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Ihmisiä etenee pitkospuita pitkin aukealla syksyisellä suolla

Aesthetics of Nature on the Move

How does our appreciation of nature evolve in the age of digitalisation and AI?
  • Seminar
  • Languages and cultures
  • Environment and natural resources
Event date:
Time:
10:15–16:00
Event location:
Joensuu campus, Agora building, room AG106, and on-line
Additional information:
Yliopistokatu 4
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Open research seminar of the DigiFREN research project will be held on Thu 3 October on Joensuu campus starting at 10.15.

How does our appreciation of nature evolve in the age of digitalisation and AI? 

The research seminar Aesthetics of Nature on the Move invites reflection on the ways in which digitalisation reshapes our interactions with and perceptions of natural environments. With topics spanning from algorithmic landscapes to artificial tropics and to the care of nature, the seminar delves into the recent research and arts-based approaches for feeling and thinking about fragile environments. What kind of new aesthetic categories are emerging, and how do they shape our understanding of nature in a "post-digital world"?

The seminar is organised by the DigiFREN research project (Digital Aestheticization of Fragile Environments) in collaboration with BOMOCULT Research Community (Border, Mobilities, and Cultural Encounters research community of the University of Eastern Finland), the Finnish Folklore Society, and the International Peatland Society. 

Program


10.15–12.30 Mediated Experiences of Nature (in English) 

Jukka Mikkonen: Some Remarks on Mediated Appreciation of Nature 

Minna Santaoja: Digital Naturecultures and Citizen Science 

Juhana Venäläinen: Algorithmic Landscapes of Finnish Nature: Exploring Mire Landscapes through Computer Vision 

Anna-Sofia Sysser: Experiencing the “Artificial Tropical” in Finland 

Break

13.30–16.00 Estetiikka, hoiva ja teknologia ihmisen ja luonnon vuorovaikutuksessa (in Finnish) 

Virpi Kaukio: Vähättelystä arvonannon välineeksi – ehdotus estetisoinnin uudelleen tulkitsemiseksi 

Salla Jutila: Monilajinen huolenpito matkailussa 

Kaisa Vainio: Monilajinen arki – luonnon monet arvostamisen tavat kaupunkiympäristöissä 

Kirsi Laurén ja Tiina Seppä: Digilaitteiden kanssa suolla 


Please register by 29.9. for the afternoon coffee and/or to receive the Zoom link. The seminar is open to everyone, also without pre-registration.


Evening program at restaurant Sointula, address Kirkkokatu 22, at 19.00:
Soiden Soidinmenot is a scientific-artistic video art piece combining avant-garde jazz and bog research. It collides video material related to boglands, bog restoration and bog research with the avant-garde jazz expression envisioned by jazz guitarist Heikki Ruokangas. The end result is a live-performed, musical video. 
Musicians: Heikki Ruokangas, guitar; Juho Karjalainen, percussion.
Filming: Vesa Ranta, Juho Karjalainen.
The event is open to everyone. 

Welcome!

For further information, please contact Tiina Seppä, email tiina.seppa@uef.fi.

Arrival instructions and parking on campus

Related content

Research group picture: Hauraiden ympäristöjen digitaalinen estetisoiminen (DigiFREN)

Digital Aestheticization of Fragile Environments (DigiFREN)

Ongoing

It can readily be observed simply by looking around or listening attentively in any natural setting, that people’s engagements with their surroundings are different from a decade ago. Today, in the mountains, by the seaside, and in the forests, it is hard to find anyone who is not tapping on their smartphones, flying drones, using wearable cameras, or other gadgets to digitally “capture”, and augment, their experiences of the environment. The objective of DigiFREN is to study this transformative moment of environmental perceptions in Europe. The historically and ethnographically grounded research will elucidate digital aestheticization in/of fragile environments, namely, how is digital media and technology implicated in reframing environmental perceptions, affections, conceptions, and practices. Five places in Slovenia, Croatia, Finland, Norway and Poland, strongly impacted, or seen to be threated, by human activity, have been carefully selected to reflect the cultural and ecological diversity of Europe. Although particularly important in the era of “overheating”, digital aestheticization of fragile environments remains ethnographically relatively understudied. In the humanities, it was debated primarily in art theory, (new) media studies, and philosophy. Furthering these debates, DigiFREN will approach digital aestheticization as it unfolds in everyday life. DigiFREN is the first ethnographic project to undertake a large-scale, comparative study of the topic in a digitalizing Europe. It expands established methodological strategies and introduces the experimental method of senso-digital walking. DigiFREN is uniquely designed to study the shifting and increasingly important relationships between the changing categories of the human, environmental, and technological. Thus, it will produce important results relevant to not only anthropology, history, cultural and sensory studies, but also to human geography, environmental aesthetics and media studies.

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Borders, Mobilities and Cultural Encounters (BOMOCULT)

Through its research on borders and different encounters, the research community provides in-depth knowledge concerning the transformation of socio-cultural phenomena given increasing complexity and accelerating globalization.

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