[Air-L] ANU School of Sociology x ANU Computational Culture Lab seminar on 'Climate’s Computational Infrastructures', Prof Michael Richardson (UNSW) and Prof Adrian Mackenzie (ANU) Click to teach Gmail this conversation is important

[Thao Phan]

Please join us for this ANU School of Sociology x ANU Computational Culture
Lab event on 'Climate’s Computational Infrastructures' featuring works in
progress from Prof Michael Richardson (UNSW) and Prof Adrian Mackenzie
(ANU).


   - *Date: *Thursday 9 April, 2026
   - *Time: *12 - 1:30pm (AEST)
   - *Location: *RSSS Room 4.69, and Zoom
   - *Register to receive zoom link: *
   https://events.humanitix.com/anu-school-of-sociology-x-cclab-seminar-climate-s-computational-infrastructures


What roles do computational infrastructures and their embedded values,
priorities, and assumptions play in making knowledge about planetary
futures? How do computational ensembles pull together computing
architectures, data pipelines, calculative practices, and institutional
settings to make climate knowledge actionable? What happens to
uncertainty and the incomputable richness of ecologies as computational
models become decisive in managing Earth futures?

In this seminar, Michael Richardson and Adrian Mackenzie offer two
works-in-progress as invitations for a robust discussion of climate
modelling and planetary computation as increasingly operative ensembles for
making and managing futures.

---

*Computing Earth: what sort of thing is a computable planet?*

Michael Richardson (with Anna Munster, Adrian Mackenzie, Baden
Pailthorpe, Kathrin Maurer & Antoine Bousquet)
Earth is increasingly staged as a computable object: not a singular
replica, but an operational object assembled through technical ensembles
that render Earth systems addressable, actionable, and governable. Drawing
on Simondon and theories of computability, we argue that planetary
computation stabilises prediction as decision by coordinating models,
datasets, compute infrastructures, standards, interfaces, and institutional
mandates. Using Destination Earth (DestinE) as a diagnostic case, we show
how platform gateways, data backbones, and twin engines package
probabilistic projections and scenario products for intervention contexts.
Incomputability persists as operational remainder, intensified by
machine-learning compression, surrogates, and latent spaces that
redistribute uncertainty as risk.

Michael Richardson is Professor of Media & Culture at UNSW Sydney and a
Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence on Automated
Decision-Making + Society. His latest book is *Nonhuman Witnessing: War,
Ecology, and Data after the End of the World* (Duke University Press, 2024).

Coupled sensitivities: calculative agencies and overflows in climate
overshoot
Adrian Mackenzie

Climate models function as an experiential membrane. Rather than being mere
diagnostic tools, these computational ensembles form a "membrane" that
filters and shapes human experiences of time, agency, and mundane
feelings of comfort or discomfort. Senses of crisis or futures, and the
witnessing of injustice or  loss are now fundamentally inseparable from the
calculative agency of models.  Modeling, however,  is a dynamic calculative
agency. It uses "framing" to disentangle the climate as  calculable
geophysical and socioeconomic processes. This framing inevitably produces
"incessant overflows" that can be seen at various points over the last few
decades. Anomalies defy existing computational frames and force a recursive
re-evaluation of models and the propositions they support. Describing the
temporal effects of these overflows, the paper will suggest that 'coupled
sensitivity'  reconfigures what counts as experience of climate.  This
concept designates a shift where the physical susceptibility of the Earth
system to change becomes inextricably linked to the heightened sensitivity
and attunement imbued with model projections, scenarios, attributions and
pathways. Contemporary engagements with anxiety, inaction, or overshoot
might be understood in terms of coupled sensitivity.

*Adrian Mackenzie *is Professor in Sociology at ANU. His latest book is *1000
Platforms: Ensembles as Ontological Experiences *(Bristol University Press,
2025)
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