Over the Spring semester of 2025, our research program (as well as the Digital Aesthetics Research Centre) has again been happy to welcome some wonderful visiting PhD researchers.  Sin-yi (Emilie) Choi and Erik Ljungberg joined the program and provided an insight into their work in presentations and conversations.

Sin-yi Choi’s dissertation examines ocean sensing and the digital environment across Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South China, focusing on how environmental governance and knowledge production are shaped through both technical infrastructures and cinematic/artistic practices. Her interdisciplinary research spans film and media studies, environmental humanities, and science and technology studies (STS) which is also why the research program and department of Digital Design and Information Studies was such a good fit. Currently, she is a fellow at the Digital Narratives Studio at the School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong. In addition to her academic work, she is also an independent documentary producer, curator, and writer.

Similarly, Erik Ljunberg from KTH in Stockholm emphasised the great resonance with his work:

"As a visiting PhD student from KTH, Stockholm, my research period as part of the Environmental Media and Aesthetics program as well as DARC (the Digital Aesthetics Research Centre) has been very rewarding. My project, ‘Media and Environment: Al and Autonomous Systems in Data-Based Environmental Research,’ found a supportive intellectual space here, aligning well with existing research in Aarhus on topics such as AI, sensing, data, politics, and ecology.”

Both emphasized how the combination of artistic perspectives and methods with more technical discussions of media technologies stands out as particular element in the Aarhus research environment.

Erik adds: “Most of all,  through this visit I’ve come to learn the value of a digital aesthetics perspective for understanding phenomena such as computational culture, AI and data."