Earth Is a Sensorium

As a palaeontologist, I have spent a lifetime collecting fragments of past lives to weave stories about how life on Earth has changed over millions of years. Sometimes these changes were remarkably good, like the evolution of flowers, and sometimes very bad, like the loss of entire groups of animals such as the dinosaurs. I use the patterns that emerge from the deep geological record to help inform the near-future trajectory of life on Earth in the Anthropocene.

Owen Gaffney is a writer, optimist, producer, record label founder, and researcher. He founded Strange Attractors Records. In July 2025, it released Hard Rain with the Kronos Quartet, Ringo Starr, Laurie Anderson, Iggy Pop, Willie Nelson, and more than 50 other artists. He is chief impact officer at Nobel Prize Outreach and author of Earth For All: A Survival Guide For Humanity (2022) and Breaking Boundaries (2021). He co-leads the Earth4All initiative and is co-founder of the Exponential Roadmap Initiative.

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Selected Publications: Metanoia. Ontologie der Sprache (mit A. Hennig), 2014. I Überschrift. Ethik des Wissens–Poetik der Existenz, 2015. I Miamification, 2017. Metaphysik zur Zeit,2018. I I - I. Spekulative Poetik von Feminismus, Algorithmik, Politik und Kapital (mit A. Hennig), 2019. I Konflikt, 2022. I Flüchtigkeitsmanagement. Medientechnologien zwischen Wirtschaft Kultur Politik, 2023. I Planeten Denken. Hyper-Antizipation und Biografische Tiefenzeit, 2024. I Planetarische Ethik, 2025.

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Ulrike Felt is Professor of Science and Technology Studies (STS) at the University of Vienna. Her work explores how science, technology, and society shape each other, with a focus on research and innovation cultures, public participation, and governance. Her fields of study cover a broad spectrum from the life sciences/biomedicine to physics and environmental research to digital trends. Her current ERC Grant investigates the residues of innovation and their impacts on our environmental futures.

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Dr. Alexander Damianos is a researcher and lecturer in Environmental Law at the University of Kent. He holds a PhD in Law and an MSc in Law, Anthropology & Society from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on the historical and social production of knowledge across science and law. He was previously postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Science & Technology Studies at University of Leiden and a researcher at Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, Germany.

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Established by architects John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog, Territorial Agency promotes comprehensive territorial transformations in the Anthropocene by integrating science, architecture, art, advocacy, and action. Grounded in spatial and territorial analysis using remote sensing technologies, they represent complex transformations of contemporary inhabited territories.

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Vanessa Hannesschläger is head of European Collaboration at Ars Electronica. She holds a PhD in literature from the University of Vienna and teaches digital humanities in Austria and Sweden. Before joining Ars Electronica, Vanessa worked on developing European digital research infrastructures and numerous projects involving physical and digital archives for cultural heritage and art. In the European policy context, Vanessa advocates for digital infrastructures for the arts and humanities, data and legal literacy, the Commons, and Open approaches.

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