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Digital nature is a term used in several academic and creative fields for relationships between digital technologies and the natural environment. In human–computer interaction (HCI) and media art it often refers to systems and artworks that use computation, networks or sensors to represent, simulate or intervene in natural processes.^[1][2] In philosophy of information and computation, debates about the infosphere and computation in physical systems provide background to some uses of the term.^[3][4]

In human geography and environmental social science, the plural form digital natures is used to describe digitally mediated forms of nature and to analyse the politics of digital tools in environmental governance.^[5][6] A synthesis in media‑arts research defines digital nature as "an evolving view of nature as a dynamic process of circulating computation and matter" and proposes a framework for comparing projects across art, design and ecology.^[7]

Geographers Andrés Luque‑Ayala, Ruth Machen and Eric Nost use the phrase digital natures for digital technologies that shape how nature is known, governed and valued, arguing that such developments unsettle earlier separations between society and a singular external "Nature".^[5] Nost's commentary Follow the Thing: Digital Natures traces how conservation practitioners work with digital images, models and datasets and asks what nature becomes when it is encountered through such tools.^[6][8]

In HCI and media‑arts contexts, Ochiai and Shimizu note that digital nature appears in discussions of computer graphics, generative and bio‑art, AI‑generated imagery, augmented and virtual reality, environmental sensing and posthumanist theory.^[7] They distinguish between projects that use natural imagery mainly as spectacle and those that treat computation as part of what counts as nature in an information‑saturated world.^[7]

Related expressions such as virtual nature, digital nature experiences and digital urban nature are used in psychology, health and urban studies for research on simulated natural environments and nature‑related digital tools.^[9][10] A review article in Nature Electronics on a large‑scale projection‑mapped forest installation discusses how digital art can alter viewers’ experience of natural imagery.^[11]

The 2024 special issue of Digital Geography and Society on digital natures sets out a research agenda on how digital data, platforms, sensors and visualisations are transforming understandings of environments and environmental politics.^[5] Contributions examine topics such as nature‑based games, conservation apps and remote sensing, and emphasise that digital natures are multiple and contested rather than a single unified "digital environment".^[5]

Nost's 2025 article in Conservation & Society follows particular digital artefacts and datasets and argues that "digital natures" are produced through chains of data collection, modelling and visualisation as well as through fieldwork and on‑the‑ground practices.^[6]

Work on digital urban nature investigates apps and platforms for urban biodiversity, citizen science and green‑space use. Tim Moss and co‑authors show how projects in Berlin use digital tools to classify, visualise and manage urban nature, and how these tools affect public access and understandings of urban ecosystems.^[10]

Ochiai and Shimizu's article Digital Nature Revisited surveys computer‑graphics techniques (such as fractals and noise), generative and bio‑art, and environmental monitoring projects as precursors to recent uses of the term in media art and AI art.^[7] They define digital nature as "a dynamic process of circulating computation and matter" and argue that the notion is used in computational design and media art to describe mixtures of natural and digital processes.^[7]

HCI research at the University of Melbourne has examined "digital nature engagement" technologies that aim to support environmental attitudes and nature connection.^[12][13] Sarah Webber discusses how interactive systems can encourage people to attend to non‑human environments, while also noting that poorly designed systems may displace rather than deepen direct contact with outdoor nature.^[13]

In philosophy of information, Luciano Floridi has argued against a "digital ontology" that would reduce all reality to discrete digital objects, instead proposing an information‑theoretic account of the infosphere.^[3] Work in digital physics and pancomputationalism likewise explores whether natural processes can be described as computations, providing background to some broader "computational nature" claims, although these works rarely use the phrase digital nature itself.^{[14][15][16][4]}

A body of health and psychology research studies the effects of "virtual nature" or "digital nature" experiences on mood and stress. Chan and colleagues reported that walking in a virtual forest in a head‑mounted display improved affect and reduced stress for young adults and older participants compared with a control condition.^[9] A mixed‑method study on "designing digital nature for older adults" found increased feelings of social connectedness and peacefulness after viewing simulated nature scenes among older adults with limited access to outdoor environments.^[17]

Because the expression digital nature is descriptive rather than the name of a single discipline, it appears in a range of research projects rather than a single field.

