ClimateAction.tech has been awarded the Prix Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanity for creating the Branch online magazine.

The magazine was spearheaded by Michelle Thorne, Chris Adams, Laurence Bascle, Carrie Hou, Tom Jarrett, Jack Lenox, Hannah Smith and others as part of an international community effort. ClimateAction.tech was co-founded by Thoughtworks Arts Director Andrew McWilliams.

Prix Ars Electronica is the world’s most time-honored award in electronic and interactive art, with prize ceremonies going back more than thirty years. The Digital Humanity Award focuses on artistic projects that address social, cultural, and humanitarian issues in our digital society.

The user interface of the magazine was designed by Tom Jarrett to be ‘Demand Responsive’ meaning it adapts to the physical infrastructure of the internet and the energy behind the page view.

By looking up power grid intensity and the user’s location, Branch renders in four different ways to adjust to detected power needs.

The ClimateAction.tech community first formed when tech sector employees got together to advocate under a sector-wide global banner for greater awareness and action and awareness of tech’s role in the climate crisis.

The ClimateAction.tech community now operates over a wide swath of the planet with online hubs based in every continent bar Antarctica, and discussion and action groups around varied topics such as machine learning, tech research, product design, datacenters and web infrastructure.

This international collaboration has led to a Climate Tech TED talk series and an ongoing series of Climate Tech Salons with public online presentations followed by private community discussions. The community is served by a highly active Slack, targeted social campaigns and was a central instigator for the Digital Climate Strike.