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Paper short abstract

We explore the creative possibilities for contesting data rich practices at the intersection of health and environmental justice through graphic storytelling.

Paper long abstract

Amid escalating environmental crises and rapid advancements in data-rich technologies such as artificial intelligence, the stakes for our individual and collective futures have never seemed higher. Data-rich technologies are rapidly being integrated into everyday life, transforming domains from healthcare to climate change. While the environmental impacts of generative AI (i.e., LLMs) are increasingly entering public discourse, the broader implications of data-rich technologies, what kinds of lives they enable or constrain, and their personal, environmental, and health impacts remains largely unexamined. This paper draws from two research projects that explore how situated, first-hand accounts of experiences with data-rich technologies can provide richer understandings of their implications at the intersection of health and environmental data justice for specific people and communities. We present a series of graphic counter-narratives that have resulted from these collaborations to explore the creative possibilities for contesting data-rich technologies across art, science and technology, and for mobilizing art as a specific mode of response in caring for collaborators' accounts. The presentation reflects on the creative and empirical process of creating counter narratives. We then discuss how graphic art-ethnographic collaborations can also be a form of care within research, helping to promote a broader range of situated knowledges on the world-making effects of data-rich technologies.