[Commlist] CFP: Digital Ecologies 3: Machine / Material / Land

*CFP: Digital Ecologies 3: Machine / Material / Land*
*Date: July 24-25 2025*
*Location: Bath, UK*
*Venue: Bath Spa University, Locksbrook Campus*
The *Digital Ecologies 3 Symposium* examines the complex material 
relationship between technology, society, food and energy production and 
the land. It is informed by Yuk Hui’s notion that the essence of 
contemporary technology is to ‘consider everything as a standing 
reserve, as a resource to be ordered and exploited’ (Hui, 2021). Along 
these lines Hito Steyerl identifies AI generative media as ‘Mean Images’ 
and looks at their reliance on ‘vast infrastructures of polluting 
hardware and menial and disenfranchised labour’ (Steyerl, 2023).
Today, we find ourselves in a new kind of alchemical process. The 
digital age has become our modern-day philosopher’s stone; with its 
infrastructure exploiting both base and precious materials. Technology 
tools and infrastructure hold the potential to transform our world in 
ways we are only beginning to understand. However, like the alchemists 
of old, we must approach this potential with wisdom, respect, and a deep 
understanding of the material and spiritual consequences for the human 
and non-human world.
We must scrutinise the material and ecological cost of production, 
extraction, AI and technological acts, and seek to reimagine our 
relationship with technology, not as a tool for exploitation, but as a 
means of seeing things differently and fostering care and attention 
towards all entities.
Our symposium is organised around three main themes:
*Digital Ecologies: Machine Futures*
In this strand we explore how we can challenge Hui’s notion of 
contemporary technology as a tool for extraction and exploitation of 
resources. We ask how technology and our relationship with machines of 
all sorts can be re-imagined in creative, critical and sustainable 
ways.  Here we would like to expand on Hui ‘s other ideas which consider 
how philosophy and art can transform the concept of technology, 
including the imagination, invention and use of technology’ away from 
the conditions of exploitation. In addition, we are connecting with 
Artist and writer James Bridle’s suggestion that technology can be 
reimagined as a way of ‘seeing things differently rather than just doing 
things’ (Bridle, 2022).
We are interested in a range of responses that explore themes including:

  *
    Speculative machine futures and imaginaries – re-imagined ethical
    and sustainable machines
  *
    Machines that help us to communicate with, & understand non-human
    intelligences
  *
    Non-western and postcolonial machine futurisms
  *
    Organic and biological machines
  *
    Caring machines

*Soil as place, internet as place-less-ness*
This strand thinks about digital technologies and their entanglements 
with soil and food systems.  Vandana Shiva argues that the techno 
optimism advanced by Big Tech and Big Ag, will only exacerbate the 
climate emergency. How might thinking-with soil, an undertheorized body, 
offer fresh perspectives?
Soil, when understood as biologically intact, interconnected and 
ongoing, is contingent on place. Conversely, cloud technologies and 
internet infrastructure have a place-less-ness - our everyday actions 
online, both trivial and essential, feel immaterial and weightless 
thanks to metaphors and abstractions like the cloud. These tools are 
constructed and operational through complex relationships with soil and 
land.
What sense does soil make of our digital actions, what seeps in and out 
of soily bodies – materially, conceptually, philosophically?
How might we create new metaphors for the digital that materialise and 
bring to mind these hidden realities, manifesting with mass, visibility, 
and place in a more authentic digital ecology?
We are interested in a range of responses that explore themes including:

  *
    Soil-human relations
  *
    Soil-food-data synergies
  *
    Food culture
  *
    Extraction
  *
    Data and transfer
  *
    New metaphors and stories for digital infrastructure and digital
    actions
  *
    (Digital) compost and a (digital) lifecycle
  *
    Temporality
  *
    Acoustic soilscapes
  *
    Belowground digital ecologies
  *
    Photosynthesis and carbon
  *
    Phenology
  *
    Soil care practices and rituals

*Landscape, Ritual & Technology *
This strand seeks to understand how technology has altered human 
interaction with the landscape and our ritualistic practices. We welcome 
papers that explore how we are adapting to change and uncertainty 
through ritualistic and folk behaviours in the face of the current 
climate crisis.
The question arises: How has technology altered our interaction with the 
landscape and our ritualistic practices? Furthermore, in what novel or 
traditional manners are we exploring, celebrating, and adapting to 
change and uncertainty?
We are interested in a range of responses from artists, academics, 
historians and technologists who are investigating the intersections of 
landscape and technology through ritual, folklore or performance to 
submit papers and present work that explore the following themes:

  *
    Ritual & Rites
  *
    Embodied practices
  *
    Energy Production: Solar, Wind, Hydro
  *
    Alchemy
  *
    Technology as revered object
  *
    Festival/Carnival/Rave/Music/Dance/Theatre
  *
    Folk Practices and Costumes
  *
    Uncertainty
  *
    Celebration / Feasting
  *
    Human / more-than-human
  *
    Calendrical: Seasons / Harvest / Spring / May Day

*Submission Process*
We welcome submissions from academics, artists, researchers, and 
practitioners who are exploring these themes. We also welcome proposals 
for non-traditional approaches to papers including proposals for 
exhibits and moving image screenings, sound works & performances.
Abstracts must be submitted in English by February 20th 2025 to 
(_artandtechnologyresearch /at/ bathspa.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(artandtechnologyresearch /at/ bathspa.ac.uk)>_with the subject 
“Abstract DE3 2025” and should not exceed 300 words. Abstracts must 
include the presentation title & the author's name. For practice based 
work please provide the title and a summary/description of the work.
Shortly after the conference, participants will be invited to submit 
their work for an online publication.
Applicants will be notified of the outcome of their submission by April 
28th 2025. Subsequent information regarding the registration process and 
process for submitting work will be made available closer to the 
symposium date.


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