Excerpt:

Alt-C is an installation that uses electricity produced by plants to power a single board computer mining a cryptocurrency.

During the photosynthesis process, green plants release sugars and organic matters in the soil. These nutrients will then be digested by bacterias releasing electrons. As electrons flow between the two electrodes, the electrical current is then leveraged to power a cryptocurrency mining rig.


As money grows on trees, it is then possible to draw a correlation between atmospheric condition and production of cryptocurrencies. A neural network had been trained to predict the crypto mining rate in regard to the weather forecast in the UK.

The AI will try to come up with a strategy to reinvest the grown/harvested money into farmable land.
As the system grows, it will attempt to plant more trees to provide for the required energy.
Could an ecological computer virus reverse deforestation?



Rationale

Alt-c question our relationship to ecosystems in regards to networked technologies and abstraction problematics.

What would it mean to perceive forest and fields as giant networked processing or powering the information grid?

How forecasting technics in places in the finance industry can recall Aeromancy (Cloud reading Divination)?

What would it mean to live in a world where economic would be driven by the weather forecast, atmospheric conditions or any naturally occurring phenomenon? Would this made us respect more natural ecosystems or nourish our will to control them?

With enough abstraction and control, could we plan on growth? In such a context, would economic growth lead to ecological sutanability or a total financialization hegemony on farmable lands making them vulnerable to the fluctuations of the market?