Project
Back to overview
Shift Register: Media-geological Grounding of the Anthropocene through Artistic Research
English title |
Shift Register: Media-geological Grounding of the Anthropocene through Artistic Research |
Applicant |
Allen Jamie
|
Number |
166400 |
Funding scheme |
Project funding
|
Research institution |
Institut für Experimentelle Design und Medienkulturen Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst, FHNW
|
Institution of higher education |
University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (without UTE) - FHNW |
Main discipline |
Arts |
Start/End |
01.10.2016 - 31.03.2019 |
Approved amount |
200'000.00 |
Show all
All Disciplines (2)
Climatology. Atmospherical Chemistry, Aeronomy |
Keywords (10)
DIY; artistic research; electronics; fieldwork; citizen science; data; anthropocene; geology; signal; media
Lay Summary (German)
Lead
|
Die Erde hat sich in ein “planetares Labor” verwandelt: dies um sie zu erforschen, zu kontrollieren und umfassend zu verstehen. Wissen aus diesen Interaktionen mit der Erde macht globale Phänomene wie den Klimawandel wahrnehmbar, welche wiederum modernistische Illusionen wie einer Trennung zwischen “Natur” und “Gesellschaft” auflösen. Es ist daher wichtig neue Wege zu finden, ein öffentliches Verständnis für diese Erkenntnisse zu schaffen. “Shift Register” möchte die Verschiebungen, wie die zwischen der Erde als natürlichem Objekt und der Erde als Teil von Kultur, erfassen. Das Projekt adressiert das interdisziplinäre Problem, wie sich solche Verschiebungen identifizieren, katalogisieren und lesbar machen lassen.
|
Lay summary
|
Materielle Nachweise menschlicher Aktivität auf der Erde werden von “Shift Register” untersucht und zugänglich gemacht: nicht nur als Indikatoren menschlicher Leistungen, sondern als mehrdeutige Verhandlungen und Wegweiser planetarer Erschöpfung. Das Projekt setzt von Medien-, Labor- und Feldforschung inspirierte Methoden ein, um die Markierungspunkte der Auswirkungen der Menschheit an signifikanten Orten zu bezeugen. Die Resultate des Projekts – Texte, Medien- und Ausstellungsobjekte – versuchen Umweltwissenschaften mit anderen kulturellen, affektiven sowie inter- und subkulturellen Perspektiven zu verknüpfen und so die Komplexität und ständige Widersprüchlichkeit der Energie- und Kommunikationsinfrastruktur der Erde zu integrieren. Zu finden sind die Markierungspunkte menschlicher Aktivitiäten und Veränderungen in den Wachstumsringen von Bäumen, den Oberflächenstrukturen von mineralischem Gestein, als radioaktive Isotopsignaturen und als Veränderungen im Erdboden, der Athmosphäre und deren mikrobischer Zusammensetzung. Diese Markierungspunkte erlauben uns “die Erde” als nicht-lineares Archiv menschlicher und nicht-menschlicher Bestrebungen zu lesen. Der Kontext der wissenschaftlichen, sozialen, künstlerischen und kritischen Medienarbeit von “Shift Register” bezieht aktuelle Arbeiten und Debatten in den umweltbezogenen Geistes- sowie den Geowissenschaften ein. Ziel ist es, die Simplifizierung in Debatten um singuläre “anthropozänische Markierungen” produktiv zu stören, indem wir unterschiedliche, sogar gnostische Wege vorschlagen, unsere irdischen Spuren zu verstehen.
|
Responsible applicant and co-applicants
Employees
Publications
AllenJamie (2018),
Sitting On Top of the World: Meridional Media, Arctic Condescension, and Northern Techniques, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
AllenJamie (2018), The Overgrounds and Undergrounds of Pure and Applied Science: Cosmic Collisions and Industrial Collusion, in
Media Theory, Vol 2(No 1), 352-392.
Allen Jamie, Bruder Johannes, Mareis Claudia (2016), Why is it so hard to describe experience? Why is it so hard to experience description?, in Latour Bruno (ed.), MIT Press, Cambridge, 496-515.
Allen Jamie, Martin Howse, Ibach Merle,
Shift Register (final publication), Motto Books, Berlin(Issue 5.2 ).
