The climate emergency presents a deep ecological, anthropological and cosmological crisis, demanding an urgent re-conceptualisation of the frameworks in which we conceive the world and our place in it. Bruno Latour’s concept of the ‘terrestrial’ (2018) invites us to decentre the human toward an ecological mode of thinking that recognises the agency of earth systems and their dynamic interaction with human life worlds. Around the globe, extreme weather events are increasingly demonstrating this agency into a palpable devastating force in response to human-driven global warming. Advances in technology have greatly supported the scientific exploration of occurrences such as wildfires and flash floods (e.g. via sensors, mathematical and graphical modelling). However, current state-of-the-art technological systems as yet fail to support the transformation of such data into embodied understanding. Yet, the latter is required to enable effective preparedness by researchers, frontline personnel and communities – in technical as well as cultural terms. We argue that this is due to an aesthetics that prevents conceiving the human, terrestrial and technological as co-constituents of an integrated sphere, in which each determines and transforms the other through dynamic and open-ended transaction. The creative arts and humanities hold the key to reformulating the aesthetic relationships that underpin current scientific practice.

An interdisciplinary team comprised of researchers from The University of New South Wales’ iCinema Centre (Sydney), Queensland University of Technology’s Design Lab (Brisbane) and Royal College of Arts’ Computer Science Research Centre (London) will discuss how innovations in full-body immersive creative visualisation, intuitive interface design and intelligent human-machine interaction may be leveraged to transform the aesthetics underpinning extreme event exploration, understanding and preparation. We do so by investigating how creative digital systems may be deployed as a ‘remediating pharmakon’ (Stiegler 2011) that deliver visceral experiences that can prime users to a deeper recognition and capability to engage the symbiotic processes that bind and determine our planetary life.