Digital Aestheticization of the Environment
April 19, 2024 4 PM Hale Science 230

Presented by
Veronika Zavratnik Postdoctoral Researcher
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

By becoming increasingly digitalized, the aestheticization of the environment permeates our daily lives. Simply by looking around or listening attentively in any naturalsetting, it can easily be observed that people's engagements with their surroundings are different from a decade ago.
Today, ti is hard to find someone in the mountains, by the sea or in the forest who is not tapping on their smartphone, flying drones, using wearable cameras or other devices to digitally 'capture' and augment their experience of the environment. Images, blogs, vlogs and newly added (tourist/walking) maps are then circulated through digital technologies and media, uprooting and disseminating places and environments through time and space.

This talk draws on the ongoing collaborative research project (2022-2025) that aims to study the transformative moment of environmental perceptions by focusing on digital aestheticization as it unfolds in everyday contexts of outdoor leisure in selected European countries - Slovenia, Croatia, Poland, Sweden and Finland. The emphasis will be put on how, through digital aestheticization, sustainability and environmental change become perceptible and meaningful in the local and/or regional context.