I’m looking forward to joining this symposium on Human Machine: Soil, Sound, Memory 🗄️ at Akademie der Künste, Berlin on 15th November.

The event brings together artists and researchers to “explore new ways and practices of thinking, acting and feeling at the intersection of technology with ecology”.

I’ll give a talk on “regenerative data cultures” - drawing on Public Data Cultures:

regenerative data cultures

How does data shape earthly life? How might it support care, solidarity and regeneration rather than extraction and exploitation? This talk explores how nature-culture relations are shaped with data, from environmental data histories, to data practices of artists and activists, to machine learning datasets and more-than-human landscaping. Beyond corporate carbon laundering and neocolonial terraformation, it considers how data might support other kinds of socio-ecological relations and futures. Drawing on the recently published Public Data Cultures (Polity, 2025) as well as ongoing projects on ecological restoration, environmental intelligences and forest media practices, it aims to feed critical and creative engagements with data as cultural material, medium of participation and site of ecological politics.

Further details about the symposium are copied below.

Human Machine: Soil, Sound, Memory - 11/15/2025, 1 – 10 PM

Symposium with keynotes, lecture-performance, concerts, panels

With Jonathan Gray, Wesley Goatley, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Tamara Kneese, Anh-Linh Ngo, Tiara Roxanne, Jennifer Walshe, Helen Starr, Juno & fellows of the „Human Machine“ programme: Maithu Bùi, Victor Brim, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, Emerson Culurgioni, Assem Hendawi, hn. lyonga and David Odiase, Sonya Isupova, Safiya Seedmother, Kira Xonorika

As AI continues to evolve, grow and expand – from the material to the industrial to the digital and beyond – its impact on the Earth, climate, humanity and all living beings often remains invisible. This year’s Mensch Maschine symposium takes soil, sound and memory as points of departure for rediscovering alternative narratives and conceptions of technologies and intelligence in the arts – in acknowledgement of global perspectives, experiences and voices.

Against the backdrop of ecological grief and extractivism, through technologies of nature and the cosmos, Earth vibrations and machine learning, artists and scientists discuss and explore new ways and practices of thinking, acting and feeling at the intersection of technology with ecology.

The symposium runs in parallel with the group exhibition “Mensch Maschine: Return to Earth” 🗄️ at the E-WERK Luckenwalde (until 22 February).

Programme 1.00 – 1.15 pm: after the wires, our hands remain

Performance by Mensch Maschine Fellows hn. lyonga & David Odiase

1.15 – 1.25 pm: Welcoming Remarks by Anh-Linh Ngo, Vice President of Akademie der Künste

1.25 – 1.35 pm: Introduction by Co-curators Clara Herrmann, Helen Turner, Tiara Roxanne, Curators

1.35 – 2.20 pm: Regenerative Data Cultures

Keynote by Researcher Jonathan Gray

2.20 – 2.30 pm: BREAK (10min)

2.30 – 4.00 pm: Art and the Seeding of Hope in the Polycrisis

Panel Discussion with Mensch Maschine Fellows Maithu Bùi, Assem Hendawi, Viktor Brim, Emerson Culurgioni & Sonya Isupova, moderated by Critical Artist and Researcher, Wesley Goatley

4.00 – 4.30 pm: BREAK (30min)

4.30 – 5.15 pm: whya (2) – a listening exercise

Lecture Performance by Artist & Researcher, Nolan Oswald Dennis

5.15 – 5.25 pm: BREAK (10min)

5.25 – 6.10 pm: Resisting Data Extractivism

Keynote by Researcher Tamara Kneese

6.10 – 6.30 pm: BREAK (30min)

6.40 – 8.10 pm: Uwani: Recursion, Relation, and the Three Movements of Life

Panel Discussion with Mensch Maschine Fellows hn. lyonga, Safiya Seedmother, Kira Xonorika, Diva & Thuy-Han Nguyen Chi, moderated by Curator & Researcher Helen Starr

8.10 – 8.40 pm: BREAK (30min)

8.40 – 09.50 pm: 13 Ways of Looking at AI, Art & Music & A Late Anthology of Early Music, Vol. 1: Ancient to Renaissance

Talk and Performance by Vocalist and Composer, Jennifer Walshe

09.50 – 10.10 pm: Echoes in Stillness

Closing Performance by Artist, Singer and Musician, Juno

10.10 – 11.00 pm: Bar open