Machinology

The new batch of Leonardo (online) reviews includes both my short text on Yuriko Furuhata’s recent book Climatic Media as well as a review of the Words of Weather collection edited by me and Daphne Dragona. As Michael Punt points out in his review, “As such Words of Weather is possibly both a material and intellectual marker that the weather is no longer subsets of other disciplines but has acquired obtained an autonomy that might allow us to talk about it in relation to human agency.”

Same could be said about the topic of Furuhata’s book which amounts to one genealogy of geoengineering or at least, weather modification of the Cold War period.

“Furuhata’s book brings out well the range of techniques and their institutional affiliations to ground the epistemic underpinning of atmospheric control and elemental media. Computer simulations, meteorological knowledge, but also the sort of climactic and communication experiments as staged for example at Expo ’67 in Montreal and Expo ’70 in Osaka play here a role. Here the example of artificial fog by Nakaya Fujiko becomes an example that also ties, again, the two sides of the Pacific together when it comes to art and technology experiments.”

Both books could said to combine themes from environmental media studies with readings of, as well as experiments in, art-science-technology.

Words of Weather is available for purchase online – both in Greek and in English.