EcoDH

We in digital humanities and media studies like to use environmental metaphors. We talk of “media ecologies” and hold conferences about “possible worlds.” Maxwell, Raundalen, and Vestberg have suggested that such metaphors of the environment obscure the relationship of digital media to the material world, enabling utopian discussions about virtual environments at the precise moment in which the real environment is in crisis. The emerging field of Ecocritical DH (EcoDH) seeks to maintain a focus on the material world within the digital humanities. Located at the nexus of environmental humanities and digital humanities, EcoDH mobilizes a range of tools and critical constructs, using digital methods to investigate environmental issues while reflecting on the ecological implications of those same digital methods. EcoDH thus offers new horizons for digital work while challenging digital humanities to investigate its own practices and metaphors. Our panel features scholars and practitioners from various institutions and backgrounds discussing the existing place of, and future possibilities for, EcoDH. Ted Dawson will present on immersive experiences of infrastructure and how these can both reveal and obscure the materiality of the digital. Amanda Starling Gould will touch upon the “dirty digital humanities,” sustainable digital practice through permaculture, and the urgency of cross-disciplinary EcoDH. Craig Dietrich will discuss his work combining permaculture with network culture by creating software that drives non-hierarchical systems such as Scalar and ThoughtMesh. Max Symuleski will explore the political ecology of maintenance as it relates to digital objects, digital infrastructures, and life-cycles of computational hardware. libi will address media archaeological and techno-revitalization practices in relation to obsolescence and convenience culture. To demonstrate EcoDH at its best, our presentation will be a hybrid intervention that puts into practice our theoretical intentions.