Exploring the Urban Technosphere: An interview with Amanda Bennetts
The Refinery sat down with artist Amanda Bennetts to discuss her project for R|Artist Residency: Urban Ecologies, a program supporting mid-career and senior artists interested in critically applying new, sustainable technologies in their practice with a focus on the built environment. Known for her compelling investigations into disability, care, and the body, Amanda is using the residency to explore how Maroochydore’s data-driven infrastructure, particularly its Smart City network and submarine data cables, shapes our understanding of self in an increasingly digital world.
The Refinery: Hi Amanda! Can you start by telling us a little about your practice and how it’s evolving?
Amanda Bennetts: Hello! My practice is always evolving, but at its core, it's grounded in the lived experience of a body in flux, shaped by multiple sclerosis and a recently diagnosed rare muscular disease. My work draws on clinical, wellness, and disability aesthetics, positioning the body as a critical site for artistic inquiry. Through large‐scale immersive installations, I engage with materiality, video, sound, emerging technologies, and mass‐produced objects to explore the politicised experiences of illness, care, and disability.
TR: Can you share how you incorporate creative technologies into your work?
AB: My interest in technology as a way to explore what it means to live in a data-driven world began with an earlier encounter with AI. Back in early 2023, I used ChatGPT 3 to analyse some vague medical symptoms I was experiencing. I listed the symptoms I was experiencing and asked AI for possible conditions. Before I received a formal diagnosis, ChatGPT had listed my rare disease as the third out of ten possible conditions, my doctor had already ruled out the first two. This experience made me question the role of AI and data systems in healthcare, how they influence personal agency, decision-making, and the future of medical care. Who will our future health care providers be? How will personal data be used, and will it ultimately train AI?
TR: Is this something you’re expanding on during your residency?
AB: When I first came across this residency, I thought: This is similar to what I had been working on! While in Austria for an art x tech x science program, I began critically examining the urban technosphere, the intricate web of technological systems woven into the built environment. Though the term may sound abstract, it speaks to the everyday infrastructures that connect us to digital life: data towers, transport grids, sensors, and smart systems. This research became the foundation for my current work, which investigates the “divided self” as it is shaped and splintered by data-driven environments. This residency felt like a natural next step, an opportunity to expand on these ideas and deepen my inquiry into how urban technologies shape, fragment, and mediate our embodied experience.
TR: Tell us more about the project you are working on.
AB: I began looking into how the technosphere reveals itself here on the Sunshine Coast, and one of the most interesting findings was the presence of a submarine fibre optic cable that comes ashore at Maroochydore Main Beach, quietly linking the region to global data infrastructure. These submarine cables form a vast, under sea network responsible for carrying 99% of the world’s internet traffic, physically connecting Australia to other continents.
My project focuses on how Maroochydore’s data-driven infrastructures—particularly the new Smart City and the undersea cable—shape our experience of the digital self. I plan to walk the terrestrial route from the data centre to the cable’s ocean landing point, conducting a series of site-based experiments to expose the tension between supposedly seamless data systems and the unpredictable realities of our physical bodies.
Ultimately, these field trips seek to reconcile invisible data flows with the complex reality of human existence.
TR: That’s such a unique way to engage with urban space. How is The Refinery’s partnership with UniSC supporting your project?
AB: Access to UniSC’s facilities, alongside the guidance of Dr Leah Barclay and Dr Toby Gifford, has provided a generous space for dialogue and experimentation. The Maker Space tools, including hydrophones and 360-degree cameras, have been instrumental in realising the material and conceptual layers of this project.
As I traverse and map the urban landscape, I’m using drones to capture aerial footage that situates the body within broader systems of infrastructure. I’m also experimenting with hydrophones to investigate whether the fibre optic or copper layers of the submarine cables emit any audible frequencies at their ocean landing site.
TR: Any other technologies you’re planning to use during the residency?
AB: Yes! I’m experimenting with a range of tools, including environmental sensors, bio-data sensors to measure stress, smart city data, and an EMF (Electromagnetic Field) cable locator. Using these tools, I will add extra layers to the mapping of the terrestrial path to explore the interactions between data, infrastructure, and the body.
TR: That sounds incredible. For other artists interested in integrating technology into their practice, what advice would you give?
AB: Don’t be put off by the term ‘creative technology’, if you own a smartphone, you're already engaging with it. The key is to start small and stay critical. Technology isn’t separate from daily life, it quietly shapes how we think, move, and relate. Whatever themes you explore in your practice, be it identity, memory, or place, technology is already part of the conversation. It can be more than a tool; it can be a lens to question the systems we’re entangled in.
Amanda Bennetts will present a new artist-led exploration inside the CAVE2 at UniSC on June 11.
Image credits: ‘Carve Crevice from Grace’, Photo by Ryan Jones, image courtesy of Amanda Bennetts; ‘I feel the weight’, Photo by Louis Lim, image courtesy of Amanda Bennetts; IMA Churchie, 2023, Photo by Charlie Donaldson, image courtesy of Amanda Bennetts; ARS Electronica Founding Lab, 2023, image courtesy of Amanda Bennetts.
R|Artist Residency: Urban Ecologies is presented by SCCA through The Refinery in partnership with the Creative Ecologies Research Cluster at UniSC.
Supported by Major Partners: Queensland Government through Arts Queensland and Sunshine Coast Council through the Regional Arts Development Fund.
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