School of Arts and Creative Technologies
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- Richard Carter
Dr Richard Carter
Interim Deputy Head for Teaching and Learning and Senior Lecturer in Digital Culture
Profile
Biography
Dr Richard A Carter is an academic and multidisciplinary digital artist whose work investigates how digital technologies, from drones to algorithms to AI, shape the ways that we sense and make sense of the world, defining different possibilities of action and expression.
Carter’s subject expertise encompasses Digital Art and Culture (specialising in historic and contemporary digital arts practices, environmental sensing and impacts, science and technology studies, media archaeology, and gaming cultures); Digital Storytelling (digital writing and storytelling practices, virtual environments, gaming and simulation); Digital Creativity and Design (creative coding, web design, speculative and imaginary media).
Research
Overview
A key theme of Carter’s academic work concerns the ‘more-than-human’ dimensions of digital systems and environments, particularly their ecological underpinnings, and considers how these define different capacities of perception, action, and expression in the contemporary world. Carter focuses especially on the role of digital art in telling different stories about these aspects, and in realising other potential worlds and imaginaries. Critically informed speculation, experimentation, indeterminacy, and possibility are a cornerstone of Carter’s research practice, which engages a wide range of technologies, formats, and modes—including drones and satellites, machine vision and artificial intelligence, generative algorithms, poetic text, and virtual worlds.
Carter’s critical-creative outputs have been anthologised and published by numerous presses that are interested in contemporary and experimental writing practices, such as Guillemot Press, Paperview Books, Ambient Receiver, Taper, The AI Literary Review, and others.
Carter has recently completed a fellowship with the York Environmental Sustainability Institute, working in partnership with the York Institute for Safe Autonomy. Carter’s project “Environmental Intelligence: Reimagining Environmental Sensing and Sense-Making” used AI and environmental sensing technologies to creatively bridge the gap between environmental data and human experiences of the changes indicated.
Carter is presently a Co-Investigator on a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project led by Dr. Beryl Pong at the Centre for Drones and Culture, in association with the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge: “Droned Life: Data, Narrative, and the Aesthetics of Worldmaking”.
Carter has also been a Co-Investigator on an AHRC BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) funded project led by Dr. Joanna Tidy at the University of Sheffield: “Museum Visitor Experience and the Responsible use of AI to Communicate Colonial Collections”.
Publications
Full publications list
Carter, R. 2026. War Machine. Punctum. See: https://punctumbooks.com/
Tidy, J; Smith, S; Da Costa-Abreu, M; Gaeta, A; Pong, B; Carter, R; 2026. “Coloniality, Collections, and the Responsible Use of AI in Museums and Heritage”. https://sites.google.com/
Martindale, S., Hook, J. D., Carter, R. 2025. “A Collective Interdisciplinary Agenda for Immersive Storytelling: Editorial Analysis”. Convergence 31(1), 3-17. https://doi.org/10.1177/
Carter, R. 2025. “Lines of Flight”. Media+Environment 6(2). https://doi.org/10.1525/001c.
Carter, R. 2024. “Art, Ecology, and AI: Envisioning More-than-Human Landscapes”. Visual Culture in Britain. https://doi.org/10.1080/
Carter, R. 2024. “Speculative Visions—Drones, Digital Art, and Ecological Concerns”. Drones in Society: New Visual Aesthetics. Ed. Elisa Serafinelli. Palgrave. https://link.springer.com/
Carter, R. 2024. “Algorithmic Light”. The Digital Review 4. https://doi.org/10.7273/x3d0-
Carter, R. 2024. “Waveform: Writing across Oceans, Air and Algorithms”. Ambient Stories in Practice and Research – Digital Writing in Place. Ed. Amy Spencer. Bloomsbury. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Carter, R. 2023. “Satellite Poetics and Provocations”. Cultural Geographies “Digital Ecologies in Practice” 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/
Carter, R. 2023. “Machine Visions: Mapping Depictions of Machine Vision through Critical Image Synthesis”. Open Library of Humanities Journal “Cultural Representations of Machine Vision” 9(2). https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.
Carter, R. 2023. “Topographic Algorithms: Reimagining Environmental Sensing and Representation”. Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology “Reimagining AI” 9(2) 227-244. https://doi.org/10.1080/
Carter, R. (2022) “Executable Landscapes: Speculative Platforms and Environmental E-Literature”. Electronic Book Review. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7273/seea-7012.
Ng, J., and Carter, R. (2022) “Wayfaring in Space: Story as Environmental Encounters in Ruins (2011) and Sacramento (2016)”. New Techno-Humanities. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techum.2022.03.001.
Carter, R. (2022) “The Aftermath Atlas”. After Progress. Curated by Martin Savransky and Craig Lundy. Available at: https://www.afterprogress.com/the-aftermath-atlas.
Carter, R. (2021) “Orbital Reveries: Satellite Textscapes and Reframing the Multispectral Gaze”. The Digital Review 1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7273/y54j-8s40.
Carter, R. (2020) “Signal Generators: Digital Text in a Damaged Ecology”. The Future of Text, ed. Hegland, F. Future Text Publishing: Southampton. DOI: https://doi.org/10.48197/fot2020a.
Carter, R. (2020) “Waveform”. IJCMR Digital Ecologies: Fiction Machines. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33008/IJCMR.202017.
Carter, R. (2020) “Waves to Waveforms”. The Machine as Artist/The Machine as Art. Eds. Leymarie, F, Bessette, J, and Smith, G.W. MDPI: Bern. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/books978-3-03936-065-9.
Carter, R. (2020) “Electronic Literature and the Anthropocene”. Electronic Book Review. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7273/rt06-ts14.
Carter, R. (2019) “Tweeting the Cosmos: On the Bot Poetry of The Ephemerides.” Convergence. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856519837796.
