{"product_id":"living-surfaces-isbn-9780262547956","title":"Living Surfaces","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn investigation of aesthetics and visualizations of planetary surfaces from an experimental media theory perspective.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat if every vista, every island—indeed, every geographical feature on Earth—could be viewed as an art object? In \u003ci\u003eLiving Surfaces\u003c\/i\u003e, Abelardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka explore how the surface of the Earth has, over the last two centuries, become known and perceived as an environment of images. \u003ci\u003eLiving Surfaces\u003c\/i\u003e features a range of case studies from eighteenth-century experiments with and observations of vegetal matter, photosynthesis, and plant physiology to twenty-first-century machine vision and AI techniques of calculating agricultural and other landscape surfaces. Mapping these different scales of vegetal images, Gil-Fournier and Parikka help us understand core questions that pertain to the artistic and architectural reference points for the Anthropocene.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith 42 black-and-white and full-color illustrations, \u003ci\u003eLiving Surfaces\u003c\/i\u003e is an engaging and unique take on environmental surfaces as they come to occupy a central place in our understanding of planetary change.Series Foreword\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction\u003cbr\u003e1 Forests of Glass Tubes Will Extend Over the Plains\u003cbr\u003e2The Photographic Surface of the Plant\u003cbr\u003e3 Photochemical Planetarity\u003cbr\u003e4 Inner Colonisation and Visual Agriculture\u003cbr\u003e5 Ground Truths: Environments of Images\u003cbr\u003e6 Living Surfaces of Measuring Numbers\u003cbr\u003e7 Into the Forest: Light and Recursive Sensing\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003eIndex\u003ci\u003e“Living Surfaces\u003c\/i\u003e is a thought-provoking read for scholars and students across diverse disciplines. Even those outside of media studies will be intrigued by this book’s thoroughly investigated, real-world examples without being overwhelmed by its rich theoretical lineage.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Media Theory\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“\u003ci\u003eLiving Surfaces\u003c\/i\u003e is an impressive work, drawing together a wealth of research from the history of science, technology, agriculture, photography, and media studies with a sharp theoretical approach to understanding how life, matter, and technology co-constitute one another. Rich with illuminating examples and case studies, Living Surfaces constructs a new aesthetics of life, light, media, and planetarity that deserves attention from anyone seeking to better understand human-environment relations and the ecological crises that characterise those relationships at present.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eBritish Society for Literature and Science\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eLiving Surfaces \u003c\/i\u003eexamines the Earth as a surface, a medial, ecological, thermal skin that we mostly perceive as an assemblage of images… It is a process that the two authors define as ‘environmental imaging’…. Gil-Fournier and Parikka have been working together for some time, merging theory and practice in texts and art installations. This includes the related Lumi, a video essay in which historical photographic datasets are organised through the lens of a fictional synthetic intelligence programmed to ‘repaint landscapes’ as part of a ‘climate restoration initiative’ – the perfect complement to this excellent book.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Neural Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“\u003ci\u003eLiving Surfaces\u003c\/i\u003e is an important contribution to ecological media studies, offering a new perspective by positioning plant surfaces as active mediators in media systems, not just passive objects.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eJournal of Environmental Media\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“An urgent reminder that environmental change affects not only the planet but what we know and can do about it, Gil-Fournier and Parikka invite us to creatively change the world by embracing our ‘recursive planetarity’ through ‘superficial’ investigations of ecological aesthetics to expand our limited ecological politics.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Jimena Canales, author of \u003ci\u003eBedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“The book proposes a new aesthetic imaginary of the multi-spectral and trans-planar image; one that metabolizes vegetal life and media theory in order to understand how living surfaces become a kind of image-biome registering intensities of light, chemical properties of soil, temperature differentials, and species interdependencies.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Susan Schuppli, Professor and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London, author of \u003ci\u003eMATERIAL WITNESS: Media, Forensics, Evidence\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eAbelardo Gil-Fournier is an artist and researcher. Initially trained in physics, he holds a PhD in Arts from the Winchester School of Art. His work has been shown and discussed in international venues and exhibitions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJussi Parikka is Professor of Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University and Visiting Professor at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague as well as the Winchester School of Art. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eInsect Media\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eA Geology of Media\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eWhat is Media Archaeology?,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eOperational Images\u003c\/i\u003e and a coauthor of \u003ci\u003eThe Lab Book\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302812078309,"sku":"NP9780262547956","price":60.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262547956.jpg?v=1767731604","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/living-surfaces-isbn-9780262547956","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}