Rakova and Dobbe reject the fiction that algorithms are bounded technical objects. Their iconic proposition is ontological: algorithmic systems are indistinct from the social, ecological and technological relations through which they are produced and made effective. The theoretical contribution is a Social-Ecological-Technological Systems framework for environmental-justice-oriented auditing, replacing narrow evaluation of code or datasets with analysis of emergent couplings, infrastructural dependencies and place-specific harms. Methodologically, the paper translates environmental justice traditions into an audit framework that broadens inputs, opens outputs, secures access to redress and requires relational, situated assessment. Its conceptual operation is boundary dissolution: impact is relocated from the artefact to the ecosystem of institutions, materials, labour, energy and communities that sustain it. The wider bridge reaches STS, critical algorithm studies, environmental governance and design justice. Audit consequently becomes a political process of defining the system under examination, determining who possesses standing, and establishing which ecological and social consequences count as remediable harm.
URBANISM MEETS ART