanted to change and so

called augment and improve their body. And
so he documented everything he found and

how humans nowadays are changing their
bodies, either to go from disable body to

able body or from able body to superable
body. And one way you can augment your

body is, you know, is with RFID chip that
you can implant and that allows you to get

access to offices, open your car door or
even pay for public transport. And I've

been told recently that RFID chips are the
new tattoo. And then you can also get

magnets implanted underneath your finger
that allows you to sense electromagnetic

fields. And actually, the first time I
heard about this, I was at least 10 years

ago, it was one of the first Chaos
Communication Congress I attended in good

old Berlin. And there was this this
journalist called Queen Nocturne. And she

came to explain that she had just had a
magnet implanted and explained that the

new experience and how she felt magnetic
fields. Anyway, I could multiply the

example. But of course, the people who are
really at the cutting edge of body

improvement and augmentation are the
Transhumanists. This is one of them, Igor

Trapeznikov is part of the Russian
Transhumanists Community. He had a number

of implants, you know, the usual RFID
chips, but also a device that turns its

sights into sound, which is usually useful
for people who have a vision problem or

who are blind. And then, of course, they
are addition to the body or correction of

the body that are there for to a
particular reason. That's how some find

themselves with bits of titanium in the
knee or in the shoulder. And they use this

kind of screw. I think that's one of the
images in the series that I found the most

impressive, the idea that when I get
older, I might get these kind of screws

inside my body. Pacemaker, of course. And
what makes pacemaker interesting is that

it was one of the first electronic devices
that found its way inside our bodies. So

it became kind of emblematic of the coming
mechanization of the human body. And then,

of course, there are the other devices that
communicate with electronics that you

insert in the body and that communicate
with phones and computers. So that's why

so much talking about the Internet of
Bodies, you know, after the Internet of

Things, there ist the Internet of Bodies.
So this is a bio artificial pancreas for

people who suffer from Diabetes Type 1.
There are so many smart devices that can

be added on your body or inside your body.
I've heard about smart contact lenses and

also smart prosthetics. And after seeing
this exhibition, I started looking at

people around me with a different eye. I
am wondering who else had bits of metals

and electricity and electronics inside
their body. So that's where my obsession

with with e-waste came because my
immediate question after this is what

happens after you died? What happens to
that? I don't know if you're interested,

but I had to do some research. So if you
are buried the traditional way, you buried

with with all your gadgets and gizmos and
anything orthopedic. If you're cremated,

you're not cremated with your pacemaker
because it contains batteries that could

explode. And then I learn about the new
very interesting service. I mean, to me,

it sounded quite interesting. It is that
when you are cremated, of course, the

titanium or any metal, they do not burn.
There is this company who retrieves all

the metal that is found among the ashes.
There's just a couple of companies around

the world who do that. They just recover
all the metals, they divide them according

to the types of metal. And then they melt
them down into ingots, which they sell to

the medical industry, but also to the Car
Industry and the Aeronautical Industry. So

that means that parts of these bodies are
going to become part of a car or a plane

one day. And I also started imagining that
probably in the future, archeologists will

find skeletons with e-waste. We will be
buried simply with our e-waste. They will

find bits of metals in the shape of bones
and then the rusty electronics. So that's

really what set me on the path of starting
to see e-waste absolutely everywhere. I

never miss an opportunity to show my dog
because I realized that he has an RFID

chip and apparently all pets are buried
with them. Anyway splendid animal. So

since I'm thinking about e-waste it's
difficult not to mention one of the icons

of e-waste. It's Agbogbloshie. I'm sure
you've seen the picture. I'm going to show

images, but I'm not going to tell you the
whole story because I'm sure you've seen

all these images. It's located in Accra,
the capital of Ghana. And that's where

full containers of electric and electronic
trash end up. And the press really like to

talk about it and say "Oh, this is where
your data and your your devices go to

die." It's a huge place. And you've seen
the images of these young people who spend

the whole day dissecting your devices and
trying to separate different types of

precious metals such as aluminum, silver,
copper, etc.. Of course, they're working

in terrible condition. It's very toxic to
work there. They all suffer from terrible

