Future Digital Life: A World Without Us?
· talk
IMPAKT's Future Digital Life conference in Utrecht used ArchaeaBot as a starting point for discussions about robotics, AI, synthetic biology, and environmental futures, with Alex May contributing to the wider programme.
Future Digital Life: A World Without Us? was a conference programme at IMPAKT Center for Media Culture in Utrecht on 18 January 2019. Announced the previous day and framed in relation to ArchaeaBot by Alex May and Anna Dumitriu, the event asked what life, intelligence, and culture might look like in a post-climate-change, post-singularity future.
The programme brought together speakers from art, science, and philosophy to approach those questions through robotics, artificial intelligence, microbiology, synthetic biology, neuroscience, hacking, and environmental activism. Within that setting, May’s contribution sat inside a wider public conversation rather than a single authored lecture. The conference used the artwork as a starting point for thinking through the societal implications of emerging technologies and for asking what role art can play in making those implications discussable.
That context matters for May’s wider practice because it shows how a work such as ArchaeaBot can operate beyond the exhibition space. Here, the project became a framework for debate about technological futures, ecological crisis, and non-human life. The event extended the work’s speculative force into live discussion, connecting installation-based research to public discourse and interdisciplinary exchange.
The original livestream was shared on YouTube.