The Visual Politics of Digital Ecologies

A two-day conference with cutting-edge presentations from academics, artists, and practitioners on the visual politics of digital ecologies.

This two-day, in-person conference aims to collectively explore visual metaphors prevalent in the mediation of more-than-human worlds to interrogate how digital technologies are refashioning ecological aesthetics. The event will showcase contributions from academics, artists, and practitioners interested in the visual politics of digital ecologies. Papers will speak to a particular action of visualisation, for example: reflecting, hallucinating, refracting, zooming, obscuring, glitching, layering, pixelating, blurring, filtering, operating, mirroring, generating.

We are delighted to welcome Joanna Zylinska (Professor of Media Philosophy + Critical Digital Practice, Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London) and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg (Recent recipient of the S+T+ARTS Grand Prize and internationally renowned multimedia artist) as our keynotes.

Context:

As environmental degradation accelerates globally, Nature is becoming increasingly mediated through screens, sensors, and simulations: datafied, downloaded, and deciphered; saved, stored, and shared. Emerging technologies create novel visual regimes through which humans encounter, imagine, and interpret the other-than-human world. These visual regimes are not only technical; they also refashion ecological aesthetics, shaping how environments are perceived, valued, and cared for. Wildlife webcams promise unmediated intimacy with living beings, while artificial intelligence (AI) fabricates hallucinatory ecologies untethered from the web of life. “Digital twins” offer ecosystems from an impossible nowhere-everywhere vantage (a rearticulated ‘god trick’), while Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies layer and curate space, and attention at the whim of their designers. From TikTok feeds to satellite imagery, these proliferating techniques of visualisation not only mediate ecological knowledge but also stage new aesthetic and political relations between humans and their environments.

Visualisation practices—often employed uncritically or devoid of social, cultural, and historical context—form a key part of emergent forms of modelling, prediction, and analysis in science, engineering, and architecture. Emergent visualisation practices are not neutral; they carry material, affective, and political implications for increasingly precarious ecologies. The implications of these practices, therefore, fundamentally alter the politics of environmental governance and knowledge. From the advertising boards of property developers to contemporary documentary film, this emerging visual regime is characterised by, among other things, curation, artificiality, and abundance. What is at stake, then, in this evolving visual politics of ecologies? How might we characterise this emerging visual regime? How is nature visually presented?

Schedule:

DAY 1 - 2nd February (in Digital Hub@ Jesus College and St John’s College)

10am - Registration opens in Digital Hub@ Jesus College

10.30am - Welcome tea/coffee / introduction

11.00 - 12.30 - Panel 1

12.30 - 13.30 - Lunch

13.30 - 15.00 - Panel 2

15.00 - 15.30 - Tea/coffee break

15.30 - 17.00 - Panel 3

Move to St John’s College

17.30 - 19.00 - Keynote by Joanna Zylinska followed by wine reception at St John’s College

DAY 2 – 3rd February (in Digital Hub @ Jesus College)

9.00 - Tea/coffee and networking

9.30 - 11 – Panel 4

11.00 – 11.30 - Tea/coffee break

11.30 - 13.00 - Keynote by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

13.00 - 14.00 Celebratory closing reception with refreshments and light finger food

This event is part of the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub Programme with support from the School of Geography and the Environment, Jesus College Oxford, St John’s College Oxford, and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

The conference fee includes refreshments, lunch, and a networking reception. Catering will include vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options and allergens will be clearly labelled. If you have any additional dietary requirements or allergies, please do contact digitalhub@jesus.ox.ac.uk and we are happy to help.

FIND US

This event will take place in the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub at Jesus College, Oxford. The Hub entrance is on Market Street (opposite Wagamama). The Hub is accessible, with automatic double doors at the entrance and lifts to and from the main lower ground floor event space.

If you have any accessibility requirements, please do contact digitalhub@jesus.ox.ac.uk and we are happy to help.

*Filming and photography will be taking place during the event. If you do not wish to be photographed or filmed, please notify a member of the Hub team on arrival.