headaches, difficulty sleeping problem,
respiratory problem, untreated wounds,

etc. But it's really usually the way the
press is depicting what's happening and

what the press is really not depicting
the full story and that there are bits and

pieces missing in the narratives. First of
all, I think we are not conscious enough

of these people playing a really important
role for us because they retrieve metals

and we have the feeling that metals are
everywhere. But on the surface and

underneath the earth some of them are
going to be more and more difficult to

retrieve. This year, UNESCO's declared the
year of the periodic table. And you can

see on this periodic table that the dot
seen in red and orange are the types of

elements that are going to be more and
more difficult to mine and to retrieve.

And I like to show these graphics a bit.
It is all not very precise, but it shows

the trend. So if ever you have a child or
brother was born in 2010, by the time your

child or your brother or your sister is
20, there will be no antimony, no lead

left to mine. Very little indium, very
little zinc, very little silver, almost no

gold. These elements will still be there,
but it's just going to cost more and more

energy and more and more money to retrieve
them. So that's why you have this project

of mining very deep into the ocean or even
mining asteroids for the same kind of

metals that we need. And I think it was so
that we kind of have a blind spot for

metals. We forget. We take them for
granted. And when we think about the

challenges of the environment, we tend to
focus on energy. And energy is important.

But when you think about renewable energy,
we have the feeling it's zero emission,

but it still has a big impact on the
environment. And I like to talk about

these solar thermal plant. It's a famous
one. It's a very, very big one. It's in in

Southern California. As you can see, it's
vast and actually, when it was built

conservation biologist were very concerned
because essentially it was built on a

really environmentally intact desert
habitat for a number of animals which were

in danger, such as tortoise that had to be
moved by hands and put on a truck and

relocated elsewhere. Some of them died out
of stress. You might have heard that, too.

So birds and bats by the thousands every
year, they did die because of the heat and

the radiation. And also you see the
surface of the earth that this is

occupying. It's really huge. And they
think it's not a coincidence if the

opening sequence of the sequel of Blade
Runner 2049 starts with these seemingly

endless landscape of solar panels that are
necessary to power modern life. As I said,

I think we we don't perceive the
importance of materials and how many

components extracted from the earth are
inside any object that surround us. So I'm

going to show a couple of example of of
design work and artworks that try to make

it visible, the elements that are inside
our electronics or electric objects. So

the first one is by these designers Studio
Drift. They have a series where they

decompose all kinds of objects. I'll show
a few of them. They can be bikes. They can

be a mobile phone. In this case, it's an
iPhone model from 2010. It can be hovers.

I'll show a few examples. They dissect
them and they analyzed the elements that

compose them. And then they reconstruct
these elements in the form of these

geometrical shape. I want to show a few of
them. So that was the iPhone. That's good

old Nokia from 1999. When you see them in
an exhibition, they're really tiny. And I

think we saw that some elements are simply
not represented. If you think about rare

earths, some of them are presenting in
smartphone in really tiny quantities like

less than half a gram. But I couldn't find
another image. But this is very big. So

this is the representation of a Volkswagen
Beetle from 1980. And so that took a lot

of space. And you see an element appear
that I was really not expecting, such as

horse hair and also corc. This is an
electic cable. So, you know, a bit of

copper and a lot of plastic for one meter.
That's my favorite, the Kalashnikov. You

see the the bullets in the front. And when
I went to see the first time this

exhibition and if I didn't look at the
label, I had no idea what was what, I

could not recognize anything. So it shows
the level of ignorance of at least people

like me. But that I could recognize - a
pencil. That I could manage. So that's the

last one. That's a light bulb. That's one
way to visualize the elements that

surround us. It's very designy, quite
elegant and charming. But I also like

artists who adopt a more brutal strategy.
So Dani Ploeger also wanted to show the

inside - well, that was one of his
objectives at least - to see the inside of

electronic devices. So the first part of
his project started back in 2012 and 17 he

infiltrated Phillips and got hired, as you
know, this guy. You see them at these

consumer goods fairs that try to sell it,
to sell you gadgets and say what is going

to change your life? And here is what this
can do. So he was he was hired to to sell

a highly sophisticated shaver for men. And
the reason why he wanted to be there is if

you wanted to understand exactly what were
the dynamics and the logic behind the

constant rapid innovation behind our
electronics. So that was the first part.

