News, events, and highlights from the Planetary Praxis constellation of projects.
12/09/2023
As part of the upcoming symposium “The Only Lasting Truth is Change 2023”, BEK invites artists, scholars and foresters to the workshop “Forests as Environmental Media: Vegetalizing a Smart Forests Atlas” led by researcher, writer, and practitioner Jennifer Gabrys.
17/01/2023
As part of Congreso Futuro (Regiones: Valparaiso), Jennifer Gabrys presents Smart Forests research, with a focus on wildfires and digital technology.
28/11/2022
Kate Lewis Hood will respond to Martina O’Brien’s of ephemeral measure, which is rooted in image making, phenology, and the activation of communities. The ongoing project involves installing and maintaining digital cameras at multiple sites in County Kildare to counter the lack of phenological monitoring in Ireland. Kate will discuss the project as part of a network of smart forest practices and phenological technologies. This publication launch and discussion will be held on Monday 28 November 2022 from 6pm GMT as part of Dublin Art Book Fair.
24/11/2022
Jennifer Gabrys will present a keynote for the seminar series “Action, Climate, Crisis: Anthropological tales in times of climate change” on 24 November. Organised by the University of Amsterdam and the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, the series focuses on urgent epistemological, methodological and political challenges that scholars face when conducting research in a climate crisis.
27/10/2022
The question of what is a forest runs through numerous environmental research and policy discussions. We’re excited to present this Smart Forests symposium at the University of Cambridge. Attending to the “forest multiple” (cf. Mol, 2002), this two-day symposium will consider the pluralistic mobilizations and inhabitations of forests across varying contexts, and in relation to digital technologies. Register to join us 27-28 October 2022.
20/10/2022
As part of The Policy Perspective session of “Citizen Science for Policy and Practice” on 20 October, Jennifer Gabrys will discuss Citizen Sense research and reflect on how citizen science can build citizen infrastructures to generate and sustain democratic exchanges. Hosted by UK Research and Innovation, the Institute for Community Studies, Food Standards Agency, and Social Research Association, this online conference is designed to inspire and support people to explore what citizen science is and the opportunities it offers for policymakers, funders and researchers alike.
07/10/2022
For this Future of Forests hybrid event, Jennifer Gabrys gives an overview of the Smart Forests research project and discusses examples of digital technologies as they contribute to different forest worlds and livelihoods. “RegTech, Governance and the Future of Forests” is hosted by Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and Food and Agriculture Organization for the United Nations (FAO). Tune in on 7 October 2022 for one or multiple sessions from 2-5pm CEST.
23/09/2022
5G promises to bring ‘physical’ and ‘digital’ worlds closer by enabling more rapid and extensive communications through Internet of Things networks and devices. This keynote presentation by Jennifer Gabrys will examine how urban infrastructures and forests become newly and doubly animated by the promises of 5G working with AI.
22/09/2022
To promote scholarly exchange around data, governance and ethics, Big Data & Society is holding a Colloquium, featuring a series of panel discussions with experts from around the globe. Jennifer Gabrys will contribute to a session addressing issues of computing and the environment, from waste and pollution to the materiality of data. Join this online talk on 22 September at 15:30 BST via Zoom here.
19/08/2022
During the Participatory Design Conference 2022, Michelle Westerlaken will present a co-authored paper that details the development of the Smart Forests Atlas. The Atlas expands open-data research platforms toward pluralistic and participatory practices, and works with the under-examined practice of ‘digital gardening’ to reconfigure the open-data research platform into a dynamic and participatory space for cultivating ideas and generating content.
26/04/2022
Jennifer Gabrys will present “Sensing Smart Forests” as part of the NordAI seminar series “AI and Environment” on 5 May 2022. The series is curated by Tirza Meyer and Adam Wickberg from the research project “The Mediated Planet” by the Environmental Humanities Laboratory at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Running February and June 2022, the series features contributions from leading scholars working with AI at the interface between the human and non-human world, exploring the question: what constitutes the environment through the lens of artificial intelligence?