Collaboration
K. Verlag |
Germany (Europe) |
Leuphana University |
Germany (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results - Research Infrastructure |
University of Southampton/Winchester School of Art |
Great Britain and Northern Ireland (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results - Publication |
Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space - University of New Hampshire |
United States of America (North America) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results - Publication |
Art Papers |
United States of America (North America) |
University of Helsinki, Department of Atmospheric Sciences (Climate Whirl, SMEAR Finland) |
Finland (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results - Research Infrastructure |
Sadie Plant |
Switzerland (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results |
Science Friction |
Denmark (Europe) |
Capsula (SMEAR Finland) |
Finland (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results - Research Infrastructure |
Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de Géophysique de l’Environnement |
France (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results |
Dirt Foundation |
France (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results |
Transmediale Festival |
Germany (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results - Publication |
The Institute of Nature and Culture at DePaul University |
United States of America (North America) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results - Research Infrastructure |
Finnish Society of Bioart (SMEAR Finland) |
Finland (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results - Research Infrastructure |
Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel: H3K |
Switzerland (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results - Research Infrastructure |
Oxford University School of Geography |
Great Britain and Northern Ireland (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results |
Haus der Kulturen der Welt |
Germany (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results - Publication |
Rosemary Lee |
Denmark (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results - Publication |
LEAP Berlin |
Germany (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results - Research Infrastructure |
Environmental Humanities Switzerland |
Switzerland (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results - Exchange of personnel |
Science Po (Bruno Latour, Paris) |
France (Europe) |
|
- in-depth/constructive exchanges on approaches, methods or results - Publication |
Scientific events
Active participation
Title |
Type of contribution |
Title of article or contribution |
Date |
Place |
Persons involved |
Symposium, University of Turku, Division of Geography, organised by Päivi Rannila
|
Talk given at a conference
|
The Invisible Earth. Finding Your Way in the Invisible World
|
12.12.2016
|
Turku, Finland
|
Allen Jamie;
|
Self-organised
The Aerosoils of the Airpocalypse
|
12.03.2018
|
Peking, China
|
Knowledge transfer events
Active participation
Title |
Type of contribution |
Date |
Place |
Persons involved |
Note: As Artistic Research methods, events listed in "Academic Events" are also Knowledge Transfer and Public Communications Events
|
Performances, exhibitions (e.g. for education institutions)
|
01.06.2019
|
Basel, Switzerland
|
Kemp Jonathan; Allen Jamie; Ibach Merle; Howse Martin;
|
Communication with the public
Communication |
Title |
Media |
Place |
Year |
Associated projects
Number |
Title |
Start |
Funding scheme |
156185
|
Times of Waste |
01.01.2015 |
Project funding |
185494
|
Cycles of Circulation |
01.12.2019 |
Project funding |
170104
|
Ökodaten - Ökomedien - Ökoästhetik. Die Bedeutung von Technologien und techno-naturwissenschaftlichen Methoden in der Kunst für die Wahrnehmung und Ästhetik des Ökologischen |
01.11.2017 |
Project funding |
173371
|
Institutions as a Way of Life |
01.10.2017 |
Project funding |
Abstract
‘Shift Register’ is an artistic research project that renders sensible the proposed markers of the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch marked by irreversible Earth-magnitude changes caused by human activity. These are markers of geoscientific, geopolitical, geosocial and ecological novelty. They are material and conceptual inscriptions of exchanges between Earth’s geologies and human beings, behaviors, and thinking. ‘Shift Register’ directly and critically encounters the Anthropocene, ‘shifting the register’ and status of its markers from symbolic, scientific fact toward their reality as aesthetic, media-technical geoscientific and climatological methods, practices, instrumentations, and data. Critical, media-epistemological, artistic research and ‘sensory anthropological’ perspectives are used to look at personal-cultural and sensory-informational spectra of the Anthropocene and its evidential sites: our ambiguous, even celebratory fascination with determining a singular, static, human-selected marker that in fact should mark an exhaustion of obstinate, deterministic human endeavour. We attempt here, instead, an ‘unmonumentalisation’ of the proposed markers of the Anthropocene, bringing them ‘down to size’ by doing and documenting the media-technical activities of geoscience, shifted into hands-on Do-It-Yourself (DIY) science, as artistic research strategy. ‘Shift Register’ is a novel approach to Anthropocene research, reasserting the radical, dynamic nature of material Earth processes.The onset of the Anthropocene is “primarily an aesthetic event.” Artistic praxis is one of the principal means by which we frame sensory experience, and how we confront and characterise the problematic of ‘ends’ and ‘beginnings’. ‘Shift Register’ is a research platform that brings modes of artistic research into dialogue with global Anthropocenic debates, through AMs as spatio-temporally localised conjunctions of History (as a domain of the Humanities), Natural History (Geology, Biology, Chemistry, Physics) and Culture (Art, Aesthetics, Communications Technology). AMs constitute Earth-signals-material-informational ‘responses’ to the ‘impulse’ of anthropocentric and anthropomorphic activity. Earth-signals are read back as rock, soil, biomass, water, ice and air-documents from the Earth-as-media-archive. Infospheres and technospheres are always already geological; subterranean and atmospheric regimes are inscribed as in formation, as ancient biospheric ‘tree-rings’, antecedent atmospheres frozen in ice, and radioactive rippling of bygone cataclysms. AMs are not only geoscientific determinations, but complex, eco-aesthetic archives of psycho-geotrauma, intersecting numerous knowledge domains.Artistic, citizen-science laboratory and fieldwork research methods for geo-ecological sciences are here created toward ‘unmonumentalising’ the Anthropocene, by emphasising the aesthetic (as in aisthesis) centrality of media-technical knowledge production in both Science and Art. The global Anthropocene is returned to the wild locality of anthropogenic life, via self-built toolset development and documentation, and a Basel-based material and aesthetic-geological “Earth Lab” that comparatively links fieldwork excursions at sites marking the Anthropocene, and provides a venue for public workshops and exhibition. Contemporary scholarly writings (2 collaborative peer-reviewed papers) are fused with discourse-oriented digital media (online platform, PDF and multimedia internet dispatches, Artistic Publication in an international distributed contemporary arts magazine, and digital Final Project Book) and artistic outputs (artefactual processual Earth Lab Exhibition at the Earth Lab). ‘Shift Register’ is the contemporary, impactful work of internationally-known artistic researchers and geological science specialists. The project hosts invitational workshops, invites online discussions and publicly presents research in its site of production. Through the project, we seek deeper understandings of the Anthropocene’s construction, in avoidance of this new epoch further authorising destructive anthropocentrist modes of technoscience.
-