He got his hands on confidential material
that really explain how people at Philips

have these teams - I say Philips but I'm
sure it's the same elsewhere, of course -

they really analyze the different types of
consumer that we are and find the best way

to to trick us and to lure us and seduce
us into buying new products. And then the

second part of his project was this year
where he bought this machine. It's a

machine that is called industrial stress
testing machine. So it's several of these

machines, you can buy them. He bought this
one on Alibaba in China. And they're

usually used by makers of whichever mobile
phone, whatever, and they simulate all

kinds of accidents that can happen to your
device like you walking on it or dropping

it. I'm going to show a video of this one.
video of machine in action is shown

So that's our poor shaver inside. I like
the machine because, you know, it has a

bit of a vintage feel inside. The object
that it tests are quite sophisticated and

very, very much 21st century. But when you
see the the control panel, it seems to be

stuck in the mid 20th century. It has
these kind of old design. Apparently it

was a nightmare to get it shipped to to
Europe. It costs more to get it shipped

than the machine itself. And if you're
like me and you could watch this video for

hours of the arm rotating and breaking
things, and if you live in Leipzig, the

machine is going to come to the Museum of
Fine Art in March as part of an exhibition

called Zero Waste. So the reason why he
did this, like, obscene display of

destruction of luxury goods was that you
had two reasons for doing that. First of

all, the first reason was, is that usually
when we think about consumer culture and

how we consume too much and throw away too
much and and waste and the onus usually is

on the consumer. You know, the consumer is
wrong, and yeah, we are wrong. We buy too

much. But then the wrong starts actually
much further upstream. It starts

everywhere in the line of production and
especially in the design and research and

development teams who engineer constantly
new ways to seduce us and to convince us

that we have to update. And then another
reason why he did this project is that is

that he wanted to to make a comment on
maker spaces, which, you know, are very

interesting, but still feeding on this
vocabulary of entrepreneurship,

innovation, progress. But they never
really, truly and deeply and and they

don't really challenge in a systemic way
consumerism. So he saw this laboratory of

electric electronic aging as a kind of
make up space for unmaking things. And

also you get to see what's inside this
piece of electronic. But I would like to

go back to Aghogbloshie again, because if
there are people who know very well what's

inside our electronics and what they are
made of it's the workers of Aghogbloshie.

And sometimes, you know, when we think
about this kind of place and I think the

example of Aghogbloshie, but as I'm sure
you know, there are equal sites elsewhere

in Africa, in Asia and Bangladesh et
cetera. We have the feeling that this is a

big junkyard and that it's a kind of huge
mess and it's it's dark and it's dirty.

But this is a map done by architects,
designers and activist who spent a lot of

time in Aghogbloshie. And you probably
cannot read - well, you probably all have

better eyes than me, but it's still
written very small - they map the

activities in Aghogbloshie. And if you
read the map, you see that the there is a

maker space, there are spaces dedicated to
disassembling, there are places to eat, to

pray, to disassemble, to repair, to have
fun. And also, we have the feeling that,

well, these are just people discarding and
dissecting our electronics. But actually,

the way they work is very sophisticated
and very fine. So first of all, they get

these huge containers, that with content,
pretty much anything we don't want that's

electric or electronic, including entire
cars. And they divide them in streams. So

this is a heap of photocopy machines. They
also can detect when something can't be

repaired, but they also can detect which
part of the machine all the computer is

still, which component can be saved and
reused to repair something else. So that

also goes on another pile. I think they're
much better than us at differentiating

different types of plastics. They have
places dedicated to weigh in the kind of

metal that they retrieve. And I would say
that they're quite like you suddenly, not

like me. So when I have a computer and it
doesn't work. I think for me, it's a black

box. I'm never going to open it. But these
people, their job, their business is to

open our old computers and better than
that. Most of them, like not most of them,

but many of them, can repair and give them
a second life or really a new lease of

life, which, you know, it's important
because we think all these objects are

dead, but actually they give them a second
life and then, you know, they repair it.

