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Overclockers, Urban Miners, and Zombie Media: Crack-opening the GPU Black Box through Research-Creation

The fourth session of this year’s "Digital Materialities" seminar will take place on Wednesday, January 14. We are pleased to welcome Cyrus Khalatbari, design researcher at the Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD, HES-SO) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).

Event, Research Seminar

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Salle CS16, 1 place Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, Paris

Abstract 

This  conference will explore how our algorithmic media landscape is shaped  by the miniaturization of smartness—embedding AI into ever more compact  and efficient devices. At its core lies the GPU, originally designed for  graphics rendering but now central to AI, parallel computation, and the  political economies that sustain them. By tracing the material,  thermal, and cultural infrastructures of the GPU, the presentation will  question dominant narratives of AI’s immateriality and universality  through two labouring communities at the periphery of its lifecycle:  Taipei’s overclockers and Accra’s urban miners. 

It will show how  smartness is grounded in geological, environmental, and social processes, and how following the GPU reveals the corporate processes of enclosure that underlie its miniaturization. Drawing on fieldwork and critical and speculative design projects, the talk will also introduce alternative research epistemologies. It will show how arts and design  can open the black box of computation and make visible the hidden infrastructures, labour, and planetary implications of contemporary  computing power. 

Biography

Cyrus Khalatbari is an artist, designer and PhD candidate of the joint program between the  Geneva Arts and Design University (HEAD – Genève, HES-SO) and the Swiss  Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL). Inside his PhD, Cyrus bridges  ethnographic fieldwork, Science and Technology Studies (STS) with arts  and design methodologies in order to address, at the level of the  Graphical Processing Unit (GPU), the ecological implications of  computing power and the digital. Cyrus’ research has been published by  journals and publishers such as Diseña, Valiz, TETI and has been funded  by the French Embassy in Switzerland and the European Union.  

The "Digital Materialities" working group of the Centre Internet & Society (CNRS) is dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary exchange. It seeks to bring together perspectives from the social sciences and humanities—including sociology, anthropology, history, geography, and political science—with those from fields such as computer science, chemistry, physics, geology, electronics, and materials science and engineering.

This approach aims to develop a deeper understanding of the material dimensions of the digital. The group also seeks to open dialogue to a wide range of audiences, including activists, artists, industry professionals, policymakers, workers, and journalists, in order to enrich discussions around these multidimensional issues. 

Practical informations

The session will take place on Wednesday, January 14th, from 4 to 6 PM (CET), in a hybrid format: via Zoom and in person at Sciences Po, room CS16 (1 Place Saint-Thomas d’Aquin, 75007 Paris). Prior registration is required.