Transtechnology Research,
Room B312 Portland Square,
University of Plymouth,
Drake Circus,
Plymouth,
PL4 8AA.
3D3-funded PhD candidate at Transtechnology Research. Associate Partner at Etic Lab LLP digital research and design consultancy, mid-Wales. Board Member, the Innovation Advisory Council for Wales (IACW). Art Editor at The Ecological Citizen, peer-reviewed ecological open access journal.
Stephanie is an artist and information professional. She has a background as a Librarian in academic, specialist and public libraries and archives, most recently managing the library and archive of Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts).
Her artistic practice as a painter (in both oils and pixels) and producer of offbeat, cross-disciplinary projects, including over a decade’s experience of art organisation leadership, informs both her PhD method and her work with Etic Lab. Etic Lab is a partnership of scientists and artists who together conduct research, build applications and execute projects. We aim to use radical new ideas to create meaningful results and solve complex problems in socially useful ways.
Stephanie holds a Postgraduate Diploma from Cyprus College of Art and an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, London. Tweeting at @SJ_MoranUK
Media Ethology: Ecological Fictioning and Networked Media
Stephanie’s cross-disciplinary PhD investigates the degree to which nonhuman animals participate in the social construction of human narratives, and ways they are socialised by human narratives. It approaches this from the speculative outsider, or alien, perspective of various molluscs.
Recent Publications, Conferences and Project Work
Fieldwork:
AHRC-Smithsonian IPS Fellowship, ‘Using multimedia and AI to investigate nonhuman perspectives in ecosystem conservation and natural history collections’. Collections-based research with the freshwater mussel collection in the Invertebrate Zoology department at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, Jan-April 2022. Funded by the AHRC and sponsored by the US Government.
Publications:
‘Alien Perspective, a Speculative Weightless Sketch’, Transtechnology Research Reader 2019-21. January 2022.
‘Crow Black’, catalogue essay, Darkness at Noon, curated by Ruth Calland at APT Gallery, London, November 2021.
‘Rethinking communication with other life forms’, The Marine Biologist magazine (Marine Biological Association UK), July 2021. With Maggie Roberts.
‘Exploring the Pluriverse: Fictioning, Science and Interspecies Communication’, Ecocene Journal, July 2021. With Maggie Roberts.
‘Eco-Sci-Fi Art and Interspecies Technology‘, Vector no. 292, Special issue on Speculative Art (Journal of the British Sci-fi Association), pp.8-11. Fall 2020.
Digital Technologies in the Access to Justice Sector: a Strategic Overview (Contributor), Etic Lab Press, April 2020.
‘Visual Democratisation: AR and the Underpass Festival’, co-authored with Christian Tilt and Alexander Hogan. Proceedings of EVA London 2019.
‘Narrating Collective Empathy Online’, Transtechnology Research Reader 2019, pp.110-127.
Interview with artist Annabelle Craven Jones, Alembic exhibition catalogue, Res. Gallery, London
Reviews:
‘Zootechnologies: A Media History of Swarm Research by Sebastian Vehlken‘. Leonardo Reviews online, May 2020.
‘Extraterrestrial Languages by Daniel Oberhaus‘. Leonardo Reviews online, March 2020.
‘High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica and Visionary Experience in the Seventies by Erik Davis’. Leonardo Reviews, September 2019.
Conferences and Talks:
‘Rethinking Communication with Other Life Forms‘, The Marine Biologist Deep Dive, The Marine Biological Association UK, Plymouth. Youtube interview with Dr Kevin Hogan (Etic Lab) and Guy J. Baker, Editor The Marine Biologist magazine. November 2021.
‘Strange Relations: Exploring Interspecies Communication through AI and the Arts’, FIBER Festival, Netherlands. With Maggie Roberts. November 2021.
‘Animal Consciousness’, SoundArt Radio, Totnes UK. With Sarah Scaife. August 2021
‘Communicating Between Two Alien Intelligences Through Art’, Art Machines 2, Hong Kong. With Maggie Roberts. July 2021
‘Octopus Consciousness: a conversational provocation’, Posthuman Voice Symposium, University of Exeter, UK. With Sarah Scaife and Lucinda Guy. July 2021
‘ISCRI – An AI coded by an Octopus’, SWW DTP Research Festival: Futures, South West and Wales. June 2021.
‘Scoping your Collaborative Digital Project’, SWW DTP Research Festival: Futures. With Etic Lab and George Simms. June 2021.
‘Nonhuman diegetic worlds: the visual perception of animals as described in Richard H. Horne’s The Poor Artist, or Seven Eye-sights and One Object: Science in Fable (1850)’, Transtechnology Research Seminar, Plymouth, UK. March 2020.
‘Eco-Sci-Fi’, Stuart Hall Research Network, Iniva, London. With art collective Keiken. February 2020.
‘Eco-SF’, presentation and workshop on worldbuilding and ecological storytelling, SPUR virtual residency programme, Nottingham, UK. November 2020.
KRAKEN?: AI, Octopuses and Alien Intelligence, lecture for Goldsmiths Visual Cultures public programme, London UK. With Etic Lab and collective artist 0rphanDrift. October 2019.
‘Alien Holobiontology’, Digital Ecologies II: Fiction Machines, Bath Spa University, Bath UK. July 2019
‘Visual Democratisation: AR and the Underpass Festival’, EVA London. July 2019.
‘Mantic Staining: the Divinatory Paintings of Ithell Colquhoun’, Re-writing the Future: 100 Years of Esoteric Modernism, Merano, Italy. With Anna Sebastian. May 2019.
‘Ecological Science Fictioning’, Environmental Arts Practice Research Conference, University of Plymouth, UK. April 2019.
‘Future Ghosts and Biosemiotic Chronotopes’, Haunted Geologies Symposium, University of Plymouth. March 2019.
‘Alien Physics’, Transtechnology Research seminar. February 2019.
‘Coding the Digital Occult’, Occulture Berlin. November 2018.
Blog posts and papers for Etic Lab include Anti-Muslim Propoganda in the US: a Study of Online Narratives and Communities, write-up of research by Kevin Hogan; Nascent: a New Contemporary Art Platform August 2019; The Guru Code: Algorithmic Reality Production and Cultural Work (with Alexander Hogan) May 2019; Building an Interspecies Twitter Bot (or, What Does a Cyborg Imagine it’s like to be a Bat?) September 2018.
Early PhD Project Work:
Interspecies Twitter bot, with Etic Lab @alien_ontology
Skullcracker Suite Ballet, online hypertext sci-fi ballet with sonic drone score by sound engineer Chris Hind.