I am an interdisciplinary researcher working on eco-media and robotics. My research revolves around the futuristic forms of human-technology-nature relationships in visual and other sensory media, questioning the role of media materiality in affording certain ways to conceive ourselves and our relations to the worlds, in the digital times and an era of global climate change.

Drawing from eco-media, new materialism, and STS, my current project ENVISIONING examines eco-media in Southeast Asia, with a particular interest in how ecological imaginaries of the Borneo rainforests are produced and adapted through the media materials, which are used to channel out the ecological ideas and feelings. Woods, leaves, science fiction novels, archival materials, films, and new media installations inform my research in braiding the grids of sensations. With multi-species and postcolonial approaches, I challenge the connotation of media and address the mediated features of the ecological speculations - so as to open up alternative ways to envision vital human-nature relationships for the futures and to travel across multiverses other than the extant and historical power structures. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “nomad” (1986) is critical to my work.

Besides my ongoing project, I also wrote about human-robot relationships in Japan. My thesis The Mechanical Hearts: Speculative human-robot intimacy in Japan examined imaginative forms of human-robot symbiosis in Japanese science fiction works and art laboratories, calling for a relational ontology of robotics.

For more updates regarding my ongoing research, please feel free to check my research accounts on Instagram (@montjujube) and LinkedIn.