ThingsCon Salon

ThingsCon Salon - Making Symbiocene

Fri, Jun 26 · 3:00 PM CEST

Sociaal AI Lab, Hillevliet 90, Rotterdam, NL

### Making Symbiocene; Design for regenerative strategies in AI

Join us on 26 June 2026 at Sociaal AI Lab Rotterdam for the launch of the 2026 RIOT publication, with a special guest presenting the results of a project exploring how to design with algae and make the ecological impact of AI tangible—Tiwánee van der Horst.

## Launching RIOT 2026

The State of Responsible IoT is an annual collection of essays by experts from the ThingsCon community of IoT practitioners. First launched in 2017, the report explores the challenges, opportunities, and questions surrounding the creation of a responsible Internet of Things (IoT). The latest RIOT publication is an offspring of the 2025 conference theme RESIZE-REMIX-REGEN.

The articles:

• Arcane Designing: Getting down to Earth with magic, by Maja Riemann
• Design Principles for Physical and Agentic AI in Lived Space, by Iskander Smit
• Invisible Debris: Rethinking digital waste in an era of perpetual storage, by Martijn van Loon (Studio Frontier)
• Kenner Futures: Backcasting a New Deal for Mobile Infrastructure, by Rob van Kranenburg and Maarten Lens-FitzGerald
• Mud and Models: Does Making Matter for Regenerative AI Speculation?, by Fieke Jansen (Critical Infrastructure Lab), Kars Alfrink (TU Delft), Lena Trotereau, and Sunjoo Lee
• The Oracle of Chemnitz: An interactive art installation to reanimate old things in a garagefeaturing a rotary phone, by Karola Köpferl and Albrecht Kurze
• The Politics of Design, by Sen Lin
• Resize, Remix, Regen: Frankensteining IoT Design Methods, by Albrecht Kurze
• The Things We Cannot Throw Away, by Joanna Montgomery
• Uneasy symbionts in the clearing, by Phil van Allen

We invite present authors to introduce their articles; more details follow.

The Salon
We are happy to have Tiwánee van der Horst sharing the results of three workshops held in April and May at Het Nieuwe Instituut. AI may seem purely digital, but it uses energy, raw materials, and physical infrastructure. The workshops explored what that means for nature.

Participants worked with algae, fungi, soil, and materials such as iron and copper. Together, they developed ideas for AI applications. They examined which choices matter—including data use, hardware, and energy consumption.

Based on these choices, they created recipes for growing algae. The algae then showed what the effect is: do they grow well, or do they decline? In this way, the impact of AI becomes visible through living material.
During the Salon, Tiwánee will speak about the learnings and show the results of the workshops. Visitors will see what the good strategies are, and what designing with nature can teach us?
We aim to set an agenda for further research and application together with the participants. What do we need to make the symbiocene happen?

### About Tiwánee

Tiwánee van der Horst is a design researcher investigating the ecological impact of AI and how to make it tangible through interaction design at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, research centre Creating 010. Her research focuses on designing interactions and objects that reveal systemic and ethical issues of Artificial Intelligence. These objects are used for AI design and decision-making processes and for increasing ecological AI literacy. The workshops at Het Nieuwe Instituut were held on behalf of the Rotterdam Sociaal AI Lab and the Municipality of Rotterdam.

## Schedule

15:00 doors open
15:30 Welcome by ThingsCon, introduction to this year’s RIOT by editors Andrea Krajewski and Iskander Smit
15:45 Articles introduced by the authors
16:30 About the research and preliminary insights of the workshop Co-design with Algae by Tiwánee van der Horst
17:15 Discussion with participants: future research and application in design
18:00 Official presentation RIOT publication, drinks and bites
20:00 End

## Location

The Salon is held in Sociaal AI Lab, Hillevliet 90, Rotterdam.

## Registration

The ThingsCon Salon is free to visit, but you need to register. Also, if you cannot join the whole Salon.