As online worlds increasingly infuse or supplant analog realities, the meaning of “exterior” in digital spaces finds new relevance. Netscapes, my latest body of work, examines cyber-environments, and in particular, the extent to which digital representations of natural landscapes reflect existing values and attitudes towards nature. 

 

Desktop wallpapers serve as a salient and sardonic example of the Anthropocene’s ethics. While climate change threatens to collapse global ecosystems and unravel the fabric of civilization, we paper desktops with uncannily-idyllic Caribbean beaches and rolling mountain ranges. We build captivating virtual worlds and mine cryptocurrencies on digital platforms that are abstracted away from the petrochemical infrastructure upon which they run.

 

Through interactive web vignettes built with recognizable user interfaces, I hope to subvert digital escape by injecting anthropogenic detritus into online spaces. Simultaneously, I hope to expose modes of extraction endemic to cyberspace (and late stage capitalism more broadly) so that we might arrive at a more responsible visual language for the web.

 

I believe this work is relevant to conversations surrounding coastal landscapes in transition. In many ways, our analog realities are transitioning through the infusion of technology. We need to ensure that the technologies we build, and the virtual worlds we inhabit, center climate, environment, and frontline communities.