Drawing territories via dynamic ecosystem activity: Reframing boundaries through observation and technology

This research investigates how drawing, when combined with emerging technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence, can redefine the representation and understanding of territorial boundaries within a multispecies landscape. Framed as both methodological tool and a critical epistemological practice, drawing is explored not simply as a representational technique but as a dynamic means of engaging with ecological processes, change and disturbance. Focusing on post-disturbance landscapes in northern New South Wales, Australia, this practice-based research combines site-specific fieldwork, sensor technologies and machine vision to record environmental transformations across time. However, it is through the act of drawing, manual, speculative and interpretive, that these technological data are translated into new cartographic forms. The paper introduces the concept of an ‘Atlas of Events’ to describe a methodology of dynamic mapping that visualizes ecological succession, interspecies activity and the temporal layering of landscape processes. By situating this work in both environmental design and critical cartography, the research aims to contribute to a rethinking of territory and mapping beyond human-centric, static frameworks. The resulting visual and spatial outputs challenge dominant cartographic conventions, proposing instead a hybrid drawing methodology that foregrounds collaboration between human and non-human agents, and that is sensitive to ecological knowledge systems. In doing so, the paper responds to urgent calls for more nuanced, temporally responsive modes of environmental representation.