On Digital Media and “Sustainable” Futures
Key Subject Area Climate Futures in Digital Cultures
Digital media technologies play a central role in shaping visions of the future in contemporary societies: from the resource-efficient scenarios simulated by digital technologies to alternative futures, in which digital media are instrumental in shaping their designs and narratives. At the same time, resource extraction and the globally interconnected infrastructures on which digital cultures are built place a strain on ecosystems across our entire planet. From this tension, we examine the spaces of possibility for digital futures to emerge.
Our Goal
We aim to examine the role of digital media technologies in the emergence and shaping of climate futures, ranging from aesthetic and participatory designs to digital simulations and data-driven decision-making processes. Our overall goal is to further develop the research field of Digital Cultures by recognizing that transformation knowledge related to anthropogenic climate change is inseparable from digital media technologies and infrastructures.
The Challenge
Within the fields of academia, industry, politics, and culture, climate futures scenarios are developed in close connection with digital media—though often with little awareness of the impact that these technologies have on resource extraction, environmental pollution, and social inequalities. Addressing this tension, our research takes an in-depth look at both the opportunities for sustainable futures and the growing negative impact on the climate brought about by digital technologies.
Our Approach
Through interdisciplinary collaboration among scholars from cultural, media, and literary studies, as well as science and technology studies, we investigate how climate futures are constituted, imagined, and shaped in digital cultures. With a focus on media-based artistic and activist practices, sociocultural and political transformation processes, and technological developments, we explore digital cultures in the context of climate change and its global impacts.
Researchers from the School of Culture and Society are active in this key subject area. The team collaborates closely with their colleagues from the research area Digital Cultures and the Centre for Digital Cultures.
Affiliated researchers
In addition, Prof. Dr. Timon Beyes, Prof. Dr. Kevin Drews, Prof. Dr. Maren Haffke, Prof. Dr. Erich Hörl, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ursula Kirschner, Prof. Dr. Anna Lisa Ramella, Prof. Dr. Stephan Scheel und Prof. Dr. Christina Wessely take part as associate professors and doctoral advisors.
The key subject area is part of the Embracing Transformation program, which is funded by the Strategic Development of Potential initiative of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture (MWK) and the Volkswagen Foundation.
