Category: announcements

Branch #8 + Pause

Branch is a magazine about sustainable and just internet for all. It is edited and funded by the Green Web Foundation on behalf of the volunteer-run Climate Action.tech community. One of the many cool things about Branch is that it exists in three different versions, according to the carbon intensity of the energy grid at any given moment (so the heavier assets, like high resolution pictures, can be delivered by renewable energy). The fantastic issue #8 has just launched, edited by Hannah Smith and Marketa Benisek.

The Sussex Digital Humanities Lab has a little contribution in #8, in the form of an article by Jo Lindsay Walton, as well as an article by GreenPixie’s Rory Brown, whom we’re collaborating with on Digital Sustainability 2024. And there’s plenty more …

Editors’ letter
Hannah Smith and Marketa Benisek

10 people share what finding beauty in the imperfect means to them

Issue 8 community-assembled playlist
Hannah Smith and Lima Dastgeer

Meaningful connection

Talking it out: Restoring information ecosystems through authentic human connections
Bárbara Paes and Olivia Johnson

One Movement, Four Wings: Connecting climate strategies
Melissa Hsiung

Connectivity, infrastructure and the defence of the Amazon’s socio-biodiverse ecosystems
Hemanuel Veras

What can digital sustainability learn from accessibility?
Mike Masey

Solarpunk and speculative features

Pause
Jo Lindsay Walton

Care for life, care for the chips: the future is re-used, recycled and permacomputing
Alistair Alexander

Toward a Pragmatic Future: Accepting Imperfect Systems whilst Striving for Regeneration
Oliver Cronk

Solarpunk Meets Better Business: Reimagining a Sustainable Digital Future
Simon Blackler

Ministry of Imagination Manifesto
Rob Hopkins

Octavia’s Future is Here, Now What
Mica Le John

Design philosophy

Designing Friction
Marketa Benisek, Luna Maurer, Roel Wouters

The Wabi Sabi Web
Tom Greenwood

Echoes of electronic waste
Joanna Murzyn

Imperfect design for a better future
Thorsten Jonas

Alternative networks: Consciously designing from within earthly dynamics
Jesse Thompson

Perfection is the enemy of progress

The perfect site doesn’t exist
Michelle Barker

Rabbit holes of perfection
Mary Pitt

From bytes to carbon savings: Immediate’s sustainable transformation of Good Food
Tommy Ferry, Marketa Benisek, Michelle Whitehead, Linzi Ricketts, Filippa Furniss, Graham Martin

Small steps, big goals: Building sustainable change
Kim Lea Rothe

The perfect data paradox
Rory Brown

Communicating Climate Risk: A Toolkit

SHL Digital is pleased to announce the latest edition of Communicating Climate Risk: A Toolkit. Originating in a climate risk communication project from COP26 Universities Network (now UK Universities Climate Network), this publication was updated and expanded in 2022 and again this year. Weaving contributions by climate scientists and modellers and social scientists together with decolonial, postdevelopment, and ecocritical approaches within the arts and humanities, and informed by fieldwork with policymakers and stakeholders, it explores the social life of ‘climate risk’ across a variety of vital domains.

Toolkit cover: colourful abstract pattern, resembling quilt
https://bit.ly/CommunicatingClimateRisk

Delving into the complexities of IPCC reporting, green bonds and ESG labels, and decision analysis under deep uncertainty, Communicating Climate Risk nevertheless seeks always to speak to a broad audience, and to not only shine light into the obscure forces that are shaping the future of our world and our planet, but also provide resources, models, and inspiration for action.

See also:

What’s Your AI Idea?

Are you a Sussex researcher in the arts, humanities or social sciences, with an idea about how AI might be used in your work? Are you looking for some expert advice, and the chance to explore some collaboration?

If this sounds like you, submit your idea here, and/or get in touch with j.c.walton@sussex.ac.uk.

