Carbon Karma was the title of the o2CO2 art project. This project was designed to reflect the anthropogenic impact on the environment, particularly the emission of CO2 as a result of internet surfing. The idea of the project originated as a result of a brainstorming session between Atiq Hashmi, Adrienn Lestyan, and Daria Vdovina for our semester project at Aalborg University Denmark in 2018.

The idea was to create awareness about the emission of CO2 among the participants of the Politics of Machine Art and After conference that took place in Copenhagen in May 2018. There is strong evidence that CO2 is one of the major gasses that are contributing to global warming. Each individual click on our digital screens uses a certain amount of electric power on the server level which ultimately contributes a particular amount of CO2 in the air.

We tracked the Wi-fi usage of the building on run time where the conference was taking place and counted the number of websites being opened after certain regular intervals. This data was fed on the spot to the servo motors that were controlling helium balloons right in the middle of the conference building. The height of the balloons represented the amount of CO2 going into the air as a result of internet surfing on our laptop as well as on all the devices that were connected to the building’s Wi-fi.

To make people use our project laptop, we have designed some interesting and tricky questions written on colorful envelopes that enticed them to look for the answers on the internet. After opening some websites a message popped up on the screen telling them how much CO2 they had contributed as a result of their online search. In each envelope, some seeds of herbs and root vegetables were also offered with instructions on how they could plant them in their garden. 

A project website was also developed to share our findings with the broader public. The link to the site is given below in the Important Links section.