They repair them, they sell them to
communities around Aghogbloshie or in

Ghana, or in neighboring countries to
people would otherwise not be able to

afford a new printer or new TV or a
computer. And then, as you can see, they

have places to have fun. And they, too,
are quite fans of the Premier League. So

the map I was showing, just before. With
all the activities in Aghogbloshie has

been made by architects and designers DK
Osseo-Asare and Yasmina Abbas. They spent

a lot of time trying to understand how the
community was working. And they designed

this kiosk with anything they could find
on the scrapyard. And it's a meeting place

where they invite the community of
Aghogbloshie to meet people such as

graduates or young students in science,
technology, engineering, math. And so the

students and graduates who have very, very
theoretical vision on technology. And then

they get to meet these people, who have
extremely sophisticated, very deep, know

how. And together they exchange ideas and
they've developed ways, for example, you

know, the traditional lead to to recover
the copper from the cable, they would burn

the cable, the plastic, which is very
toxic and also damages the copper. So they

find a way to recover the copper without
burning the plastic, which means that it's

less toxic, it's safer, and they can sell
the copper for more money. So it's kind of

a win-win. The aim was to develop together
new processes, new ways of working, new

tools. They also have fun. So with bits
and pieces, they found on the scrap yard a

couple of years ago they made these drones
that flew over the junkyard. So it's a

project I like a lot because it pays
hommage to the kind of work that doesn't

get a lot of recognition. But that's
really important, you know, when you think

of, as I said, the metals we are using to
make our electronics and also even the

solar panels and and the wind turbine et
cetera, and all our renewable energy they

also rely on the same metals that are
disappearing, at least are becoming less

available. So that's one of the reasons I
really like this project. And also, it

reminded me of this performance from
already forty years ago by Mierle Laderman

Ukeles. She kind of decided she would be
an artist in residency at the New York

Department of Sanitation. So that's the
people who collect the trash. So she spent

a year with them everyday. She was there
at six in the morning and she followed

them and she did, she had this gesture of
she wanted to meet every single one of

them. There were 8500 employees. So she
she wanted to shake them with them and

say, thank you for keeping New York City
alive. Which I think is a lovely gesture,

because suddenly this anonymous mass of
bin men you realize that there are

individuals. And yeah, she documented and
talked with them. It's a way to bring

attention to a profession that we don't
value a lot. And also, she wanted by

spending so much time among them to make
people realize that the work of these

people should be valued at least as much
as her own as an artist because of the

role they play for the collective society.
Yeah. Okay. I see. Still Agbogbloshie

but if I had time I would talk about other
projects in Africa. This one's a startup.

African born 3D that makes 3D printers
that at least a third of the components

come are found in second hand on second
hand, in discarded electronic let's say.

And I think what this show is, is a kind
of mindset and an attitude that should

inspire us. And it's going to show to show
you a few example of this attitude, I

think is really important is is trying to
make the most of what you have instead of

jumping on the next gadget and gizmo, but
really trying to to be as creative, as

innovative as possible. So in India,
they have this movement called Jugaad,

where even in the West we
translate it as frugal innovation. So this

is. Oh yeah. You needed. You had only a
motorcycle. You need a ploughing machine

for his land. So you adapted. The the the
is motorcycle. And you turn it into a kind

of.
sudden silence

RD: I can take a traveling mic
Audio technician: Dead battery.

RD: So I should keep ... watch out for my
hair, yeah.

Herald: In the meantime, the question. You
know it. Oh, no. I think the meantime is

over. No. So, uh, you know the question.
And you know the case 6-2-1. Someone? No?

So six hours of sleep a day. Two meals?
No. Oh, boring. Anyways, to remember it:

six hours of sleep, two meals a day and
one shower, please remember. And, uh, to

make some minor announcements, don't
forget the trash. Do we have audio back?

RD: I think so.
Herald: Perfect. Then, please.

