Practice as Research – Surveillance Capitalism

Jing Wang Thomas

Jing Wang Thomas is an artist, creative director and a practice-led researcher in ACRG (Arts and Creativities Research Group) in University of Cambridge. She is a CDH Methods Fellow 2025–26 and was named a St John’s Scholar in 2022, graduating with distinction from the MPhil in Arts, Creativity and Education. After being awarded an international scholarship from the Cambridge Trust in 2023 she is now studying for her PhD at St John’s College, Cambridge. As a founder of Diffraction Theatre, Jing’s Practice as Research (PaR) involves materials, digital technologies and transdisciplinary creation through the lens of New Materialism, an approach that extends PaR in the context of AI hype, aiming to address the new format of theatre-making for sustainability.

Jing’s research focuses on how new materialism and critical theories of digital technology function epistemologically in digital humanities. Her research project ‘Copenhagen’ (2022) and ‘Reimagine Copenhagen’ (2023), which are combined with digital technology such as machine learning, portrait composition and digital sound technology, was presented in Prague Quadrennial Symposium 2024 : ‘Technologies in theatre, performance, and exhibition design’ and Prague Quadrennia international exhibition 2023. ‘Decay’ (2024) focused on art and digital technologies in the age of AI hype and was presented at the Entangled Futures Festival in Cambridge. Her recent project ‘Agent! Agent?’ (2025) explores Surveillance Capitalism.

Over the past 20 years, Jing has worked on many prominent productions in China, the UK and Europe as scenographer and assistant director, including ‘The Diaries of John Rabe’ (2019) at the Berlin State Opera and Vienna’s Ronacher Theatre, ‘Lao Can Impression’ (2019) at London’s Southbank Centre, ‘The Tenant’ (2017) at the National Portrait Gallery, ‘Hamlet’ (2016) at the National Centre for Performing Arts, Beijing and ‘27 Wagons Full of Cotton’ (2014) at the 1st Toga Asian Theatre Director Festival in Japan. She has also worked on the opera ‘170 Days in Nanking’ (2017) which was shortlisted for the 2018 International Opera Awards in the UK.

Theatre has long been an art form that brings together diverse media. Today, this integration includes digital technologies. In an era marked by the pervasive rhetoric of artificial intelligence, how might theatrical practice serve as a mode of critique and inquiry? This workshop addresses urgent questions raised by digital technologies in everyday life, explored through forms of audience participation. It will consider dramaturgical development, scenography, audience engagement, and the body as sensor and as entangled with digital sensors, approached through the framework of new materialism.

Participants will be introduced to the methods of Diffraction Theatre and engage in site-specific theatrical exercises designed to critically investigate hidden sensors and the infrastructures of digital data collection embedded in ordinary objects. Together, we will examine how surveillance capitalism operates through these seemingly mundane technologies, transforming human behaviour into data for prediction and profit.

This workshop is part of our Methods Fellowship programme, which develops and delivers innovative teaching in digital methods. You can read more about the and view the complete series of workshops here.

Our CDH Methods workshops have limited places and are prioritised for students and staff at the University of Cambridge. However, if space is available, we welcome all participants who want to learn and apply digital methods and use digital tools in their research.

This session may be of particular interest to:

• PhD students in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
• Early Career Researchers in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

If you have specific accessibility needs for this event, please get in touch. We will do our best to accommodate any requests.

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