Vibrant Media: Shimmering Ecologies of Artistic Co-Creation

This article introduces ‘vibrant media’ as a critical framework to reconsider mediation, highlighting relational and agential dimensions in artistic practices. Drawing from Jane Bennett’s ‘vibrant matter’, it challenges conventional views of media as passive or neutral conduits, instead embracing pulse, resonance, and affect. The term is not a category or label but rather a conceptual ground that discerns whether media are treated as instrumentalized tools or as co-creators in emergence. Central to this conceptualization is the notion of ecologies as co-creative fields of tension, where human and non-human entities engage through ongoing ontological negotiations. Here, authorship is reimagined as 'shimmering,' emphasizing permeability and partiality, by building on artistic practices as ecologies of co-creation. Vibrant media reposition mediation as a perpetual presence—unfolding, never fully closed. They demand sustained engagement with relational frictions and uncertainties, offering a fertile space for negotiations among artistic, ethical, and political realms, thereby acting as agents to think-with ecological complexity and vibrancy.