Fluvial encounters: Experimenting with a ‘River’s voice’ amidst light-based datafication

Abstract

Fluvial geomorphologists’ advocacy for a culture of care towards rivers is increasingly animated by the potentialities of hyperscale environmental data. Championing catchment-specific responses, it has been argued that intensified datafication of rivers can help them express their own voice. Motivated by this provocation, this paper discusses prosthetic research encounters with the River Feshie in Scotland to tentatively approach the question ‘what is a river’s voice’ in a moment of increasing digitisation and automation of geomorphological fieldwork via technologies of light. Exploring the allowances and excesses of illumination in the scientific imaging of the Feshie, it draws on ‘critical physical geography’ and ‘feminist new materialism’ to conceptualise the geovisualisation of riverscapes as a partial practice of envisioning, rather than a process of total illumination. By highlighting the multiplicity of riverine voices that become co-produced through differently configured sensing ensembles, the paper advocates for a critical fluvial geomorphology that interrogates its assumptions about access to the ‘real’.