touch/grass: digital ec
touch/grass: digital ecologies
2026
Touch / Grass: Digital Ecologies explores mimicry as a shared biological condition that connects human and non-human species within evolving technological environments. By utilising the European starling, which intergrates synthetic sounds into its song, as a sonic and conceptual anchor, the work presents how digitised environmental tones and signals are absorbed and transformed within non-human nature. In conjunction, the work is an observation on how humans internalise the rhythms, language, and behavioural patterns of digital systems, shaped by algorithmic structures and continuous exposure.
By framing digital culture as an ecological force rather than an external tool, the project investigates human's embodiment of technological immersion. As the starling fluidly adapts to its soundscape, incorporating digital noises into its natural biology, human mimicry operates within systems designed to capture and condition behaviour, raising questions around agency, autonomy, and unconscious adaptation.
Through sound and observation, the work constructs portals to recursive and reflective environments in which organic and synthetic signals circulate and respond between bodies and systems, dissolving distinctions between the natural and the technological.
Watch full video here (with headphones)
By framing digital culture as an ecological force rather than an external tool, the project investigates human's embodiment of technological immersion. As the starling fluidly adapts to its soundscape, incorporating digital noises into its natural biology, human mimicry operates within systems designed to capture and condition behaviour, raising questions around agency, autonomy, and unconscious adaptation.
Through sound and observation, the work constructs portals to recursive and reflective environments in which organic and synthetic signals circulate and respond between bodies and systems, dissolving distinctions between the natural and the technological.
Watch full video here (with headphones)
