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Welcome

Letter from the Editors
Michelle Thorne, Babitha George and Shannon Dosemagen

Conversation With Branch’s Cover Artists
Aravani Art Project

Open Climate Then and Now
Shannon Dosemagen, Emilio Velis, Luis Felipe R. Murillo, Evelin Heidel, Michelle Thorne, Alex Stinson

Solarpunk and Repair

garden.local
Taeyoon Choi

NORCO
Geography of Robots

After-Times® M22 HD
Deepa Bhasthi

The Repair Shop 2049: Mending Things and Mobilising the Solarpunk Aesthetic
Paul Coulton, Tom Macpherson-Pope, Michael Stead

Solar-Centered Designing: An Eccentric Proposal
Andres Colmenares

Climate Justice Now

Climate Justice: The Debt Is Not On Us
Brisetha Hendricks, Kristophina Shilongo

A Call to Action for Environmental Justice in Tech
Sanjana Paul

New Research on Climate Justice and Digital Rights
Fieke Jansen

The Different Intersections of Digital rights and Climate
Shannon Dosemagen, Evelin Heidel, Emelia Williams, Katie Hoeberling

The Power of Open

Map of the Future
Shayna Robinson

Wikipedians Reimagine Open Climate in the African Context
Maxwell Beganim, Otuo-Acheampong Boakye, Euphemia Uwandu

Critical Openness and Digital Sustainability
Emilio Velis

African Traditional Knowledge and Open Science for Climate Mitigation
Thomas Mboa, Ahou Rachel Koumi

Sentinels
Anna Berti Suman

Slow Tech, Hi Craft

Slowing Down AI with Speculative Friction
Bogdana Rakova

River Walks, Mutual Aid and Open Futures
Siddharth Agarwal

Enough
Michelle Cheripka

Alternative Computing Environments

Computing from the South / Computação do Sul
TC Silva, LF Murillo, Vince Tozzi, Francisco Caminati, Alice Bonafé, Junior Paixão, Mariana Rocha Arduini , Djakson Filho, Layla Xavier

Learning from COWs: Community Owned Wifi-Mesh
TB Dinesh, Shafali Jain, Sanketh Kumar, Micah Alex

Smarter, Greener Cities through Community, Open Data and Systems Thinking
Sruti Modekurty

Tech’s Environmental Impact

Apple just launched its first self-repair program. Other tech companies are about to follow.
Maddie Stone, Grist

Environmental Impact Assessment of Open Technology
Allie Novak, Shannon Dosemagen

Boavizta Project: Assessing the Environmental Impact of Digital Technology with Open Tools
Eric Fourboul, David Ekchajzer

The Fermi Problem of Climate Change
Anna Knörr

Fossil-Free Internet

The People’s Cloud: Manifesting Community and Eco-led Digital Spaces
Sarah Kearns

CO2.js: An Open Library for Digital Carbon Reporting
Fershad Irani

Library Love

Social Infrastructure Is What Love Looks Like in Public
Mai Ishikawa Sutton

Leading with Slow Craft
Nate Hill

Changing Soft Adaptation Limits, Seed By Seed
Daniela Soleri, Rebecca Newburn, Nate Kleinman, Mary K Johnson, Hayden Kesterson, Nick P Wrenn

About Branch

Unknown grid intensity

NORCO

Refinery

NORCO follows a young woman named Kay who returns to her hometown of Norco, Louisiana to settle the affairs of her recently deceased mother. Upon her arrival, she discovers that her brother has gone missing, and her search to find him leads her through an increasingly distorted and magnified South Louisiana. The game has its roots in a small geography and oral history project conducted in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that explored industrialization, erosion, and other characteristics of America’s Deep South. The game carries these research interests forward into the COVID era, where truth is contested, and reality, conspiracy, and dreams entwine.

As NORCO leads the player down the rabbit hole, the game offers many lenses through which to understand the dissolution of a community, whether it be through climate instability, wetland erosion, and repeated flooding; the social atomization of the internet; spiritual crisis and a loss of faith; or illness and residential displacement by industry. NORCO is a game about the loss of home, and the fraught and often misguided attempts we make to rediscover it.

While the scope of NORCO has grown since its inception, it was originally created using open source tools such as Phaser.js, as well as low resolution “pixel art” with maximum canvas sizes of 600×400 pixels. This early emphasis on small file sizes and simple, often textual game mechanics reflects an ethos of creating media that demands little from its host machine. Geography of Robots, the studio behind the game, is interested in exploring these ideas further, and creating small, portable experiences that are platform agnostic.

About the Author

Geography of Robots is a collaborative of artists and developers exploring the geography of the American South through interactive media.