Digital Dirt under the Fingernails (David Webb) (part of doing together 25)

Digital Dirt under the Fingernails8th April 2025A swipe or tap on your phone might allow you to do something joyful and intentional, habitual and pointless, or resentfully necessary. Each digital act is one tip of a mysterious chain of digital happenings that somewhere touch the earth, ecologies, soil, water, people, politics, economies, wealth and power. Digital experiences feel, and are presented as abstract, placeless and weightless, but are they really?This session explored the lifecycle, and material reality of these digital chains beginning with the metaphor (which we may break) of a garden and its hidden ecosystems, forces, seasons and labour that it takes to harvest a desired fruit.Participants used mark-making, objects, the space and ourselves to collectively build a story behind these abstract actions, to see where they make contact and what the consequences might be.doing together 25doing together is a yearly two-day making and sharing practice symposium at Locksbrook Campus, hosted by the Art Research Centre (Bath School of Art, Film and Media) in collaboration with Bath School of Design and the Centre of Cultural and Creative Industries.doing together is a platform to connect staff, students, and the community through making, collaboration and experimentation.Workshops, delivered by staff and PGR students from across the University, share practice-based research methods and a broad range of approaches to practice. doing together is proposed as a generous space to make/do/share and discuss practice with colleagues from a range of different Schools.Throughout the symposium, facilitators – alongside participants – test out ways of doing together in an effort to make their practice-based research explicit, rather than simply describe it.