Throughout the MA Computational Arts, my practice has evolved through an ongoing exploration of the connections between human, natural and technological systems. What started as a personal, sensory engagement with nature developed into a critically informed investigation into how these relationships are mediated, transformed and sometimes disrupted by digital interfaces. A central theme in my work is the concept of skin as a metaphor, a surface and a boundary that is both protective and permeable. Through this concept, I have explored how different forms of 'skin' — human, organic, and digital — embody memory, touch, and transformation.

Rather than treating technology as a mere tool for representation, my current practice treats it as a living collaborator. The concept of digital skin enables me to perceive technology as a tangible entity with its own agency, in line with Jane Bennett’s assertion in Vibrant Matter (2010) that all entities possess a form of vitality. The surfaces I work with — projected light, silicone fabric and sound — are active participants in an ecological and sensory dialogue, not passive carriers of content. This understanding has transformed my relationship with materials and systems, aligning my work with wider posthuman and ecological discourses that challenge human-centred approaches to creation.

My practice is underpinned by four key themes: interconnection, ecological balance, digital materiality and embodied perception. I explore these themes through a combination of fine art and computational methods, blending physical installation and responsive digital environments. The final work invites viewers to interact through gesture and presence rather than direct touch, creating a form of connection that mirrors contemporary modes of mediated intimacy. The interactive system enables viewers to influence the projected images by moving their hands, without touching them — an action that symbolises connection and distance, presence and absence.

This gesture-based interactivity has become a crucial element of my work, particularly in reflecting the experience of living in a world that is increasingly mediated by technology. Whether social, emotional or ecological, our interactions are often filtered through digital interfaces, screens and sensors. By reintroducing a bodily dimension to this relationship, I aim to restore a sense of tactile awareness to the digital environment. Donna Haraway's (2016) call to 'make kin' with both organic and artificial forms is relevant here: my installation aims to create situations in which humans, technology, and nature coexist in a shared space and influence each other.

Throughout this process, I have tried to take my research methods outside of the studio. My work has developed through conversations with peers in digital art, and through close observation of natural environments that serve as living archives. Walking and photographing have become forms of field research, allowing me to gather visual and tactile data that later reemerge as textures, motion, and sound within the work. My engagement with material environments is similar to the ecological thinking of Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013), who writes about reciprocity and gratitude as fundamental types of knowledge. By approaching trees, surfaces and materials as collaborators rather than subjects to be captured, I have developed a research practice grounded in attentiveness and relational ethics.

This approach also reflects a change in my understanding of technology itself. Initially, the digital tools I used for work mainly served as a means of visual manipulation, such as coding, compositing or motion design. Over time, however, I have come to see technology as a medium and a material in its own right, with its own expressive and sensory possibilities. The behaviour of digital systems, from glitches to unpredictable visual flows, mirrors the dynamics of natural processes. Rather than trying to correct these moments of disruption, I now embrace them as creative agents. The glitch becomes a method of revealing the inherent instability of technological and ecological systems. In this sense, imperfection and unpredictability are integral to my visual language, reflecting Haraway's (2016) assertion that we must "stay with the trouble" rather than attempt to eliminate it.

In my practice, the conceptual bridge between the organic and the digital draws on writers who question the separation between humans, non-humans and machines. For example, Timothy Morton’s (2007) idea of an 'ecology without nature' is a key theoretical influence on my installations. This concept suggests that ecological awareness only emerges when we recognise that humans and technologies are part of the same system. Similarly, in Ways of Being (2022), James Bridle proposes that intelligence is not confined to human or artificial systems, but exists across all forms of life and matter. This concept has shaped my perception of interactivity, viewing it as a dialogue rather than control — a non-hierarchical exchange between human gestures, responsive technologies, and environmental rhythms.

Materiality remains central to this inquiry. Using silicone fabric as a projection surface introduces a tangible, bodily quality to my installation. The texture and flexibility of the material echo the softness and elasticity of human and tree skin, thereby reinforcing the conceptual continuity across different forms of life. When light and sound interact with the silicone, the surface appears to breathe and shift, creating a living impression. In this context, the digital projection becomes almost sculptural, merging sensory and spatial experience. This aligns with Laura Marks' (2000) theory of haptic visuality, which posits that visual art can evoke touch through proximity and texture. By inviting viewers to move close to the surface and interact with it, my work activates this haptic mode of perception — an embodied encounter that contrasts with the distance of screen-based media.

Engaging with other artists has also informed the development of my practice. For example, Tony Oursler’s use of projection onto sculptural forms has influenced my approach to embodied digital presence and the emotional possibilities of light. His work suggests that technological media can evoke empathy rather than detachment — a quality that I aim to cultivate through intimate and responsive interactions within my own installation. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s exploration of synthetic biology and speculative design has inspired me to consider technology as part of a broader ecological continuum, rather than as an artificial intrusion. She frames artificial systems as extensions of nature’s intelligence, which underpins my interest in the porous boundary between organic and digital life. Harri Harrison’s digital works based on weaving have also been significant, reminding me that, like thread, code is a tactile process that connects computation to traditional craft. The physical processes of layering, folding and interlacing remain central to both her practice and mine, even when expressed through different materials.

Other artists, such as Olafur Eliasson and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, have also influenced my understanding of embodied interactivity and environmental perception. Eliasson’s installations use light, atmosphere and movement to heighten sensory awareness of ecological systems, while Lozano-Hemmer’s responsive environments reveal technology's poetic potential as a connector between bodies and data. Both artists broaden my perception of how digital systems can facilitate shared presence rather than control.

