Laurel Schwulst is a designer, artist, writer, educator, and technologist. She is recognized for her experiential projects-as-worlds, her expanded writing practice, her creative direction leadership, her websites, her innovative learning materials and educational environments, and her ongoing collaborations. Her writing (published in venues including The New York Times, The Creative Independent, and Art in America) has taken the form of essays, perfume reviews, and interviews with other artists. For over a decade, she has taught award-winning design classes and workshops (at universities including Yale and Princeton), and has presented internationally at cultural, academic, and internet-native institutions (at venues including BBC Radio 4, RISD, University of Seoul, Google, and Wikipedia). Laurel currently lives in New York City, serves as director of the gift shop at Are.na (a platform for networked curation), and is working towards a “PBS of the Internet.” 

Lecture Abstract

The word “ultralight” simply means “extremely lightweight.” In the physical realm, some kites are so lightweight they can fly indoors, for instance. But what does “ultralight” mean for technology and the internet? At first, ideas around lightness or heaviness might not intuitively make sense because ethereal technology metaphors like “the cloud” often hide or downplay physical infrastructure. But in reality, the internet is a physical thing, connected by underwater submarine cables and served from data centers containing many literal computers worldwide. All computing is physical computing. Websites, which make up some of the internet, can also be lightweight. From a pragmatic standpoint, light websites have a usefulness — they are quick to load, often accessible by default, and use less energy and resources which can have an impact on the environment. Some are even solar-powered, normalizing the idea that websites can be site-specific and linked to physical resources. Broadly speaking, lightness is about seeing the world in a new way. As suggested by Italo Calvino in his book Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1988), "I must change my approach, look at the world from a different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification."

This lecture is funded by the Robert B. Church III Memorial Lecture Fund.

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