RD: I can't believe you told people
to wash. Yeah. Yeah. This is answering

precise need instead of creating demand.
And sometimes, you know, it respond to a

specific problem. Sometimes it can be
scaled up. So this Indian inventor made a

fridge that doesn't use electricity, but
uses evaporation to to keep the food cool

simply because there are people who live
in a rural areas who don't necessarily can

afford a fridge or don't have continuous
access to electricity. And of course, the

best example and the most famous example
of Jugaad, is the Indian

space mission. Since 2014 India has is a
probe orbiting Mars and the Indian

engineers, and pretty much everybody in
India jokes about the fact that it costs

less money for them, that the space
mission cost less money than than your

average Hollywood blockbuster about space.
And, you know, it's not about making

things cheap. It's about reinventing
process, of designing, of manufacturing

and of distributing. Okay. I don't have
that much time. So I'm going to skip a few

things. Yes. So I've been to India,
Africa. Let's get back to to Asia, because

I really like this project. Say it's a
project by an artist who also saw images

from Agbogbloshien similar a
junkyards. And so he was interested in

e-waste as well. He found himself in
Taiwan and he found this really cutting

edge company that deals with e-waste no
one wants. So usually when you find a

company that deals with recycling midsize,
usually they focus on the nice metals, the

ones that are valuable like in a copper,
for example. And then you have pieces of

electronic waste that no one wants, such
as a I don't know the one that contains

lead or CRT monitors or glass fiber from
printed electronic boards. This kind of

thing that really no one knows what to do
with it. Well, they found a way. So the

company is called Super Dragon
Technology. And the trick they found is

that they just take all these bits and
pieces of waste that no one wants and they

crush them into a powder, they mix them
with epoxy and they make these splendid

objects out of them. And because I think
they're quite crafty, they can imitate

very well the appearance of bronze, of
marble, of porcelain, you know, very noble

material. And also they play with the
proportion of epoxy and this toxic powder

to make it so like feel like it's very
heavy if it's supposed to imitate bronze,

etc. And so they're decorative objects
with the particularity that they contain a

lot of lead. So you're not supposed to
manipulate them too much might be

dangerous. They also have in common that
they have a very peculiar esthetic. As you

can see, this is a trophy. And then have
these these wonderful little thing where

they actually they make fake rocks, which
looks absolutely eccentric and crazy. But

the story is that these are not just any
type of rocks. They're supposed to be

scholar stone. So during the tense 11th
and 12th century in China, there was the

dispassion for the so-called scholar stone
where an intellectual from China would go

in the countryside and admire the
landscape. And suddenly they would find

these rocks that were seemed to be
sculpted by the elements that had really

strange and interesting shapes. And they
thought it was the manifestation of the

creativity of nature. And so they would
bring them back and use them to

contemplate and meditate. And, you know,
now nowadays you can you can still buy

some of these scholar stones in auction.
They're quite valuable. But what I really,

really like is that these superb dragon
technology is the way they think. So they

can figure out that there's a difference
between applied art that makes you do

useful things like plates and furniture
and then fine art that makes basically

useless things and sees the ways no one
wants is useless. Well, that kinds of

fits with the requirement to make fine
art. So this way all these objects have

been shown showing to you. They call them
green art and they have a green art

gallery, and appearantly it's quite
successful. Tyler Coburn bought some of

these stones and actually accompanies them
with a text. So I know your narrative

where you have the story of one single
grain of sand that tells its many stories

how it started as a sand and then became
became a piece of electronics and then a

piece of trash and then and then ended its
life as art. Found it very charming. I

don't have time for this. Yes. Very
quickly. I mean, I'm famous for giving

very depressing talks. So now I'm trying
to insert a little bit of happiness in my

talks. Things are changing a bit. That's
why you have now repair cafes that are

quite successful, yet there are also shops
you can find where the people working

there and absolutely not affiliated with
with Apple, Samsung and Nokia. But they

found a way to give a second life to your
objects and repair them. So and usually

they are much nicer than the guys at the
Genius Bar. If you've ever had to deal

with them. There are more and more Web
sites that sell secondhand goods that have

