Research Seminar - War in Our Hyperconnected World: Exposing the Invisible Battlespace

War in Our Hyperconnected World: Exposing the Invisible Battlespace

Presented by: Dr Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox

Date: Friday 19 September 2025
Time: 12-1pm
Location: Online via Zoom and in-person at the SCA Writer's Studio (Level 6, Michie Building)

Abstract

Visual Journey

This seminar is a visual journey, its pathway guided by paintings that visually elucidate my interdisciplinary and creative practice-led research into the implications of accelerating civilian and military technological reliance on the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS).

Techno Context

In our hyperconnected world, digital and cyber devices and systems – smart phones, drones, social media platforms, remote targeting systems - would not work as expected without reliable access to electromagnetic frequencies (mainly radio-microwave range). In the Earth-to-satellite environment, accelerating civilian and military technological reliance on the EMS is causing bandwidth congestion and increasing contestation. This is intensifying military interest in the EMS. Tellingly, in the US DoD’s 2020 Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy, the EMS operational (EMSO) environment is called a ‘battlespace, a place where competition and warfare, as well as commerce and other nonmilitary activities, are conducted’. I offer my research-informed visual speculations as provocations to stimulate questions about, and insights into, the invisible EMSO/Earth-to-satellite ‘battlespace’, where warfare and non-military activities are conducted. 

Presenter

Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox is a visual artist, an interdisciplinary researcher, and an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Communication and Arts, UQ. She has an M. Phil (UQ: Art History and Cultural Studies) and a PhD (Curtin Uni: Humanities – creative practice-led). Since 2016, Kathryn has presented her research at multiple national and international conferences. Reflecting her interdisciplinary approach, these conferences cross cultural studies, international studies, art history, science and technology studies, and military ethics. Her most recent major solo exhibition was Drones: Ghosts and Shadows, a curated survey of the last decade of her practice, University of Southern Queensland Art Gallery, Toowoomba. She has published book chapters, and articles in leading journals, including Third Text and Media, War and Conflict.