We commonly understand radiation as the transmission of energy in the form of light, heat, and radio waves, or the emission of particles from radioactive substances. This includes ultraviolet radiation, X and gamma rays and radioactive materials as well as, less frequently, spontaneous emissions of energy from unstable atomic nuclei. The early 20^th century medical use of X-rays was exquisitely captured by Duchamp in a 1910 painting Portrait of Dr. Dumochel. In this work, the French physician is shown with a red aura – presumably depicting the erythema of radiation – while parts of his body are missing to connote the mysterious ability of X rays to invisibilise flesh while making bones and internal organs visible. A little over a century later, diagnostic mammograms, full-body airport security scans, even personal radiation-emitting devices (mobile phones) are the norm. Ionising radiation is used in Heritage Studies to identify underdrawings; fluorescence to inspect pigments; Raman micro-spectroscopy to reveal the hidden binders while gamma radiation successfully eliminates bacteria that threaten to damage cultural objects, books and statues.

However, this source-process-effect frame, prevalent in many, if not most disciplines, is by no means the only way to think radiation. Several years ago, researchers from the University of Regensburg, Germany, discovered a phenomenon akin to negative radiation. When an electron moves through a material it often collides with other electrons. This causes de-acceleration. Although an electron with negative mass loses energy in the same way that the electron with positive mass does, the effect of that loss is – counterintuitively – acceleration. In other words, if a ball with negative mass falls into water, it is not slowed down by friction but, instead, sped up. Using a new type of semiconductor material and irradiating it with a red laser, the Regensburg researchers found that, surprisingly, the electrons emitted a blue glimmer. This signalled a conversion of low-energy red light into the high-energy blue light arising from electrons with negative mass (Lin et al 2021). Experiments such as these beg the question of the scope of ‘negative’ radiation, caused by phenomena like negative force.

In the cultural and socio-political realms, the invisible working of radiation is captured by two past-laden concepts: aura and hauntology. As a ‘strange tissue of space-time’, and a ‘unique apparition of distance in proximity’ (Benjamin 1979), aura amplifies energies accruing in everyday practices as affective presence. It turns sedimentations of mnemonic processes into ‘weakly radioactive materials’ (Sloterdijk 2016), as can be seen from the so-called ‘merged objects’ – such as the Salish blankets, made of mountain goat, dog hair, and vegetation, that are part animal, part hunter, part weaver, and part wearer (Tepper 2017). Their purpose is to gather cross-species and cross-temporal relations into a single, culturally energised object. Similarly, accrued medial aura is the topic of much contemporary art, such as Kubisch and Norment’s sonic installations, which rely on the medial memory of transmitters. The crackling of an old record, inscribed through cycles of use, and remediated in a sound installation, creates fulcrums of energy similar to that of ‘merged objects’.

Hauntology, along with spectrality, was initially a rumination on ontology. It suggested that being is displaced by the shadow of the spectre of being (Derrida 1993), and that past-orientated resurgences undermine the solid foundations of the present (Jameson 1999). This can be felt in the residual working of obsolete hegemonies that continue to exert influence on the material and psychic spaces of social life. Unlike trauma, which is marked by a rupture, hauntological radiation is a form of low-frequency persistence that lingers in habits and inherited assignments of energy, imperceptibly turning the past into the behavioural and cognitive architecture of the present. Carrying the frequencies of absent systems, and of that which ‘has not yet happened but is already effective in the virtual – as an attractor shaping current behaviour’ (Fisher 2012: 19), hauntings co-constitute energy fields. But this is not to say that all hauntings are immaterial, as is often thought. In Barad’s reading, they are an ‘ineliminable feature of existing material conditions’ (Barad 2017: 107), as, from the perspective of quantum physics, haunting is not about human experience, but rather about ‘indeterminacies of time-being, materially constitutive of matter itself’ (113).

Similarly, in this conference, we are less concerned with radiation as emission of energy from a source, or a palpable effect of the past on the present. Our foci, instead, are the invisible existing and potential future radial arrangements – as forms of agencement – of actual or virtual objects and un-objects; spaces and negative spaces; organisms, pre- and post-organic matter; proto-techniques and technologies that can be assimilated into what is often called ‘third nature’.

We invite contributions from Art-Science, Media Studies, Philosophy (including Philosophy of Science), Heritage Studies, Environmental Studies and Engineering in the form of individual panel presentations (theoretical or practice-based) or curated panels that address but are not limited to the following topics:

• Counterintuitive readings of radiation, e.g. the use of radioactive waste as a source of energy despite obvious dangers
• Projective radiations of new materials or new uses of existing materials, plants and environments, such as carbon nanotubes, graphene and hyperaccumulators
• Contemporary alchemy – the notion that every living and non-living being and/or thing can potentially produce or store energy
• Art-science experiments with cross-medial radiation (e.g. sonic lasers)
• The technological and post-industrial sublime, incarnated in hydrogen colliders and sites of industrial devastation
• Propelling or accelerating processes arising from a re-configuration or re-alignment of forces, temporalities and/or technologies

• Biological and geometrical radial arrangements, their structural and less likely influences
• Explorations and genealogies of radio-enabled technologies and engineering practices, e.g. GPS, Galileo, Wi-Fi and RFID
• Novel contemporary readings of the work of Henri Becquerel, Marie Curie, J.M. Maxwell, Richard Feynman and Rudolf Peierls beyond the ‘environmental damage of positivistic science’ approach

Please send 250 w proposals for individual papers or artistic interventions of 15 min in length, accompanied by a 100 w bio and a concise list of AV requirements to ENERGYPhilosophyofPractice@dundee.ac.uk by 23:59 GMT on 20 August 2025. Proposals for panels of no more than 1500 w in length (including abstracts and bios) should be sent by 23:59 GMT on 15 August 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 25 August 2025. 

This conference is part of the 2023 – 2027 AHRC-funded research project ENERGY: A Philosophy of Practice (AH/X009114/1).