The Heliotechnics/Heliotechniques Institute for the Study of Solar Practices is a speculative media art project and website that explores new ways of thinking about energetic entities, such as petroleum, whale oil, electricity, and the sun to decenter anthropocentric representations of nature, culture, and technology. The project is a website for the science of solar practices—the techniques and technologies of living with the Sun that humans and other earthly beings do that make us the beings that we are or might be.

This Heliotechnics/Heliotechniques workshop focuses on the digital relations of photovoltaics in collaboration with environmental media theorist/researcher Dr. Anne Pasek. As energy forecasting and climate models stress, photovoltaic (PV) solar generation is an essential part of efforts to both rapidly expand and decarbonize the electrical grid. To preview this future (or hurry it along), many artists and activists have created aesthetic and prefigurative PV experiments in galleries, protest camps, and digital solar-powered platforms. This efflorescence of artist- and expert-led solar projects provide many insights about the opportunities and limits presented by PV as an aesthetic and political medium. Such work, however, remains largely disconnected from more quotidian communities and subjects. What do everyday people think about PV? Moreover, how might they think with PV, if given the chance?

Please RSVP to dssn@buffalo.edu

This workshop is hosted by the Digital Humanities Research Workshop and sponsored by the Humanities Institute and the Department of Media Studies.