24th-25th July 2025

At Locksbrook Campus, Bath Spa University

Organised by Material : Art and Technology Research Group (Sam Wilkins, Claire Loder, Dave Webb and Charlie Tweed) 

Digital Ecologies 3 (please click here if you can not access the link) is a two-day symposium which examines the complex material relationships 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: 

• Machine Futures (Charlie Tweed) 

• Soil as place, internet as place-less-ness (Claire Loder and Dave Webb) 

• Landscape, Ritual & Technology (Sam Wilkins)