The Hmm ON the Animal Internet

Have you ever thought about primates managing their own audio-visual devices or pets video-calling humans and other animals? Dr. Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, an Assistant Professor and Director of the Animal-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Glasgow, is thinking about just that. Tonight, Ilyena will explore the idea of a dog internet, a space for dog-to-dog connection mediated by technology, independent of human presence. Drawing from her design fiction research, including speculative systems like DogFlix and Virtual Walk, she asks: What does connection mean for non-human users? How do we design technologies that support relationships, play, and agency between animals themselves? Through these speculative futures, she makes a case for expanding the internet to accommodate non-human lives and needs, not just as tools for human benefit, but as platforms for interspecies connection. After all, what is life without dogs sniffing other dogs online? Link

In April of 2025, John Oliver featured the ‘visdeurbel’ (or ‘fish doorbell’) on his show Last Week Tonight, causing the website to go viral for the second time since March of 2024, with more than a million people watching the livestream between March and April alone. The visdeurbel website shares live footage from Utrecht’s Weerdsluis, where fish gather to pass through the locks and continue their passage. Visitors to the website can help this along by pressing the ‘doorbell’ when they see a fish and the image gets sent to a worker who can open the locks and let them through. The project is the brainchild of Mark van Heukelum, an ecologist and concept developer, who will be joining us tonight to talk about the visdeurbel, its popularity, and the ways in which he’s been using the internet to involve people in nature conservation. Link and Link

Does anthropomorphism in AI images reveal human-centrism? And can the process of feeding and generating AI media become an experimental exercise in accessing other-than-human modes of being in our bodies? These are some of the questions that Soyun, a South Korean interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator based in The Hague, will touch on in her talk. She’ll be presenting her workshop Shapeshifting with AI, where she combined field research, coding, and movement exercises, in order to create embodied source material for generative AI. How might we use AI to collectively shift from anthropomorphism toward non-anthropocentric embodiment? Link

Do we need zoos? Why do we enjoy looking at animals? What lies behind the simple human desire to feel connected to animals? These are some of the questions that Terezie—a designer, one half of a non-workaholic studio Day Shift Office, and a concrete office chair maker—tries to answer with her platform ZOO Index, a growing archive of visual and textual zoo related material questioning its relevance in contemporary society. During tonight’s talk she will dive into the visual research of ZOO Index and the online collection of imagery from all over the internet, depicting typical zoo moments and showing zoos seeping in many various aspects of our culture. Link

Lies is an influencer and animal lover, sharing her content across Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, where she has more than half a million followers. She will join us tonight to talk about her dream of helping animals and how she is using social media to do just that. She’ll share her experiences using TikTok and Instagram to increase awareness about animal adoption and help shelter animals. Link