Presentations, programs, and news from the Smart Forests community.
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.
10/02/2022
Jennifer Gabrys will speak on the theme “Sensed Landscapes (Mapping Change)” as part of “Instruments of Change” — a multi-day symposium focused on the technological and scientific frontiers of sensing, simulating, and experimentation in the landscape. This session on 15 February 2022 examines the use of both ground-based sensors and aerial and satellite-gathered imagery for mapping landscape change. The series is hosted by the Environmental Modeling Lab (EMLab) at the University of Pennsylvania.
14/01/2022
Michelle Westerlaken speaks about multispecies worlds in this “DH Beyond the Human” Lightning Lunch on 14 January 2022. She is joined by digital humanities scholars who research plants, animals, fish and fungi. Hosted by the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative at the University of Toronto.
13/12/2021
As part of the symposium, “Ecological Restoration and the Conservation of Biological Diversity” on 13 December 2021, Danilo Urzedo examines the digitalization of forest landscape restoration. He particularly explores how technologies impact stakeholder engagement and inequality.
03/12/2021
For this “Narratives about Earth” evening of films and talks, Jennifer Gabrys will give a lecture that addresses the topic of the planetary and outlines “Being Planetary as Praxis,” a concept that informs the ethos of her Planetary Praxis research group. Co-hosted by La Loge and Goethe-Institut Brussels as part of the “Constellations for Futures” that investigates ecology, art, community, and science.
02/12/2021
As part of the “Sentience” lecture series, Jennifer Gabrys investigates the sensory arrangements that Smart Forests generate. The presentation considers how sensory infrastructures materialize as distributions of power and governance, while detailing the sensory practices of humans and more than humans that transform and potentially re-constitute dominant regimes of perception toward other inhabitations and milieus. Organized by the Centre for Sensory Studies and Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University.
18/11/2021
This infrastructure series critically explores infrastructures, with this second workshop focusing on global infrastructures. Jennifer Gabrys will participate in a panel to discuss infrastructure and collective world making.
17/11/2021
With a focus on Smart Forest technologies, Jennifer Gabrys will consider the social consequences of environmental technologies in a keynote presented as part of this series of Cambridge Zero Research Symposia.
17/11/2021
As part of the Humlab’s 20th anniversary conference at Umeå University, Jennifer Gabrys will give a keynote that explores the digitalization of forests, and how forests become media.
29/10/2021
Max Ritts presents “Social and Political Consequences of Acoustical Monitoring Networks,” at the Anthropology and Conservation Conference (25-29 October). He reviews some of the general trends exhibited in the “sonic eco-surveillant” turn in conservation, drawing on examples from around the world.
21/10/2021
As part of the event, “Human Entities 2021: Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” Jennifer Gabrys will present work on “Sensing Smart Forests.” The talk will be presented online, but held in the open-air environment of Palácio Sinel de Cordes, Campo Santa Clara 142-145 in Lisbon, Portugal.
08/10/2021
As part of the “Sense Ecologies” panel, Jennifer presents “Re-constituting the Sensory Infrastructure of Smart Forests” at this year’s 4S virtual conference in Toronto (6-9 October). She discusses forests as sensorized environments. Whether in the form of camera traps to monitor organisms or Internet of Things to detect wildfires, there are an array of sensor technologies that observe and constitute forests in relation to scientific inquiry, Indigenous land claims, environmental governance, and disaster prevention and mitigation. This presentation asks how sensory infrastructures materialize as distributions of power and governance while considering the sensory practices that transform and potentially re-constitute dominant regimes of perception.
08/09/2021
Surveillance technologies such as drones, camera traps and long-range thermal cameras used for conservation monitoring are increasingly also used to control and repress local communities. In Trishant Simlai’s plenary talk at the Drone Ecologies workshop, he discusses the socio-political implications that these surveillance techniques are having on the different communities who live near the Corbett Tiger Reserve in Uttarakhand, India. You can view the talk here.
07/09/2021
Michelle Westerlaken talks with The Animal Turn host Claudia Hirtenfelder about her research on multispecies design. Michelle reminds us that “forests are more than trees. They are multi-species ecologies that can be looked at from all the different species above the ground, under the ground.” The conversation can be listened to here.
06/09/2021
In this talk, Jennifer Gabrys gives an overview of the Smart Forests project. Jennifer’s talk was part of the panel, “Data, AI, Ethics and the Environment,” as part of the “Just AI” event series. The talk can be viewed here.
23/08/2021
This year, Jennifer Gabrys gave a lecture titled “The Internet of Trees,” for the summer school course “The Posthuman and New Materialism,” (16-27 August). The annual course is organised by Professor Rosi Braidotti at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands.
05/07/2021
Is conservation surveillance a means for state repression? Trishant Simlai considers this topic in his plenary presentation to an international audience at Drone Ecologies at the Cabot Institute for the Environment (5-6 July 2021). The event addresses questions about environmental justice, the rights of rural communities and surveillance from the proliferation of monitoring technologies.
24/06/2021
As part of this investigation into technical-natural milieus, Jennifer Gabrys will present work on the sensory infrastructures of smart forests. This virtual symposium contributes to re-thinking the ecological across art and media studies, including by engaging with how sensation and technologies generate milieus and inform earthly inhabitations. The event is hosted by the University of Oslo and Kunstnernes Hus in Norway on 24 June 2021.
22/06/2021
In this conversation on data, AI and the environment, Jennifer Gabrys will discuss how Smart Forests contribute to the challenges of digital technologies that would manage environmental crises, while also contributing to them. The event is hosted by the Ada Lovelace Institute and the JUST AI network on 22 June.
26/04/2021
On 26 April 2021, Smart Forests researcher Michelle Westerlaken will participate in The Animal Turn podcast to talk about her research on multispecies design. Host Claudia Hirtenfelder invites scholars from the Humanities and Social Sciences to explore the increasing research interest in animals other-than-humans as individuals in their own right, who have their own stories, histories and geographies. We will share the recording as soon as it’s out.