The third edition of Japan’s Osaka Kansai International Art Festival ponders urban futures with a group exhibition that asks “STREET 3.0: Where Is The Street?” Curators Miwa Kutsuna and Yutaro Midorikawa present works by international artists that hack the city with technology (Aram Bartholl, Simon Weckert, AQV-EIKKKM), calligraphy, or olfactory. Bartholl’s over 1,400 node-strong network of Dead Drops (2010-, image), for example, inserts USB flash drives into the urban landscape for offline data sharing.

Manifesting how data centres “buzz, hum, and groan around the clock,” 24/7 (2023, image), a new audiovisual installation by composer and visual artist Esmeralda Conde Ruiz opens at HELLERAU in Dresden (DE). Produced during her residency at TU Dresden’s multidisciplinary Schaufler Lab, the installation transforms the HELLERAU orchestra pit into a pseudo-server farm, inviting visitors to explore a noisy labyrinth that foregrounds the sound of ubiquitous data flows.

“Terms & Expectations,” a group exhibition curated by Barbara Cueto & Bas Hendrikx, open’s at Toronto’s InterAccess. Focused on “distribution centres as agents within our natural environment,” the show hones in on critical infrastructure that underpins platform capitalism (e.g. the ubiquitous Amazon fulfilment centre). Featured are artists including Hiba Ali Simon Denny, Sophia Oppel, and Coralie Vogelaar, contributing works in mediums ranging from installation to performance.

Sarah Friend’s solo exhibition “Terraforming” opens at Nagel Draxler’s Crypto Kiosk, Berlin, with a series of new works that “turn to the protocol layer of blockchains and the physical reality of the internet as subject matter.” Using text, video, code, and waste from a local data center, the Canadian software artist foregrounds “internet infrastructure, its stories, shape, materials” and the false “dichotomy between competition and cooperation.”

In the CLB Berlin exhibition “Assembly Strategies,” Chilean architect Pedro Serrano explores how JOYN MACHINE might help address local infrastructure needs sustainably. Developed by the research-driven Berlin-based Studio Milz, the portable all-in-one design and assembly system allows for low-cost, low-footprint fabrication of wooden architecture. During the inaugural JOYN residency in 2021, Serrano realized speculative spatial configurations “that have no site or client.”

“Transatlantic Visions,” an exhibition showcasing Juliette Lusven’s doctoral research on internet infrastructure, opens at Montréal’s ELEKTRA gallery. Its single installation Sonder (le monde) (2022, image) presents a visualization of the undersea cables that span the Atlantic Ocean and real-time geographic data, fusing topographic and satellite views with “microscopic captures of technological residues, sediments, and microfossils from the ocean floor.”

What comes after platform capitalism? An assemblage called ‘hyperstructures,’ according to Jacob Horne. In an essay published on his website, the co-founder of the NFT marketplace aggregator Zora outlines the frameworks he sees emerging around crypto protocols. Inspired by the utopian architecture of Paolo Soleri, Horne argues the permissionless nature of hyperstructures generates low-friction exchange, yielding more equitable outcomes for participants (versus web 2.0 platforms where the user is the product). Is this the frothy rhetoric we’ll hear as money flows into web3? Yes, but Zora’s manifesto claim that “platforms hold our audiences and content hostage” is not wrong.

With Pink Cell Tower, artist and critical engineer Julian Oliver erects “Germany’s first cell tower for the Commons” at Skulpturenpark Berlin. The solar-powered and autonomous piece of ‘extroverted infrastructure’—it’s designed to be seen—is framed by Oliver as an act of reclamation in an otherwise completely privatised EM space. “Calls and texts across the network are free and pro-public,” the former Berlin resident writes on Twitter. In short: “No plans, no tracking, no monitoring.”