Webs of Life investigates the relational implications of the rapid acceleration of data-centric technologies, such as AI, to decode, monitor and optimise the natural world for both conservation and profit. From translating whale communication to “smart forests”, we take a closer look at the risks and opportunities of applying high-tech, data-led approaches to more-than-human lifeworlds. Through artistic experimentation we ask how this field can be led by genuine relational and reciprocal collaborations with the Web of Life.

While recognising the positive potential of the developments, especially in conservation efforts, and welcoming ethical guidelines being proposed to steer advances, more fundamental questions remain, such as: Who do these advances really serve? And do they shortcut the deeper work of reconnection and repair with the more-than-human?

When anthropocentric (and colonial) logics underpin the “decoding” the Web of Life is reduced to abstract data. Exploitation and alienation follow. The potential for more vibrant and mutually beneficial relations between humans, machines and the wider web of life is foreclosed. This narrows the full potential that the technology might offer and fails to recognise the full richness and complexity of nature’s intelligence. What if, the embodied relational flows that animate our understanding and respect for the more-than-human framed developments? How, for example, can the local and ancestral knowledge and meanings that form the glue in an intricate set of relations across lifeworlds drive approaches? 

Webs of Life is a research initiative that aims to catalyse and unearth a broader and more mutually beneficial set of creative and technological experiments with which to re-orientate AI’s inter-relations with nature. By bringing web-based technologies into creative dialogue with nature, we want to seed alternative visions for what the Internet of Things can be when guided by the intelligences of the Web of Life.