This paper dialogues with the sub-theme Ecologies of Place considering exploring the interplay of physical, digital, and ecological elements from cross-scale perspectives that have the potential to shape our understanding and experience of place. Presenting and discussing aspects of the interactive installation ‘Talking Through Tubes” (2023-2024) the artist explores and interprets these layered ecologies, considering the interactions of human, non-human, and technological actors in shaping sustainable and interconnected places in the digital age. Foregrounding the ‘semantic aspect of shamanism’ in the technoetic context, the work revisits the term ‘shamantic’ introduced by Roy Ascott in 1996, related to all that transcends macroscale. Placed on city trees in gardens, squares, and sidewalks, the ‘relational system’ (more than a relational object) that belongs to the series "Inhaling Consciousness" — a tree branch (tree) to which is attached a flexible tube hose/prosthesis, flexible PVC pipe, Arduino, dust sensor, LCD — is a cross-scale creative and critical exploration of manifestations of ‘tube’ as both object and concept, relating these to the body. The audience/pedestrians are invited to play with the tube, holding and moving freely, blowing air through the tube (an extension from the tree’s body) or inhaling from its interior, promoting microbial exchange between humans and the microbiota of the tree—-helping heal broken biotic conversations in anthropogenic contexts.

The global emerging issues including those targeted by the United Nation in the 2030 Agenda has a pervasive impact on the whole humanity and the ecosystem. These issues share common features inherent in complex systems. In this paper, we describe an innovative approach to raise the public awareness of the global emerging issues with complexity-inspired new media installations. These installations are derived from scientific models in the domain of complex science, manifesting self-organized criticality. We demonstrate how they can be used to narrate issues related to food-insecurity caused by climate change, antimicrobial resistance, and human-induced seismicity. Furthermore, a brief discussion is provided regarding the merits associated with employing such systems for storytelling.

Water is considered by Indigenous peoples of Australia and Switzerland to be a sacred gift that is critical to their identity and existence, as well as being economically important (2). Worried Wings is a project in progress to create a working prototype for an Alpine freshwater biodiversity experiment. This experiment is an art and science collaboration based on Environmental DNA or eDNA workshops for citizen scientists in Switzerland and Australia and a Virtual Reality installation that serves as a collection point for public engagement. Here the effects of climate change through eDNA display and transmedia stroytelling are exchanged (1). Waste and pond water quality testing is a long, manual process so the workshops will help scientists gather environmental DNAdata (Fig 1). They are also asked to document their experiences. The aims is to raise awareness about biodiversity and how indigenous futures are at stake in each country.

The purpose of science is to interpret phenomena through measurement and analysis to understand why it is the way it is in the world. The art humans are compelled to make is a phenomenon and we reasoned that in many cases, presents measurable attributes. This author – a former scientist – subjected his art process and the resulting works to scientific modelling and scrutiny to see what valid scientific narrative could emerge. The system measured was a machine (termed a stochastic apparatus) with irregular behaviour placed in different environmental contexts. Measurable attributes regarding the machine’s behavior as well as its interactions with its environment were analysed. The stochastic apparatus was shown to have regular behaviour at the core and untune-able and chaotic behaviour at its periphery. The untune-able behaviour nucleated behaviours in people interacting with it which could be modelled using a system’s theory lens while considering the participant as a component of the system – a peculiarity resulting from the behaviour and particularities of the machine. We concluded that although preliminary, this artistic approach may provide a framework to interact with complex systems that have more degrees of freedom such as emerging generative Artificial Intelligence.