that even come with a one year warranty.
You've heard about the fairphone, of

course. And then brings me quite abruptly
to the other type of waste I wanted to

talk about, which is nuclear waste. I
thought I saw that I needed to talk about

nuclear waste because because it's waste,
because it's energy. And so it's very

technological and extremely problematic.
So what do you do when you have your

country and you have a lot of nuclear
waste? I mean, the most toxic can be toxic

for 100.000 years, up to a million years.
It's going to be very, very dangerous. You

have two choices. Either you keep it at
hand like buried, but not too deep so that

you hope that in the near future someone
will have a brilliant idea and be able to

we'll know what to do with it and how to
handle it safely. Or else you do like they

are doing in in Finland and in other
countries. And France is thinking about

that. You bury them very, very deep under
the ground in deep geological repository.

But then you have a problem because it's
going to be to be dangerous for thousands

of years. So how do you inform people,
like a future generation that it's dangerous

and they shouldn't go nearby. Either you
use text, but then languages change,

languages disappear. I mean, we might
think that, oh, everybody speaks English,

but everybody used to speak a bit of
Latin. And now if you are confronted with

the text of Latin, you might not find it
easy to understand, even if your mother

language is English. Dealing with with an
English text from the middle age is going

to be difficult. I speak French dealing
with the with a French text from the

middle age is difficult. So how about
having some nice icons such as the skull

and crossbones like everybody, you would
think that everybody associated with

toxicity. Absolutely not. It's quite it's
quite new. It's only since the 1800 that

the skull and crossbones have been
associated with toxicity. In the middle

age Christians when they saw Skull and
Bones they tought of renewal and

resirection. And I guess if you show the
children the skull and crossbones there,

they they're not going to see toxicity.
They are going to say, oh, cool, pirate's

Treasure Island. So you see, that's
tricky. Yeah, the symbols. So I am going

to show a couple of ideas that
semioticians and artists and philosophers

and thinkers have thought about to deal
with how to signal to very, very distant

generations that there is something
special there and you shouldn't go near

it. Oh yeah. Okay, I forgot this one. Even
if you found a suitable message, let's say

you found a suitable message. You also
have to make sure that people would take

it seriously. The thing, the coastline off
of Japan, there are these so-called

tsunami stones that basically say, please
don't build beyond this point because it's

very dangerous. There's been a tsunami.
They will come back one day and no one

paid attention. Anyway, let's go back to
my artist and semioticians idea. So in the

early 80s, a semiotician had the idea of,
you know, to preserve the memory of the

presence of a very toxic, very dangerous
nuclear waste, you have to make it part of

society to include it in the fabric of
society. So, he suggested the creation of

an atomic priesthood. So that would be a
religious order that would have as its

mission to keep the memory of the danger
alive, using rituals and myths and

folklore. Some artists thought, well, we
should plan the forest like a forest of

genetically modified trees on top of one
of those repositories, so that in the

autumn the leaves would bloom and become
blue and that they would fall and that

there would be a nice blue carpet. And
people like in thousands of years would

interpret it as: oh this is a secret
place, we should leave it in peace and

respect it. I really love this idea. I
find it a bit naive because, you know,

human beings don't have a great track
record of respecting beautiful pieces of

landscape. So, yeah, I'm not very
optimistic. Yeah, and then there is this

kind of cynical idea of modifying a cat so
that the cat would stop glowing or

changing the color of its fur in the
presence of high red. Oh, 20 minutes

again. Keep adding time. But I'm almost
done anyway. So that would be a cat that

changes color or glow in the presence of
radioactivity. This is not one of those

cats this is an artistic interpretation of
Marcel Rickli. So yeah, I think it's not

very nice. To be honest with you, I like
all those ideas of trying to transmit and

connect with very, very distant time and
with people who are living in moments, in

times we cannot even comprehend and
imagine. But I'm not totally convinced.

