[ecrea] Conference: Digital Ecologies and the Anthropocene

*DIGITAL ECOLOGIES AND THE ANTHROPOCENE*

*One-Day Symposium: Friday April 28th 2017 *
*Media Convergence Research Centre, **Bath Spa University *

We are delighted to annouce that registration is now open for the 
/Digital Ecologies and the Anthropocene/ symposium at Bath Spa 
University. The symposium takes place on Friday 28 April and includes a 
dynamic range of theoretical and practice-based responses from 
researchers, artists, filmmakers and writers.
*

BOOK TICKETS 
<https://www.bathspalive.com/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=digitalecologies&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=>

*/Keynotes Speakers:/**//*
*/Dr Ele Carpenter, Goldsmiths College, London /*
*/Professor Charlie Gere, /**/Lancaster University/*
*
/*Confirmed speakers include:*/

*
*Prof Owain Jones*, Environmental Humanities, Bath Spa University
**
*Philip Hüpkes*, University of Vechta, Germany
**
*Jeff Scheible*, Kings College, London
**
*Ramon Bloomberg*, Goldsmiths College, University of London
**
*Chris Bailey*, Plymouth College of Art
**
*Matthew Lovett*, University of Gloucestershire
**
*Charlie Tweed*, Bath Spa University
*

*
*/Film Screenings and performances include:/*
*

*
*Dr Oliver Case*and *Dr Adam Fish,*/System Earth Cable - Einstock 
Mountain/(2017)
**
*Peter Bo Rappmund*, /Topophilia/(2015)
**
*Andy Weir*, /The Plureal Deal/(2016)
*
*Sasha Litvintseva*, /Asbestos/ (2016)
*
*Nathan Hughes*, /OBJECT/(2015)
*

In August 2016 the International Geological Congress declared that a new 
geological epoch known as the Anthropocene needs to be declared due to 
the fact that the human impact on the earth is now so profound. Timothy 
Morton uses the term ‘hyperobjects’ to discuss some of the 
characteristics of the anthropocene and why it is often invisible to the 
human: he notes that hyperobjects are 'so massively distributed in time, 
space and dimensionality' that they defy our perception, let alone our 
comprehension, therefore the condition of the anthropocene is easily 
ignored. Among the examples Morton gives are climate change and 
radioactive plutonium. 'In one sense [hyperobjects] are abstractions,' 
he notes, 'in another they are ferociously, catastrophically real.'

Another of these ‘hyperobjects’ relates to the human relationship with 
machines and we can trace their impact on the earth back to the 
invention of the steam engine in 1781 by James Watt and its deposits of 
carbon on the earth’s crust. But today’s contemporary technologies 
appear to be different and are crucial to enabling human life and 
culture to function as well as realising  the production and 
distribution processes of capital. They also provide us with useful 
tools for visualising processes such as climate change and tracking the 
earth’s own movements and seismic activity.

However, the notion of these technologies being ‘clean’ or ‘virtual’ is 
soon unraveled by tracing their material realities which are made up of 
complex meshes of human and non-human moving parts. Today’s machines are 
heavily enabled by the extraction of raw materials, the use of fossil 
fuels and the production of material waste at sites such as Guiyu, China 
which has been called ‘the electronic graveyard of the world’.

In her book /Digital Rubbish/, Jennifer Gabrys notes that the electronic 
extends from technologies to markets and to modes of waste, decay and 
disintegration, articulating the relation between the signal and the 
thing and how they are bound into a shared material process. The history 
of the internet and today’s pervasive media technologies is also closely 
tied to the study of the earth and an observation of the ecological. It 
emerges from the development of military and nuclear technologies, the 
conception of cybernetics and the design of self-governing computer 
systems with built in feedback loops. These machines and systems end up 
as actors within a complex mesh of networks, hyperobjects, production 
processes, waste disposal and notions of deep time.

In terms of responses to these conditions Christophe Bonneuil describes 
the 'shock of the Anthropocene' as a space for generating new political 
arguments, new modes of behaviour, new narratives, new languages and new 
creative forms and this symposium is focused on bringing some of these 
emerging discourses to the surface across theory and practice.

Symposium themes will include:

  * The Anthropocene and forms of waste
  * Digital ecologies, hyperobjects and new materialities
  * Deep time and new temporalities
  * Creative strategies and responses


/Keynote Speaker Biographies:/

*Ele Carpenter* is a curator. Her Nuclear Culture curatorial research 
project is a partnership between Arts Catalyst and Goldsmiths University 
of London, where she is Senior Lecturer in MFA Curating and convenor of 
the Nuclear Culture Research Group. The Nuclear Culture project involves 
field trips, commissioning new work and curating film screenings, 
roundtable discussions and exhibitions including: Perpetual Uncertainty 
Bildmuseet, Sweden (2016-17); Material Nuclear Culture KARST Gallery, 
Plymouth (2016); Actinium, S-Air, Sapporo (2014). Carpenter is editor of 
The Nuclear Culture Source Book published by Black Dog Publishing in 
partnership with Bildmuseet and Arts Catalyst.

*Charlie Gere* is Professor of Media Theory and History in the Lancaster 
Institute for Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University. He is the author 
of Digital Culture (2002), Art, Time and Technology (2006), 
Non-relational Aesthetics, with Michael Corris (2009), and Community 
without Community in Digital Culture (2012), as well as co-editor of 
White Heat Cold Technology (2009), Art Practice in a Digital Culture 
(2010), and Unnatural Theology: Religion, Art, and Media after the Death 
of God (Bloomsbury, forthcoming), as well as many papers on questions of 
technology, media and art. His current project is tentatively entitled I 
Hate the Lake District, and is a kind of anti-travel book. In 2007 he 
co-curated Feedback, a major exhibition on art responsive to 
instructions, input, or its environment, in Gijon, Northern Spain, and 
was co-curator of FutureEverybody, the 2012FutureEverything exhibition, 
in Manchester.

For directions to Newton Park Campus at Bath Spa University: 
https://www.bathspa.ac.uk/about-us/find-us/ 
<https://www.bathspa.ac.uk/about-us/find-us/>

For more information please contact: Charlie Tweed 
((c.tweed /at/ bathspa.ac.uk) <mailto:(c.tweed /at/ bathspa.ac.uk)>)

Book tickets:
https://www.bathspalive.com/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=digitalecologies&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id= 
<https://www.bathspalive.com/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=digitalecologies&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=>



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