Call for Submissions

Special Issue Digital Ecologies - Machine | Material | Land

Guest Editors: Sam Wilkins, Charlie Tweed, Claire Loder and Dave Webb

This guest-edited Special Issue of Screenworks invites practice-as-researchers to submit works exploring the themes of Machine | Material | Land.

The Special Issue examines the complex material relationship between technology, society, food and energy production and the land. It is informed by Yuk Hui’s notion that the essence of contemporary technology is to ‘consider everything as a standing reserve, as a resource to be ordered and exploited’ (Hui, 2021). Along these lines Hito Steyerl identifies AI generative media as ‘Mean Images’ and looks at their reliance on ‘vast infrastructures of polluting hardware and menial and disenfranchised labour’ (Steyerl, 2023).

We must scrutinise the material and ecological cost of production, extraction, AI and technological acts, and seek to reimagine our relationship with technology, not as a tool for exploitation, but as a means of seeing things differently and fostering care and attention towards all entities.

Topics may include (but are not restricted to):

- Digital Ecologies: Machine Futures

- Soil as place, internet as place-less-ness

- Landscape, Ritual & Technology

These topics were originally developed for the Digital Ecologies 3 Symposium and more details on these topics here.

Submissions should be composed of screen media practice research supported by a 2,000-word research statement, and be submitted by completing the Online Submission Form. Please read the submissions guidelines for further details. Screenworks is committed to digital accessibility, so please also check our Accessibility policy, which requires accepted work to be captioned and complemented by a descriptive transcript.

The deadline for submissions is 23rd January 2026 for publication in September 2026.

Sam Wilkins, Charlie Tweed, Claire Loder and Dave Webb are part of Material: Art and Technology research group at Bath Spa University within the Art Research Centre. The group critically interrogates the environmental, social and political conditions of contemporary technologies via practice-based art research.