Claire L. Evans, a writer and musician exploring ecology, technology and culture, will be the featured artist at the next edition of MacDowell Downtown on Friday, Aug. 2, at the Monadnock Center for History and Culture.

She’ll discuss her work, research and the project she’s working on while in residence, “Wild Information.” With the book, she’ll be pushing frontiers of biocomputing in essays, reportage and visual presentations.

As she explores future technologies, how they’re built and what they’re built from, Evans draws upon philosophers and pundits debating the sentience of artificial life, at the cutting edge of current theory. In contrast to the extractive model of exploiting natural resources, Evans posits a generative version of computing, resilient, even alive?

“I’d like this book to express my hope for the future, which is also a call to the deep past: that we might learn from the creativity and resourcefulness of the living world to survive, to persist, to thrive,” she said.

When she isn’t delving into this research, Evans is the singer of the Grammy-nominated pop group Yacht, co-founder of Vice’s imprint for speculative fiction, “Terraform,” and co-editor, with Brian Merchant, of the accompanying anthology “Terraform: Watch Worlds Burn.”

Her 2018 history of women in computing, “Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet,” has been translated into six languages and was named one of the Top 10 Best Nonfiction Tech Books of All Time in 2023.

To find out for yourself what makes this deep thinker and speculator, musician and author tick, don’t miss MacDowell Downtown. Doors open at 7 p.m. with refreshments served.

If you go

Who: Writer Claire Evans

What: MacDowell Downtown Aug. 2 from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. 

Where: Monadnock Center for History and Culture, 19 Grove St., Peterborough

Jonathan Gourlay is senior manager for external communications at MacDowell.