Solar Server is an autonomous solar powered web server run from my apartment balcony in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It will host a series of videogames designed to be low-carbon and have environmental themes in the games.
My goal with this project is to not only represent environmentalist themes and have people think about the future of the planet and what needs to change, but also put principles of sustainability into actual practice. Because I am an artist, I want people to see and interact with my work, yet my previous work demands you interact with fossil fuels in order to engage with it—on Steam’s servers, Apple’s, Androids, and itch.io’s. With Solar Server, consuming fossil fuels is no longer a necessity when playing my work.
The set up is a 120Watt solar panel I bought off Kijiji, a marine deep cycle lead-acid battery, also used from Kijiji, an MPPT, a buck converter, and a Rasperry Pi, a form of microcomputer. It has 8GB of RAM and a 32GB flash card.
You can watch a talk about creating Solar Server here. Read articles about Solar Server and interviews with me in The Guardian, Tech Radar, and CNET.
If you have inquiries about Solar Server, you can email "kara.stone @ auarts.ca" or find me on Bluesky.