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Short abstract

For this panel I propose a lecture summarising artist projects that explore digital waste and re-use and lead a Walkshop on the life cycles of minerals in consumer electronics to foster non-human perspectives towards ecologies of electronic waste.

Long abstract

It is predicted that demand for critical minerals will grow four-fold by 2030 and discarded electronics (known as e-Waste) is one of the fastest waste streams in the world. The UK government has published a critical minerals strategy focused on increasing skills and literacy around critical minerals and improving circular economies through re-use, repair and recycling initiatives. This paper will illustrate how media artists have pioneered methodologies that have contributed towards government sustainability agendas on e-Waste and speculate on how artists are re-imagining how digital waste will be regarded in future ecologies.

For the Walkshop I will specifically focus on narrating the lifecycles of minerals through ecological centred and more-than-human perspectives. Using walking as practice based methodology I propose a re-interpretation of e-Waste by looking for traces of digital debris in urban environments to consider the lifecycle of minerals through site based ecological field study. Informed by artist use of walking to map technical infrastructures and the practice of 'Data Walking', we will produce ethnographic data by walking as a participatory methodology for producing reflections on the ecologies of e-Waste urban environments.