2022

DIGITAL ECOLOGIES IN PRACTICE

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When: 28-29 July 2022

Where: hybrid – online and in-person: University of Bonn, Germany

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Following our inaugural conference in 2021 which took place online, we are delighted to be hosting Digital Ecologies in Practice in person in Bonn this year.

Digital Ecologies in Practice brings together scholars, researchers, designers, artists, and other practitioners from several disciplines and backgrounds to exhibit and explore practical and conceptual work concerning the digitisation of more-than-human worlds. Our aim is to collectively address the promises and pitfalls of digitisation for fostering multispecies conviviality from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Researchers and practitioners across multiple disciplines are increasingly experimenting with the affordances of digital technologies for producing novel human-nonhuman relations, inaugurating new modes of environmental governance, and being attentive to nonhuman perspectives. Digitisation offers novel opportunities for generating knowledges concerning the nonhuman world, enabling previously inaccessible ecological encounters, and fostering communities with shared eco-centric goals. However, digital technologies, and the data-driven approaches they enable, are not without their problems. They give rise to new avenues for exploitation and marginalisation, and can entrench relations of power embedded in market-based and technocratic responses to environmental issues.

With these concerns in mind, a series of questions has emerged. What kinds of methodological crossovers are possible between scholars, practitioners, and artists? How do digital technologies allow scholars, practitioners, and artists to experiment with novel modes of representation and participation, and creatively cross disciplinary and species boundaries? Which problems are solved, created, or exacerbated by the use of digital technologies in such research?

On Day 1 (28th July – in person only), we are pleased to welcome a panel of artists and design practitioners who are exploring the potentials of digital technologies for producing sensitive and sensual encounters between humans and nonhumans. Mari Bastashevski’s Pending Xenophora is our keynote exhibit, and we look forward to welcoming Mari as our day 1 keynote speaker. Participants will experience a range of digital technologies, including immersive VR, livestreamed wildlife cams, and experimental films.

Day 2 (29th July – in person and online) is dedicated to an interdisciplinary conference with several thematic sessions. Professor Ron Wakkary will deliver our day 2 keynote, and all talks will be simultaneously streamed online.

In-person participants will have the option of dining together at the end of each day. 

We are looking forward to an inspired and inspiring conference! 

Digital Ecologies in Practice Organisers

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REGISTRATION

Digital Ecologies in Practice will be a two-day hybrid event, held both in-person in Bonn and online.

Those wishing to attend in person, please get in touch as soon as possible—there are a very limited number of self-funded guest spots still available.

Those wishing to attend online, please register for our mailing list here. Day 2 of the conference will be livestreamed via YouTube and joining details will be sent out to our mailing list.

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DIGITAL ECOLOGIES IN PRACTICE SPECIAL ISSUE WITH CGIP

Following conversations with the editors of cultural geographies in practice, the proceedings of this conference will be published as a special issue. Contributions will document and reflect on creative, practical, and experimental uses of digital technologies and mediation in relation to environmental governance and knowledge production, human-nonhuman encounters, and digitised more-than-human worlds more broadly. These contributions can also take many forms. Participants are welcome to get in touch with the Digital Ecologies team to discuss their contribution to this special issue.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Digital Ecologies in Practice is co-organised by the Digital Ecologies research team and Dr Julia Poerting, with financial support from the University of Bonn and the German Research Foundation (project number 446600467).

We are grateful for the support of Bionic Natures, a collaboratory of the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities (OSEH).

Our past research and events have been kindly supported by the Vital Geographies research group at the Department of Geography at Cambridge, as well as King’s College at the University of Cambridge.

To keep informed on our research and future events, follow us on Twitter or Instagram (@digicologies) and sign up to the Digital Ecologies mailing list: http://www.digicologies.com/. Any questions, drop us an email at team@digicologies.com.