Intelligent Terrain—Feral Inquiries
The Entanglement of AI, Environmental Encounters, and Speculative Ecologies
In an era where digital infrastructure increasingly mediates our relationship with the natural world, how can we leverage technology to deepen our ecological entanglement rather than continue our estrangement? Intelligent Terrain—a cross-disciplinary program I have led for the past three years—explores this question by bringing together artists, researchers, and technologists to investigate the intersection of AI and ecology.
Our landscapes are constantly shifting. Intelligent Terrain operates on the premise that technology does not exist outside of cultural and ecological systems but emerges from them. This emergence is evident in tracing the history of cartography and its role in settler colonialism to modern mapping technologies that consolidate borders. Contemporary data extraction systems continue to commodify land and cultural knowledge by turning human behaviour into predictive models, satellite imaging used for resource exploitation and reinforcing historical land dispossession, and AI-driven agriculture prioritizing mono-crop yield optimization over ecosystem health. By examining these intersections, Intelligent Terrain interrogates how technological systems perpetuate colonial legacies of territorial control and economic extraction while exploring alternative models for digital tools that serve ecological and cultural restoration. The program aims to redefine what it means to "map" and "know" a place through the same technologies designed to exploit and extract.
Research Projects
Jerrold McGrath | Stories of Trespassing
El Ekeko | Rhiza—Human-mycelial Communications
Luisa Ji | Ecological Metaphors of Invasive Species—Terraforming as a Method of Challenging Categories of Intelligence.
Erika Whyte | Don’t Go Chasing the Orbitals—Water in Speculative Design
Darian Razdar | Labyrinth
Publication will be available April 2025
