I’m thrilled to be participating in the Languages of the Future conference at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University College London in the program Material Poetics of the Future.
In the panel “Material Poetics of the Future”, I’ll be presenting my think piece On Becoming Aliens: Towards a Cross-Sensory Universal Language for Extra-Terrestrial Communication, which explores alternative approaches to finding a common language with extraterrestrials—potentially the most significant new language the future holds.
I developed this piece as part of my research for the project Exoplanetary Poetry, which I’m currently conducting with Daniela Brill Estrada and Julie-Michèle Morin as part of the Cosmic Consciousness residency of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) institute.
About the Conference
“The Languages of the Future Conference invites scholars from within and beyond UCL to think through the complex relationships between language(s) and future(s) from a number of disciplinary perspectives and to consider what a language of the future might look like. How can languages of the future encapsulate the specificities of individual disciplines, embrace knowledge systems of all types, convey the urgency of future problems today, and honour the voices of the more-than-human world? Our participatory and appropriately future-facing approach aligns with the UCL Grand Challenges of ‘Climate Change’ and ‘Intercultural Communication’, and we look forward to bringing thinkers from across academia and broader society together to consider the challenges and potentials of languages of the future.”