Oral Presentation The Institute of Australian Geographers Conference 2023

Amplifying wonder amid ecological crises: speculative encounters in oceanic worlds (18269)

Michele Lobo 1
  1. School of Humanities and Social Science, Faculty of Arts & Education, Deakin University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

How can speculative encounters imagine, sustain and amplify wonder when authoritative western scientific literacies emphasise climate crisis, extinction, world endings and dystopic planetary futures? This paper argues that geographies and methodologies of more-than-human collaboration in ocean worlds enabled by environmental sensing and digital technologies amplify wonder and the promise of decolonial planetary futures. Through a focus on ‘wild sensing’ (Gabrys 2022) and ‘beautiful experiments’ (Hartman 2019) that centre whale encounters, I dive into the concept of speculative immersion. First, I explore the wild visual and sonic sensing of whale encounters in immersive films, apps and social media platforms. Second, I focus on the beautiful experiment, Tyama: a deeper sense of knowing, a multisensory digital experience of Country held at the Melbourne Museum. These collaborative modes of sensing and experimentation move beyond a ‘symphony of anger’ (Hartman 2019, 29) and generate wonder in thinking about possible futures amid climate change and extinction in the colonial Anthropocene.