• R&D Center for Digital Nature, University of Tsukuba – an interdisciplinary centre coordinating projects in media technologies, HCI, acoustics/optics and design under the label digital nature.^[18]
• Digitally Natural – Naturally Digital (Miraikan) – a permanent gallery at Japan’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan, Tokyo) that presents computer‑mediated views of nature alongside physical specimens and devices.^[19]

• University of Melbourne – HCI research on "digital nature" technologies that support engagement with nature and environmental stewardship.^[12]

• Stockholm University – Digital Nature project on sociotechnical relations in rural, nature‑based industries such as beekeeping and berry harvesting.^[20]

• University of Twente and partners – "Digital Nature – Enhancing Patient Experience in ICU", a project on smart lighting and displays inspired by nature to design intensive‑care environments and prevent delirium.^[21][22]

• Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) – VirtuLab research infrastructure for virtual/digital nature and wellbeing, a 360‑degree audiovisual space for studying virtual nature in health, tourism and environmental‑change contexts.^[23]

• University of Edinburgh – Digital/Nature project on reconnecting children with the natural world through the game Minecraft.^[24]
• University of Exeter – research on "virtual nature" and young people's engagement with nature through digital media, including collaborations with the BBC Natural History Unit.^[25][26]
• Oxford‑based initiatives – workshops on "digital dimensions of nature recovery" examining how digital mapping, automation and representation affect nature‑recovery projects in the UK.^[27]

Psychology research at Nanyang Technological University and collaborators has investigated virtual‑reality nature experiences and their effects on mood and stress among young adults and senior citizens.^[9]

Large‑scale media installations that combine projected imagery, sensors and sound to depict natural motifs are often discussed under headings such as digital nature or digital ecosystems. The Japanese art collective teamLab's immersive environments have been analysed as "digital ecosystems" that organise relations between visitors, software agents and motifs such as flowers and animals, and have also prompted discussion of spectacle and audience management.^[28][29]

Media‑art and AI‑driven installations by artists such as Yoichi Ochiai and Refik Anadol are also discussed in terms of digital nature. Ochiai's work on acoustic‑levitation displays and related installations has been covered in computer‑graphics research and popular science writing, often in connection with ideas about merging physical and digital phenomena.^{[30][31][32][33]} Anadol's data‑driven works, such as Unsupervised at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, have been described by the museum as AI‑driven "data paintings" based on the institution's collection and have generated debate about AI authorship and spectacle.^[34][35][36]

Science‑museum exhibitions and public programmes have used the phrase digital nature or closely related language to frame discussions of digital experiences of nature, immersion and audience behaviour.^[19][11]

Some policy and foresight documents use language close to "computational nature" without adopting the term directly. Japan's Society 5.0 initiative describes a "super smart" society based on integration between cyber and physical spaces, including applications in environmental monitoring and natural‑disaster response.^[37] OMRON's SINIC theory, a corporate foresight model, projects a future "autonomous society" in which technological systems and natural environments are expected to co‑evolve.^[38] These visions have been discussed alongside digital‑nature perspectives that frame computation as part of extended nature rather than as something outside it.^[7]

Writers in geography and media‑arts studies have raised questions about power, environmental cost and cultural politics. Luque‑Ayala and co‑authors argue that digital‑nature projects can reproduce inequalities in access to data and decision‑making and call for attention to how "digital natures" are governed.^[5] Nost highlights the political‑economic context of digital infrastructures, noting that digital conservation tools depend on commercial platforms and data services.^[6]

Other authors point to the electricity demand of data centres and networks as a constraint on large‑scale digital simulations and monitoring of nature, and as a factor in the environmental footprint of data‑intensive projects.^[39]

More broadly, discussions of surveillance capitalism, techno‑solutionism and hyperreality are used to analyse how digital representations of nature may support or undermine environmental goals.^[40][41][42]

• Ubiquitous computing
• Tangible user interface
• Natural computing
• Artificial life
• Digital physics
• Digital twin
• Urban informatics
• Information ethics