Across the archipelagos of southern Oceania and the coral islands and atolls of the Indian Ocean, Nancy Mauro-Flude and Shahee Ilyas draw on decades of experience in contributing the Free Software movement and Open Source (F/LOSS) computing communities. In a chapter Thinking with Shells that appears in Alternative Economies of Heritage: Sustainable, Anti-Colonial and Creative Approaches to Cultural Inheritance (Routledge, 2025), edited by T. Ireland, D. Thwaites, and B. Turner.

In Thinking with Shells: Digital Culturescapes Decolonising Digital Heritage, Nancy and Shahee explore alternative approaches to heritage systems. The reflection reconsiders the custom of seashell-stringing from lutruwita/Tasmania, the deep significance of intricate handiwork, and the new possibilities it offers for heritage frontiers.

Unpolished maireener / rainbow kelp seashell necklace collected from Tyenna Beach near Promenalinah/Brown’s River assembled by Madeline Flude (1981). Image Nancy Mauro-Flude.

Thinking with Shells work challenges dominant digital economies by repositioning minimal computing practices like codework as embodied heritage patterns—often overlooked within GLAM institutions and erased by Big Tech infrastructure. The chapter Thinking with Shells ignites long-term relations with enduring pathways of  the diverse regenerative approaches to trade by Aboriginal Knowledge Custodians and lived lore more broadly.

Visualisation of interconnected concepts in this chapter Thinking with Shell (2024) including executable codework matrices for the diagram’s foundation and labyrinthine orbits of abyssal approach. Image: Shahee Ilyas.

This is an example of computing in the shell. In this instance, it is projected onto the back of the stage so the audience can see the live execution of code strings and the outputs, within the file tree system of the artist’s computer. Still of a performance by Nancy Mauro-Flude during the Art of Hacking exhibition at the former Netherlands Institute of Media Art. Image: Michelle Powell