Julia Hahnl

I’ve been feeling quite stuck and blocked,

I tried to reflect on my work, but struggled to find a clear direction,

My research topics and material experiments haven’t fully come together yet,

I felt pressured to fit what I already had into a conceptual framework, especially while writing funding applications,

I’ve been trying to figure out what I really want to explore and what I want to say through my work.

Material Research

How can conductive yarn and thermochromic ink make the invisible flow of electricity visible through heat and colour?

How can knitting copper with different yarns, colours, and three-dimensional forms challenge the conventional appearance and materiality of electronic components?

How can reimagining speakers and microphones through copper and textile techniques challenge what we recognise as technology, while making its hidden mechanisms visible and tangible?:

How can handmade copper antennas reveal the invisible electromagnetic activity of everyday electronic devices?

Meeting Ebru 5.11

_showed her all my material research and shared my struggel

_She was especially intrigued by the knitted flower in relation to your data center research
_She emphasized documenting my decisions, your hands, your processes and how things are made when working with textiles
_encouraged me to recognize the skills I have developed and to make decisions about what to continue. (no need to incorporate every material experiment into my final project, some things can remain part of the learning process, and i can always return to them later)
_ continue using the knitting machine, especially because I had already learned how to hack and work with it.

IDEA SKETCHES:

How does an image change as it moves between digital and textile processes, and what becomes lost, visible, or transformed through the decisions of algorithms, machines, materials, and hands?

What happens when the rigid, functional architecture of a data center is reimagined through the flexible, conductive practice of knitting?

How can knitted copper forms combine textile practice with speakers and microphones to question what counts as technology, while making hidden infrastructures visible and audible?

How can a performance with handmade textile antennas, microphones, and speakers make the hidden infrastructures of a data center audible, exploring what can be heard, transmitted, and what remains inaccessible?

What could a textile server look like, how might it function, and what could it reveal about the hidden material processes of digital infrastructures?

Organisation:

• Raumverteilung for the AAA
• Ebru – Meeting on the 5th of November
• Fundings and Anträge for Diploma

Weltmuseum – Inspiration

Knitting – Fails

Tension, Yarn, image, connection computer, size , one needle broken ….

frustration…… so i went back to research

KRONSDORF /GOOGLE DATACENTER

Location: Small town in Upper Austria (3,500 inhabitants), former agricultural land.

Scale: One of Europe’s largest planned data centers, with further expansion proposed.

Energy: Potential consumption equivalent to hundreds of thousands of households; further expansion could approach one-third of Upper Austria’s annual electricity use. -> (article from 2010 speaking from whole Kronsdorf)https://www.diepresse.com/568607/kronstorf-wie-google-eine-gemeinde-veraendert?utm_source=chatgpt.com
solarpanels on roof only 1% of their enegry consuption

Water: Up to 200 L/s extracted for cooling; heated water returned to the Enns River (up to 30°C).
problems could be also chemical -> Sulfat

Also: Approximately 100 permanent positions expected, noise ! No comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment (UVP) required., larger diesel reserves in the case of multiple emergency power generators

HEAT, NOISE, CHEMICALS ……

i looked for Inspiration…..

….back to making, with new wool

Copper wire

Textile Speaker

Projectname Inspiration

“Tu Nube Seca Mi Río” (Your Cloud Dries My River) is a grassroots activist movement in Spain that campaigns against the massive water and electricity consumption of hyper-scale data centers.

When Computers Where Woman: research article from Jennifer S. Light

Fiberpunk by Ebru Kurbak

Project Description first try

Textiles have long been entangled with computation. Yet textile practices, historically associated with feminized labour, remain largely overlooked in dominant narratives of technology. Often dismissed as trivial or decorative, they reveal deeper assumptions about whose skills and knowledge are valued.

Taking the Google data center in Kronstorf, the project investigates the material and ecological realities behind our seemingly immaterial digital world. What if a server could listen to its environment rather than merely extract resources from it? What if technology were built around care, interdependence and ecological awareness?

Through experimental knitting and handmade electronics I want to explores alternative ways of constructing computational technologies. By unraveling threads of textiles’ storied past and weaving possibilities for their future, the project challenges established ideas of what constitutes technology. Rather than accepting the narrow possibilities of dominant technological systems, it seeks to expand them, grounded in care and overlooked forms of knowledge.

Next Steps

-thermochronic yarn from last feedback with silkscreen print

-continue with the copper and different metal wires and building electronic parts out of it ! (use also digital knitting)

-Idea: Built a tool with sensors to measure temp, sound,…. of enns and use these data
-making kind of an own server with the raspi
-maybe go back to Kronsdorf and make proper images
-use (iron)sulfat to color textile