Willow Gatewood
In this participatory and generative workshop, ecologist, interdisciplinary artist and scholar Willow Gatewood invites participants to explore the realm of relational technologies—not as users, but as Fieldkeepers, attending to the relational, emergent, and more-than-human dimensions of intelligence. Through dramaturgical examples, poetic speculation, and conceptual mapping, we re-imagine systems design and emerging technologies as an ecology of relationships rather than a hierarchy of control.
What if fieldwork could be a rehearsal for reciprocity between humans, machines, and living systems? The Field is a space where tools listen with intention and care; and we learn to listen back.
Framing the workshop through an active, creative lens, participants engage with and create fragments of the Fieldkeeper’s Log—a living document of sensory notes, coded gestures, and speculative protocols—to collectively imagine a future of relational AI that listens, adapts, and co-evolves with its environment. The workshop introduces creative ways to work through slowness, ambiguity, and multi-perspectival logging, resisting immediate synthesis or solution-making. The “log” is presented as an interactive digital archive.
Keywords: systemic design, design thinking, socio-ecological systems, pluriversal futures, relational technologies, speculative story-making as method, creative mapping, AI for social good, ancient intelligence, more-than-human