Sites and speculations: Writing the more-than-human (part of doing together 24)

This workshop will built on Tweed's research using methods of speculative fiction to activate sites and to collaborate with a range of AI applications. The art works that Tweed creates in video, text and performance often take a playful approach, vocalising the perspectives of machines, materials and non humans, whilst incorporating scientific research and developing scenarios for future forms of resistance. The workshop was aimed at artists, researchers and other creative practitioners who were interested in exploring their relationship with the more-than-human world via a series of open-ended writing exercises.

The workshop was partly inspired by the writing of Amatov Ghosh who has called for renewed cultural, literary, and artistic practices that use storytelling to restore the voices of silenced non-humans.

The session began with fieldwork, walking to locate some sites of interest at micro or macro scale and thinking about them as sites. Participants then undertook a series of individual and collaborative writing exercises to activate them, responding to their locations, materials, lifeforms and perspectives and thinking about their futures via a set of exploratory prompts.

During the session, participants explored a range of methods for ‘writing a site’ (visually and textually) including the use of voicing and personification, the potential of dialogue, as well as collaboration with more-than-human technologies such as AI models.

doing together 24
doing together is a yearly two-day making and sharing practice symposium at Locksbrook Campus, hosted by the Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries in collaboration with Bath School of Art, Film and Media and Bath School of Music and Performing Arts.