05/04/2022
In April, Jennifer Gabrys will present the first Melbourne School of Design Dean’s Lecture for 2022. Jennifer will draw on material from her forthcoming book, Citizens of Worlds: Open-Air Toolkits for Environmental Struggle, to discuss how atmospheric citizens are constituted through practices of sensing environments and working to build more breathable worlds. She’ll unfold Citizen Sense research and projects, from documenting emissions in urban environments and creating air-quality gardens, to citizens collaborating to monitor air pollution from fracking infrastructure. This public lecture will be held on Tuesday 12 April at 6:30pm AEST / 9:30am BST. Register via the link below.
20/03/2022
Jennifer Gabrys recently discussed the sensory infrastructures of smart forests at “Instruments of Change” — a multi-day symposium focused on the technological and scientific frontiers of sensing, simulating, and experimentation in the landscape. Jennifer spoke as part of the “Sensed Landscapes (Mapping Change)” session on 15 February 2022, which examined the use of both ground-based sensors and aerial and satellite-gathered imagery for mapping landscape change. Tune in to the recordings from this and the other sessions via the Environmental Modeling Lab (EMLab) at the University of Pennsylvania.
16/03/2022
Environmental sensors are meant to activate particular forms of data-oriented environmental citizenship. Plugging in a digital kit and joining a disparate community of users are the steps to be followed that in principle should mobilize environmental data and rights in the making. Yet rather than unfold a more straightforward form of political engagement, citizen sensing kits and the citizen data they generate can often give rise to even more complex struggles with urban environmental life. Jennifer Gabrys will present “Atmospheric Citizens: How to Make Breathable Worlds” as part of the University of Texas’s Digital Writing and Research Lab speaker series on Thursday 28 April at 10:30am CT / 4:30pm BST.
09/03/2022
For the Urban Institute’s new program “Urban Inhabitation and the Urban Technical”, Jennifer Gabrys joins an exciting line-up of interdisciplinary scholars for an inception meeting to explore questions of planetary habitability. The discussion will push beyond conventional notions of habitability, asking: how might an expanded sense of technicity open up new horizons for thinking about what the urban could be? Jennifer will discuss the breathability of worlds, drawing on work from her forthcoming book, “Citizens of Worlds: Open-Air Toolkits for Environmental Struggle”. This free, online conversation will be hosted by the University of Sheffield’s Urban Institute on Friday 18 March at 4pm GMT.
24/02/2022
For “Sound’s Colonialities: Formatting, Recording and Saving on Indigenous Lands”, Max Ritts draws from Smart Forests’ expansive research into forests, conservation politics, and digital acoustics — advancing critical questions into a central interleaving theme: coloniality. We explore how new acoustical monitoring technologies, rapidly being established to legitimately respond to escalating conservation issues worldwide, pose ethical dilemmas and material consequences for Indigenous communities whose lands, livelihoods, and ecological realities can enter their calculations in meaningful yet oftentimes unanticipated ways. This talk is part of Decolonial Research Lab at Talks.cam and takes place on 25 February 2022.
23/02/2022
Jennifer Gabrys will be presenting at “Im/materialities — Structural tensions between AI and the environment” on 24 February. This panel discussion by the JUST AI Network will explore the possibilities and limitations of AI as a solution to the climate crisis. Register via the link.
23/02/2022
For the Center for Comparative Media at Columbia University’s “Media Ecologies” seminar series, Jennifer Gabrys will present “The Forest that Walks: Digital Fieldwork and Distributions of Site” on 25 February 2022. The series brings together a diverse set of thinkers examining the relationship between technology and the bodies that interact with them.
28/01/2022
We’re excited to announce a new series by Goldsmiths Press and MIT Press for 2022 — “Planetarities”. Co-edited by Jennifer Gabrys, Ros Gray, and Shela Sheikh, the Planetarities Series investigates the rise of research and practice that attends to earthly and planetary concerns.
21/01/2022
Michelle Westerlaken recently joined the Lightning Lunch series, “Beyond the Human” — hosted by the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative at the University of Toronto. She presented “Imagining Multispecies Worlds”, exploring her research at the intersection of design, digital technologies, and the more-than-human. Watch this engaging discussion with scholars focused on digital humanities work with plants, birds, insects, fish, and fungi.