And I mean, they're charming, but I don't
think they would stand the test of deep

time, mostly because it just that the
periods we're talking about, like even

100.000 years, it goes beyond human
experience. How do you relate to it? It's

just so far away that it becomes abstract
and almost unreal. So I've been thinking,

you know, about this project. I've been
interested in nuclear waste for quite a

few years now. So I've been thinking other
projects, artistic or others, that can

relate to, like physically or emotionally,
with very, very distant past, but in the

distant times, but in the past, because we
don't know the future, we don't know what

it's going to be like. But the past, we
kind of have an idea. I couldn't find any

project that really, that I was convinced
could give a good experience, a good idea

of relating to a distant time in the past.
Until last month, there was this big art

fair in Turin and I found this butt plug
by a Swedish artist called Thomas Hämén.

And the particularity of this butt plug is
that it's made of copper light. So it's

basically dinosaur poo from around 140
million years ago. And that's where I

discovered that there is actually a big
market for the incredible, for fossilized

dinosaur excrements. You can buy it. I
checked. You can buy it on Amazon. I'm not

sure it's going to be an authentic, but
it's available on Amazon. So I thought,

yeah, that's it. I mean, if you were to
buy it and use it, you would actually be

in close connection with a living creature
that, I mean, in intimate contact, I could

say, with a creature that lived at a very,
very distant time. Okay. So, we are almost

at the end. I have three lines of
conclusion that I'm going to read. But

then I want to show you a film. And my
conclusion would be that all of this is

very fanciful, especially the end. But it
might still be useful to keep in mind that

something like renewable energy that keeps
us so, so passionate, is very often viewed

as a long term solution to the climate
emergency. But unfortunately, renewable

energy relies on physical resources that
are neither infinite nor renewable. And

right now, it looks like we are busy
implementing a future that was dreamt and

conceived a few decades ago. At a time
when society wasn't worried about

exploding climate crises, the erasure of
wildlife and growing material scarcity

accompanied by an unmanageable heaps of
waste. Anyway, I've just been talking

about the future and I would like to end
with a short movie set in the future by

Alexandra Lupashko, who is a young Russian
filmmaker. And I really wanted to show it

to you for several reasons. One of them is
that when I knew I would come back, my

first thought is that, yes, I'm going to
be able to show 2050, because I really

love it. And the second reason is that I
really didn't want to finish my

presentation with a butt plug.
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Yeah.. applause
Yeah. I forget to say it had nothing to do

with waste, but it was just irresistible,
I had to show it to you. Okay, that's it

for me. Unless you have questions.
Herald: Thank you very much, Régine

Débatty. applause As usual, if you have
questions, we have microphones over there

and microphones over there. Please stand
in line. And of course, we have questions

from the Internet. OK. In the meantime,
small thing. If you want to read, know

about.... Sorry, if you want to read more
about Régine. She writes also on a

website. It's called "We Make Money, not
Art dot com"

[https://we-make-money-not-art.com].
Which is, at least if I am concerned, a

brilliant title. And you write about what?
Régine: I've been writing, I mean, I think

is for almost 16 years about the way
designers, artists and hackers are using

science and technology in a creative but
more importantly socially engaged way. So

it's quite political, I like to think.
Herald: Which suits perfectly to this to

this event.
Régine: Yeah.

Herald: So questions? I see none so far.
None so far. In this case, we can...

Number four is this.
Microphone 4: Um.

Herald: Now in this case ... I heard an,
um. No question. In this case, we can chat

a little bit more about your website.
Régine: Okay

Herald: So if you want. If you want.
Régine: Yeah. It's not going to interest

people.
Herald: I'm pretty sure it does.

Régine: Okay.
Herald: Because I had a quick look and it

was pretty impressive. You write
about AI as far as I know.

Régine: That's the thing. When I knew I
was coming to talk about the best of 2019.

I was like, this year I've had to deal so
much with AI outside of my blog that I

said "no more AI" except maybe for the
film at the end, that, you know, is a bit

AI, but otherwise...
Herald. No AI?

Régine: Yeah. On my blog, there's been a
lot of AI. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a bit sick of

it. Actually, one of the last ... I wrote
about was by Julian Oliver who spoke just

before me now. Yeah.
Herald: Cool. In this case, no more

questions. Thank you very much.
Please, a warm applause for Jean.

applause

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