Weird AI-generated landscape
jbustterr / Better Images of AI / A monument surrounded by piles of books / CC-BY 4.0

Sussex Humanities Lab Open Thursdays

SHL Open Lab Thursdays are an informal opportunity for co-working, experimentation, collaboration, and dialogue (also in the garden when the weather allows) facilitated by SHL Research Technician Alex Peverett.

We invite people to come and use the space and meet others engaged with: Technology, Creative Practice, Hacking, Making, Experimental Technology, Critical Making, Techno Feminism, Gaming, Media Archaeology, Music, Digital Art, Practice as Research, and more.

These informal sessions are following on from the ECT maker meetups for experimental & creative technology last term where Sussex students and researchers met, co-worked and skill swapped. 

Drop in, no booking required. All welcome!

Sussex Humanities Lab, Silverstone, SB211

SHL Welcomes Two Research Fellows

Sissell Marie Tonn is working on foundational research and media experimentation for a new artwork The Sentinel Self – an immersive interactive narrative built in the game engine Unity, which will creatively explore the shared threat of microplastics to living organisms and their environments.

Ian Winters is working on the Domestic Light project, a timely work, conceived in and for a COVID and post-COVID world, which explores the nature of our relationship to the character of light, home, and the passage of time – through the spectral footprint of light in homes worldwide. The project will result in a series of new installation light-sound works in San Francisco and Richmond; a live online work showing the color of light/dark around the planet during the year; and a broad Bay Area community engagement program that includes a series of panel discussions, work-in-progress presentations, a LASER lecture and a special print/online publication in the Leonardo Journal.  

PhD Community Advocates

From the SHL newsletter:

We’re a group of PGRs who want to connect people and build a community of doctoral researchers and makers through activities based in fun, creativity and researcher skills development. We will be organising several ongoing events over the next few months including:

WALKSHOPS
The walk shop is a peer-led meetup group for researchers to walk out and share any research woes, plan the week, celebrate successes and stomp through procrastination blocks. Each Monday at 10 am, we will set off and walk out the week ahead. More info & registration

NEURODIVERGENT ART JAM
A series of art-making and creative writing workshops for PGRs who identify as neurodivergent, culminating in an exhibition to share creative work and raise the profile of neurodivergent experience at the University of Sussex.

Attendees can sign up for 3 two-hour long workshops, which will be limited to 10 participants and neurodivergent focused/friendly More info & registration (Funded by the Researcher-led Initiative Fund)

ARCHIVING AND DIGITAL SKILLS WORKSHOPS (coming soon)
This series of workshops act as an introduction to creative archiving and digital skills/methods, and will be held online and in person in the lab. Our workshops aim to be welcoming, interactive and a space for participants to think about and discuss their own research.

COLLABORATIVE PLAYLISTING (coming soon)
For when you want to get involved but don’t have much time to spare, we will also be running an ongoing series of collaborative playlists. For these playlists you will be able to suggest music you’d like to be included.

Applied Hope Game Jam

The Applied Hope: Solarpunk & Utopias Game Jam was an open games jam run in summer 2021, inviting game designers to create all manner of things related to envisioning positive futures. Entries were mostly storytelling and tabletop roleplaying games, although we also got prototype video games, zines, a Twitter bot, and more.

After poring through almost sixty submissions, some prizes have just been awarded:

1) Best RPG Under Five Pages: subconscious_Routine by poorstudents

2) Best Solarpunk DIY Game: Scraps by Cezar Capacle

3) The Lustrous Effervescing Fontanelle of Luminous Mutable Futures Award: It’s About the Yearning by Lonely Cryptid Media

4) Mx Congeniality: Moon Elves by Maik

5) The Applied Hope Fruiting Bodies Award: Roots & Flowers by The Gift of Gabes

6) The Best Adaptation Award: The Transition Year by Affinity Games

7) Best Game About Something Pretty Specific: Marvelous Mutations & Merry Musicians! by Wendi Yu

Special Prize: Big Buzz Award: The Nurture by hannah j. gray

Some remarks on the winners can be found here.