Expanding my research methods has meant engaging with interdisciplinary sources and professional dialogue. These exchanges have challenged me to consider the ethics of interactivity, including how technology relates to perception and agency, and not just what it does. Through this process, I have become more aware of how computational systems can either reinforce or resist anthropocentric thinking. For example, the use of gesture tracking in my installation is not intended to empower the viewer by giving them control; rather, it is meant to foster a more subtle awareness of how presence and attention can alter the digital environment. This approach reflects a broader interest in relational aesthetics — how art can facilitate shared experiences rather than merely providing spectacle.

Within this framework, my work has become more about coexisting with technology than using it. The installation encourages a slower, more contemplative form of interaction, prompting viewers to observe subtle changes and shifts. The immersive soundscapes are composed using recordings of forest ambiences and live data from tree biorhythms, captured via the PlantWave app. These organic electrical signals are translated into sound, enabling the trees’ internal rhythms to influence the atmosphere of the space. In this way, sound acts as both a material and a mediator, linking the physical and digital layers of the work and reinforcing a sense of ecological presence.

Crucially, my practice now occupies a space between disciplines, combining elements of environmental reflection, computational experimentation and sensory research. This hybridity mirrors the world it seeks to depict — one where data and matter, code and biology are intertwined. Through this practice, I have come to understand the studio not as an isolated production space, but as a node within a wider network of exchange. My materials — digital, organic and synthetic — each contribute their own intelligence to the process, requiring forms of attention that are ethical as well as aesthetic.

Through critical analysis, it becomes clear that the central questions driving my work concern not only how humans interact with technology, but also the kinds of relationships that these interactions produce. By combining interactive systems with sensory materials, I aim to create environments that encourage empathy towards organic and artificial systems alike. This is not about idealising nature or demonising technology, but understanding their interdependence. As both Haraway (2016) and Kimmerer (2013) suggest, our ability to survive in the contemporary world depends on our capacity to think and feel relationally — to recognise kinship where we once saw separation.

In reflecting on this body of work and research, I see my practice as part of an ongoing conversation between the poetic and the technological, the sensory and the conceptual. The process of reading, writing, experimenting, and collaborating has transformed my understanding of what it means to make art in the digital age. Theories of posthumanism and material ecology have not only informed my ideas but also reshaped the way I work — from solitary creation toward shared experience, from representation toward participation.

Ultimately, my critical reflection reveals a practice that is not simply about merging art and technology but about reimagining their relationship through empathy, sensory engagement, and ecological thought. The gesture, the glitch, and the surface — these are no longer just formal devices but metaphors for interconnected life. Through this practice, I aim to continue exploring how art can serve as a site of reconnection: a way of feeling, seeing, and sensing the living networks that sustain us all.

Interfacial Ecologies: On Bark, Bodies, and Bandwidth

We do not meet nature “out there” and technology “in here.” We meet both through skins—membranes that sense, protect, and translate. Skin is not simply a boundary; it is an instrument. It regulates, remembers, bears traces of time, and negotiates contact. Trees do this through bark and annual rings, humans through epidermis and fingerprints, and devices through responsive surfaces, sensors, and logs.
When these skins overlap, when they are layered and animated through light, movement, fabric, or code, they begin to act as one extended nervous system. Visual patterns listen to gesture; matter answers to light; the archive of surfaces—wrinkles, rings, pores, glitches—becomes choreography. In these moments, looking begins to feel like touching, and memory becomes a matter of texture and behavior rather than representation.

Every surface carries history. The furrow of bark, the crease of skin, the subtle accumulation of interactions on a digital interface broadcast time. Reading surfaces closely is reading systems: the weather and metabolism of living things, the protocols and constraints of machines, the care and wear embedded in material. Each layer of the world is a record, a network of traces waiting to be acknowledged.

Touch is also an ethics. Interaction is not a trick for engagement; it is a contract. When a surface responds to a hand, it asks: how will you touch? Responsibility in code mirrors reciprocity in ecology. Networks—of roots, bodies, and devices—thrive on exchange rather than extraction. The most vibrant connections are those where input is met with acknowledgment, where presence is reciprocated rather than recorded.

Time is plural. A tree measures it in seasons and cycles of drought; a device measures it in milliseconds and updates. We live in the interstice between these rhythms. Sometimes, we need to slow the digital to tree-time and sharpen the organic to device-time, allowing alternative tempos for attention to emerge. In these intervals, perception shifts, and what is normally static or invisible becomes legible, tactile, and responsive.

The notion of a “digital skin” is useful but must be handled carefully. The goal is not to replace the world with its interface but to create spaces that allow the world to enter, in all its resistance, latency, and grain. Fabric sags, light bleeds, sensors misread, and trees remain neighbors rather than data points. Glitches are not failures; they are testimonies—evidence of systems meeting at different resolutions, each asserting its own temporal and material logic.

Attention itself can be recalibrated. Screens become sites of care when they are asked to register more than novelty—when they are tuned to weight, delay, consequence. Likewise, nature shifts from museum object to collaborator when we follow its protocols—branching, healing, sharing—without romanticizing them. The richest exchanges happen neither in the wilderness nor the server room, but in the interfacial zone where logics meet, overlap, and resonate.

Every gesture becomes a form of authorship. A lifted hand, a pause, a step closer or back—these movements modulate the composition of surfaces and light. Subjectivity is distributed: bodies, trees, time, materials, and systems all participate. The act of perception itself is an act of collaboration, an ethical engagement with the world as it is, in all its friction and resonance.

In the end, the challenge is not to choose between natural and digital skins but to inhabit them both consciously. To slow down, to notice, to respond with care. Beneath every surface, life continues to breathe. To touch thoughtfully is to recognise that we are already entangled, that our presence leaves traces, and that attentiveness can become a form of reciprocity. By attending to these membranes, we may discover new rhythms, new connections, and new ways of belonging—ways in which the world, in all its forms, can speak back.

— 2025