Bio

Stephanie is a literary theorist and artist who works on transdisciplinary projects from a posthuman perspective, with a special interest in molluscs. She has a long practice as a painter in oils, pixels and language. She has exhibited widely in London, the UK and internationally, organised many group exhibitions and ran an arts organisation for nine years. Currently a Senior Fellow at RIFS (Research Institute for Sustainability) in Potsdam, Germany, investigating freshwater infrastructures and imaginaries using transspecies, translocal and transhistorical lenses.

Stephanie has worked with zoologists, ecologists, data scientists and other animals. She was a Fellow with John Pfeiffer’s Freshwater Mussel Biodiversity and Conservation Lab at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, in 2022. Her collaborative project, ISCRI, with digital consultancy Etic Lab and art collective 0rphan Drift in partnership with the Serpentine Gallery’s Creative AI Lab speculatively designed an AI that might communicate non-verbally with an octopus in the sea. Stephanie’s work as a Disinformation Analyst has meanwhile given her a keen sense of digital vulnerabilities and the increasing importance of improving social cohesion.

Stephanie completed her 3D3-funded PhD at Transtechnology Research in 2023 with a thesis titled ‘Octopus Optics: a Cross-Disciplinary Investigation of Human Visual Bias in Narrative with Corresponding Writing Experiments using Animal Focalisation’. She holds a Postgraduate Diploma from Cyprus College of Art and an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, London. She is Art Editor at The Ecological Citizen, a peer-reviewed ecological open access journal and was a Board Member of the Innovation Advisory Council for Wales (IACW) (2022-2024).

W: https://molluscrealism.net I: @mollusc_realism

Keywords: posthumanism, visuality, literature, science fiction, ecological psychology, cognitive literary theory, molluscs, natural history

Publications, Conferences and Projects

Current: Project, ‘The Rural Cosmopolis’. Senior Fellow, RIFS (Research Institute for Sustainability | Forschungsinstitut für Nachhaltigkeit am GFZ), Germany.

11.10.24-28.2.24: Project, ‘The Solar Goddess: Investigating ecological metaphors in image and ritual through Minoan Crete and twentieth century painting’. Research Fellow, Brno University of Technology, Czechia.

‘Octopus Optics and Mussel Memories: communicating and contextualising mollusc conservation research through artistic projects outside the museum’, Euromal 2024, the 10th European Congress of Malacological Societies. Heraklion, Crete, Greece.

‘Parasitic Visuality: Computer Vision AI and Freshwater Mussels‘ . POM [Politics of Machines] Aachen 2024.

Hogan, A.; Moran S.C.; Hogan K., Barker B., Woodall R. 2024. Can websites reveal the extent and degree to which a business’s values reflect national policy? A text embeddings approach. In: 6th International Conference on Advanced Research Methods and Analytics (CARMA 2024). Valencia, 26-28 June 2024. https://doi.org/10.4995/CARMA2024.2024.17801

Hogan et al. (2023). ‘Welsh Digital Maturity Survey 2023’. Commissioned by the Welsh Government

Jan-April 2022: Project, ‘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. AHRC-Smithsonian IPS Fellowship, funded by the AHRC and sponsored by the US Government.

Pearl_a_Mussels_Perspective, an epic tale of species love, loss and extinction based on research carried out with Pfeiffer Lab at the National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, in collaboration with Dr John Pfeiffer and Dr Sean Keogh.

‘Alien Perspective, a Speculative Weightless Sketch’, Transtechnology Research Reader 2019-21. January 2022.

‘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.

‘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: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities, July 2021. With Maggie Roberts.

‘Strange Relations: Exploring Interspecies Communication through AI and the Arts’, FIBER Festival, Netherlands. With Maggie Roberts. November 2021.

‘Crow Black’, catalogue essay, Darkness at Noon, curated by Ruth Calland at APT Gallery, London, 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.

‘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.

‘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’, co-authored with Christian Tilt and Alexander Hogan. Proceedings of EVA London 2019.

‘Narrating Collective Empathy Online’, Transtechnology Research Reader 2019, pp.110-127.

‘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.

‘Through-ness: Structures for Feedback’, Interview with artist Annabelle Craven Jones in Alembic exhibition catalogue, pp.94-101, edited by Res. Gallery, Sarah Jury, Helen Kaplinsky & Lucy Sames. Res., London, June 2018.

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.

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.