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From compost to code, how FutureEverything and University of the Arts London’s Critical Climate Computing Initiative are radically redesigning eco-conscious web infrastructures, with support from Greater Manchester Social Enterprises Sow the City and MUD

Computation is increasingly a site of the effects of ecological crisis while being a driver for the power relations and inequity that underpins it. Technology development needs to be urgently reorientated so that it works for people and planet.

Supply chain disruption, resource scarcity and conflict provide the backdrop for ever growing computational demand, while the destructive impacts of mining and computational e-waste are out-sourced to the Global South. The issues are big and largely unacknowledged at governmental level. In the face of this, localised and replicable ‘green’ technologies become a site of action and inspiration. How can Nature inspire sustainable approaches to the challenges that go beyond business as usual? And can artists, designers and urban growers, guided by more-than-human design principles, lead the way in shaping innovative ‘green’ transition solutions?

In response to this growing global challenge, FutureEverything and the Critical Climate Computing (CCC) group at University of the Arts London (UAL) are excited to announce the launch of ‘Compost Computer’, an experimental project that will radically transform FutureEverything’s computational infrastructure by integrating more-than-human protocols.

The Critical Climate Computing Team

Mariana Marangoni

Mariana is an artist, researcher, and educator whose work critically examines the materiality of media and the aesthetics of decay. Her practice-based PhD research explores new decolonial and Indigenous-influenced approaches to climate-aware computational technologies.
Artist Mariana Marangoni

Shinji Toya

Shinji is a digital artist whose practice is based on digital image-making and operates as critical generative art.
His work focuses on carbon auditing in digital infrastructures, particularly web-based technologies, which has included low-carbon servers. He also explores biomatter technologies and their role in art and design.
Image of Shin artist Toya

Wesley Goatley

Wesley is a critical artist, researcher, and the Compost Computer Project Co-Lead for UAL, alongside Eva Verhoeven. His work explores the intersection between technological change, climate change, and social change, and how critical art practice intervenes during the age of polycrisis.

Wesley Goatley

Eva Verhoeven

Eva is a designer, artist, and researcher, and the Compost Computer Project Co-Lead for UAL, alongside Wesley Goatley. As Programme Director of Creative Computing & Robotics at UAL’s Creative Computing Institute, she investigates computational culture and more-than-human-human-centred design.

Eva

Funded by the Design Museum’s Future Observatory programme, as part of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Compost Computer project proposes a complete redesign of FutureEverything’s computational system from the soil up. At its core is a proof of concept bio-reactor, powered by microbial activity and latent energy storage of compost, designed to run FutureEverything’s website server offering alternative to energy intensive web infrastructure controlled by the interests of Big Tech.

The website interface will be redesigned with low-compute code to improve carbon efficiency, while the design will reflect compost lifecycles. The project aims to practically demonstrate how reimagining local internet systems with an environmental focus can significantly reduce carbon emissions whilst highlighting the potential of eco-conscious systems thinking across both technical and creative disciplines.

In developing this project, we’ve drawn inspiration from, and hope to contribute to, a growing movement of artists, activists and technologists experimenting with permacomputing, low-TEK, regenerative computing, and digital de-growth. These ideas will be taken forward by the CCC team of artists, designers, and researchers as they develop the technology, and explore the relations between computation and the ecological crisis. CCC artists Mariana Marangoni and Shinji Toya bring their creative expertise in ecologically-aware computational technologies will shape its direction.

Lucy Rose Sollitt, Creative Director, FutureEverything

“This project sets out to counter the dominant rhetoric of computing as being infinite and dematerial, disconnected from its real-world eco-social impacts – which are unevenly distributed across cultures and geographies. By moving to low carbon, locally situated technologies, literally grounded in earth and permacultural practices we aim to help shift the perceptions and possibilities of technology with the public, culture, and policy. This is the first in a new strand of prototype projects that we are developing at FutureEverything, we are grateful to our collaborators at CCC, MUD, Sow the City, and our microbial kin for making Compost Computer a reality.”

The bio-reactor will be located within the compost at Manchester community growing site MUD. By placing the bop-reactor in a public green space, the project seeks to raise awareness about the real material dimensions of technology, explore links between growing and computing, and equip local communities to devise their own eco-approaches to web and energy infrastructure.

As part of the Compost Computer project, FutureEverything, together with the artists and MUD, will host a series of public workshops this summer at the bio-reactor location in Platt Fields, Manchester. The workshops will explore both the development and operation of the bio-reactor, as well as the innovative more-than-human approaches to web design that accompany it. To mark the launch of the Compost Computer website in September 2025, an online open access digital toolkit containing code and methodologies will be made available online. This toolkit is designed to support and empower a global network of web designers, infrastructure engineers, and others interested in green transition technologies to replicate and build upon the bioserver approach.

Informed by Nature joining FutureEverything’s Board, we are especially interested the deeper dimensions and modalities of the human and more-than-human relations at play in this experiment, and will also collaborate with with Manchester based social enterprise, Sow the City, to test the impacts of the bioreactor on the composting process.

FutureEverything and CCCI meet with MUD for a site visit at Sow the City

Mike Hodson, Director and Head Grower, MUD

“MUD have a strong commitment to regenerative practice and circular systems, attempting to produce food with minimal external inputs. We’re really excited to be part of the Compost Computer project and the possibility of harnessing the power of microbial decomposition to create energy. It fits perfectly with our ethos and helps us move towards our goal of being completely self-sustaining in every way. We’re excited to collaborate with Future Everything and UAL to see the many applications this technology could have for small scale agroecological projects”

Lead Partners & Community Collaborators

UAL's Critical Climate Computing Initiative

The Critical Climate Computing (3C) Project is a collective of artists, designers, and researchers at UAL engaging with the entangled relations between computation and the climate crisis. We develop new forms of computational art and design practice that embed responsibility, carbon and technological literacy, and critical creativity at their core.

Sow the City

Sow the City is a Manchester-based social enterprise. Established in 2009 with a few packets of seeds and some compost, we’re now helping thousands of people to green the city. We transform unused urban spaces into thriving green places and provide activities to connect people in cities with the living world.

MUD

“MUD CIC is working to create food system change and empower communities – improving our Food Sovereignty. We are determined to promote & develop disused urban areas as a small but important part of production. We do this by creating grassroots, people-led farming projects where we can grow food to share or sell.
Our model provides 3 main benefits: improving the environment, improving personal wellbeing, and strengthening communities, achieved through the universal right to grow, cook and eat.”

Wesley Goatley, co-Founder, Critical Climate Computing UAL

“The Critical Climate Computing research group at UAL are delighted to be working with groups such as FutureEverything, Sow The City, and MUD on this project; groups who center critical ecological thinking in their work, at both local scales and beyond. The Compost Computer project embodies what myself and Eva Verhoeven founded the CCC to do: fostering new forms of creative practice that respond critically and urgently to the age of climate crisis.”

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Nature to join FutureEverything

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image of Manchester skyline with flowers (Nature on the Board)

Funded by UKRI, the ‘Compost Computer’ is a collaborative project between UAL’s Critical Climate Computing Initiative (CCCI) and arts, technology and cultural organisation FutureEverything, with support from community partners Sow the City and MUD.