It’s a cold day in February and we’re here on the banks of the river Avon in Bristol thinking about all the different ways it’s possible to know a river.
With us is a group of interdisciplinary academics, artists, environmental professionals and community organisations. We’ve come together through a project exploring river futures. Over the next few hours we’ll be experimenting with different methods to understand the river in new ways.
The project, which is taking place in partnership with DEFRA and funded by Brigstow Institute, owes it beginnings to a serendipitous discovery during a VR activity. By raising the floor level in a VR environment we found that it was possible for the user to sink lower in the virtual world and get ‘under the surface’. In a watery world this means submerging. People trying this reported the different sensations they felt from being ‘under water’. Later, when we began discussions within the Centre for Sociodigital Futures about work linked to river and water bodies, this discovery highlighted the interesting ways immersive technologies could bring new understanding and different perspectives.
In some ways, a lot about our rivers is already understood; we have mapped them, measured their temperatures, their rise and fall. The fish stock and wildlife are counted. In this work however, we’re interested in what it means to know a river in different ways – our sensory, emotional, affective relationships with water and with rivers. We wonder, how we might gather different sorts of data about these ways of knowing a river, and what these data might constitute.
We met at Netham Lock and began the day exploring some physical and sensory tuning practices with Simon Whitehead, starting our thinking from a place of embodiment and attention to the river. We then discovered an incredibly rich sound landscape with Kathy Hinde who took us on an audio-walk, connecting and augmenting the sounds of the river with its history and biology with different audio technologies, before walking to the Barton Hill UoB microcampus. There, Emma Blake Morsi invited us to question how we think about futures of rivers from a variety of perspectives, using AI generated prompts to map our thinking.
The experience of discussing the river from a place of direct embodied and sensory relationship was eye-opening, leading to rich conversation and offering opportunities for revisiting what it means to know a river.
This work is in its early stages. We are interested in finding ways to understand some of the sociodigital terrains and infrastructures around rivers and their communities. And to explore some of the practices and imaginaries that are associated with rivers. We wonder, how might we find ways to attend to the multiple other, non-human / more-than-human and distributed (networked) perspectives of / as / around rivers? Lastly, we think it’s important to think about care when it comes to river futures, and what caring for and with / as a river might mean for us?
As this work continues, we’re inviting participants and collaborators to get involved. To register your interest or find out more about this and other projects connected with the River Avon, sign up to our mailing list.
For more information on the work of the Centre for Sociodigital Futures, join our mailing list, follow us on X and LinkedIn or visit our webpage.