Cultivating Data Natures

Cultivating Data Natures

 Wednesday 9 July 2025 | 7:00–9:30pm | Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster UniversityFree to attend – Registration essential

On Tuesday 9 July, Lancaster University’s School of Arts and the Future Places Centre invite you to an evening exploring how data shapes our relationship with place, environment, and the future.

Cultivating Data Natures brings together
internationally renowned contributors in a lively, interdisciplinary setting.
The event is presented in partnership with Abandon Normal Devices, Deco
Publique, and Lancaster Arts, and marks the closing celebration
of the Future Places Centre—Lancaster University’s interdisciplinary hub
for experimental research into data, design, and environmental futures. 

The theme of cultivation runs throughout the evening as a research and
innovation method. We want to ask how we tend to data, how we nurture new
imaginaries, and how we grow more just, sustainable, and imaginative
relationships between people, technology, and the natural world.

 Event Highlights 

Jonathan Gray – Public Data Cultures 
Drawing from his forthcoming book (Polity, October
2025), Gray offers a radical rethinking of public data as cultural and
political material. Rather than framing data simply as a resource to be opened
or protected, he argues for forms of public data practice rooted in care,
participation, and solidarity—essential for making sense of today’s
interconnected social and ecological crises. 

BRiGHTBLACK – Gardeners of the 5th Industrial Revolution 
A performance lecture set in a speculative future
where artificial intelligence has liberated humanity from labour. In the
GrowDome, the audience joins a group of post-labour gardeners navigating
fossils, simulations, and hybrid consciousnesses to reimagine ecological life
in a future Morecambe Bay. Combining storytelling, game engines, and
participatory dialogue, BRiGHTBLACK ask: who are we becoming? 

LUMI – Film by Abelardo Gil-Fournier & Jussi ParikkaA synthetic intelligence is trained on historical landscape photography in an attempt to repaint the Earth for climate repair. LUMI is a meditative video essay on snow, light, memory and machine vision—a planetary fiction that poses urgent questions about time, perception, and the aesthetics of environmental data.

ABOUT
THE PRESENTERS 

BRiGHTBLACK is the collaborative company of artists Simon
Wilkinson and Myra Appannah. Their work spans immersive art, playable culture,
virtual reality, fashion, video games, artificial intelligence, and music, with
a core belief that culture is a global conversation that should invite
participation. Known for creating installation and performance-based works that
aim to disrupt, democratise, and decolonise, they focus on engaging audiences
who are often excluded from traditional cultural spaces. Their work has
featured at Tate Modern and toured to 36 countries across six continents,
earning acclaim such as “one of the most influential UK immersive productions
of the last 20 years” (UK Innovation & Research Council) and they have been
named “one of the most notable names in Europe to be dealing with VR”
(Cineuropa Magazine). Since 2010, they have developed 32 VR games and
installations and, alongside Penrose Tackie, founded BRiGHTBLACK Games to
create long-form narrative video games. They are also the creators of Immersive
StoryLab, a professional development programme in immersive and playable
culture that has run 47 editions in 17 countries, with partners including the
British Council, the National Gallery (UK), Brisbane Powerhouse (Australia) and
hundres of grassroots organisations. In 2024, they launched Electric Dreaming
Lab with Cambridge University’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of
Intelligence, exploring philosophies, ethics, politics, economics, strategies
and practical skills for AI in the creative industries, arts and culture.

"One of the most influential UK immersive productions of the last twenty years" [UKRI]

"A glimpse of the future of entertainment." CULTURE WHISPER ***** 

"No one will forget this." AUSTRALIAN STAGE ***** 

"A real game changer." [Design My Night] **** 

 Jonathan Gray is a researcher, writer
and educator working at the intersection of media, culture, and politics. He is
Senior Lecturer in Critical Infrastructure Studies at King’s College London and
co-founder of the Public Data Lab. His work explores how data is made
public—socially, technically, and materially—and how it is entangled with
issues of democracy, participation, and care. Jonathan is the author of Data
Worlds: A Social Life of Data (with Danny Lämmerhirt and Liliana Bounegru,
MIT Press, 2024) and the forthcoming Public Data Cultures (Polity,
2025), which examines the cultural and political practices involved in making
data meaningful and consequential. His research spans public data
infrastructures, data journalism, digital methods, and the aesthetics and
politics of evidence. He has collaborated widely with artists, designers,
journalists, and technologists to explore the civic potential of data in
addressing social and environmental challenges. 

 Abelardo Gil-Fournier is an artist and
researcher whose work explores the visual cultures of environmental
transformation, technological vision, and the politics of landscape. Working
across film, photography, and critical theory, his practice investigates how
planetary processes are mediated through images, data, and machines.
Gil-Fournier’s work has been exhibited and presented internationally, and he
frequently collaborates with theorist Jussi Parikka on projects at the
intersection of art, media archaeology, and environmental aesthetics. Their
film LUMI, featured in this event, offers a speculative vision of
climate restoration through synthetic intelligence and landscape datasets. 

 About the Partners

The Future Places Centre at Lancaster University
has been a hub for interdisciplinary inquiry into data, place, and futures
thinking—bringing together environmental scientists, designers, artists, and
digital humanists. This event celebrates its contributions to participatory research,
public engagement, and climate imagination. 

Abandon Normal Devices (AND) is a radical arts
organisation working nationally and internationally to produce immersive,
site-responsive works at the intersection of creativity, technology and
science. Renowned for its nomadic digital arts festival, AND challenges norms
through experiences grounded in ethics, sustainability, and critical dialogue. 
🔗
andfestival.org.uk/ @abandon_normal_devices 

Deco Publique is a Morecambe-based
art and culture company animating coastal and rural landscapes across the North
of England. From festivals to public art commissions, they foster creative
place-based practice that connects artists, audiences, and environmental context. 
🔗
decopublique.co.uk/ @decopublique 

Lancaster Arts is the university’s
public arts organisation, working with contemporary artists and local
communities to develop meaningful and transformative cultural experiences on
campus and beyond. 

Cultivate is Lancaster University’s cultural
innovation framework, developed from the 2024 Arts & Culture Review.
Cultivate positions the university as a Global Cultural District,
bringing together research, practice, and regional partnerships to support
wellbeing, sustainability, and creative growth across disciplines. 

Info: A synthetic intelligence remakes landscapes.

Info: How data can be a tool for care, connection and resistance.

Info: A performance lecture on post-labour futures and cultural ecology.

Also check out other Arts events in Lancaster, Entertainment events in Lancaster, Festivals in Lancaster.