Future Form with Lauren Franco

Tega Brain

In this episode of Future Form with Lauren Franco, I speak with artist and environmental engineer Tega Brain about ecology, automation, artificial intelligence, carbon accounting, and the infrastructures shaping contemporary life. Tega's work explores how technologies organize agency, distribute power, and shape our relationship to the environment. Through projects ranging from Solar Protocol, a solar-powered web hosting system, to Slop Evader, a tool for navigating the pre-ChatGPT internet, to Offset, an alternative carbon registry, she uses artistic practice to question the assumptions embedded within technical systems. We also discuss her long-running collaborative practice with artist Sam Lavigne and how humor, participation, and intervention can be used to expose the logics of contemporary technological systems. We discuss engineering and its claims to neutrality, the politics of optimization, AI and climate change, and the growing tendency to frame environmental crises as technological problems. The conversation also explores participation as a form of intervention, and what it means to design systems that work with environmental limits rather than constantly attempting to overcome them. Theme song by Yuzeren.

Marina Otero Verzier

In this episode of Future Form with Lauren Franco, I speak with architect, researcher, and curator Marina Otero Verzier about the hidden infrastructures shaping our digital world. Marina’s work reveals the material, environmental, and political costs behind technologies we often think of as immaterial, from data centers and cables to mineral extraction, and how these systems reshape landscapes, labor, and ecology. We discuss the myth of “the cloud,” and how its smooth, frictionless experience conceals systems that are, in reality, “noisy, heavy, and polluting,” as well as how labor is redistributed and often made invisible. The conversation expands into questions of extraction and so-called green energy, and reflects on memory, data, and why we store so much, asking what it might mean to rethink these systems more collectively. Theme song by Yuzeren.

Jordan Weber

In the first episode of Future Form with Lauren Franco, I speak with regenerative ecology sculptor and activist Jordan Weber about art as a tool for environmental justice and collective repair. Weber shares how his work transforms polluted land in historically redlined neighborhoods into spaces for healing and resilience. Focusing his energy in East Detroit currently, he explains how ecological restoration, community design, and scientific research come together to address both environmental harm and toxic stress. The conversation also traces the personal and political roots of his practice, from Ferguson in 2014 to his ongoing commitment to building landscapes that counter violence in the built environment. Together, we reflected on sustainability, power in the art world, and the role imagination plays in creating more just futures. Theme song by Yuzeren.

Future Form with Lauren Franco Trailer

Curious what Future Form with Lauren Franco is about? Start with the trailer! Theme song by Yuzeren.