The Metabiont

The ‘metabiont’ concept combines: meta- (more-than; beyond; transcendent; encompassing); and -biont (living matter or thing; organism) presented as a composite more-than-biological agent, which expresses across both digital and physical ecologies. Humans and other organisms can be considered holobionts — an assemblage of a host and the other organisms which live in, on, and around them. The metabiont goes beyond this, suggesting both humans and nonhumans could form meta-ecologies and new ways of being in digital and physical worlds. The metabiont responds to and is critical of the ‘metaverse’.
What insights does the metabiont concept hold for the relationships in multispecies ecologies that exist between physical and digital spheres?

Concept by Greg Orrom-Swan + Louis Alderson-Bythell
→ 2022