ABOUT US

Digital Earth was a research fellowship (2018-2022) for artists thinking through questions of digital futures.

Digital Earth aims to imagine a more humane digital future. We invite you to radically shift and reimagine the current narrative of our digital futures. 

The question at the heart of our work is: how do we imagine a humane Digital Earth to come? In order to change the narratives and enable the transition to a more than just digital society, we work with sci-fi writers, filmmakers and artists.

Our mission is to create a planetary movement. Only when this movement is as global and diverse as the users of the technological systems, we can redesign our planet's technological infrastructures. Digital Earth propels systemic change by producing films, campaigns, events and shares the insights of our global community and informs the public. Explore our recent publication Vertical Atlas.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

The Impact of Aesthetics 

• We can only build just societies in a digital world if we imagine radically different futures. Art becomes imperative to this project because it is inherently committed to the realm of imagination.

• Film, games, art, music, literature, and other forms of popular culture are perennial instruments in sharing and shaping public narratives and imaginaries of present and possible futures.

• Through its sonic, tactile, visual, affective, and embodied qualities, art is an opportunity to involve all of us and shake us free of the paralysing grip of futures presented as inevitable. 

Planetary Cooperation 

• We need to counter narratives promoting the development of a global technological monoculture. Instead, the interpretation of technology should build on a diversity of visions rooted in different knowledge systems. 

• We need to perturb the notion of technology providing frictionless and trouble-free solutions for “everyone”, and acknowledge the multiplicity, inequality, and unevenness of our common digital existence. 

• New narratives of our digital future should rely on a new forms of planetary cooperation; Such a community embraces a diversity of perspectives and knowledge as a necessary condition to cooperate for our collective survival.

Humane Technology

• Our current technological systems and business models are aimed at short term successes measured in the accumulation of capital. We need to develop long term technological systems attending to the well being of all people.

• We are in urgent need of technologies and business models which serve the planet rather than extracting its resources for the benefit of the few.