Living Surfaces
Images, Plants, and Environments of Media
- Paperback
320 pages
- Release Date
30 July 2024
Summary
What if every vista, every island—indeed, every geographical feature on Earth—could be viewed as an art object? In Living Surfaces, 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.
Living Surfaces features a range of case studies from eighteenth-century experiments with and observations of vegetal matter, photosynthesis, and plant physiology to twenty…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262547956 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0262547953 |
| Author: | Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Jussi Parikka |
| Publisher: | MIT Press Ltd |
| Imprint: | MIT Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 320 |
| Release Date: | 30 July 2024 |
| Weight: | 369g |
| Dimensions: | 229mm x 152mm |
| Series: | Leonardo |
What They're Saying
Critics Review
“Living Surfaces 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.”–Media Theory
“Living Surfaces 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.”–British Society for Literature and Science
“Living Surfaces examines 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.” –Neural Magazine
“Living Surfaces 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.” –Journal of Environmental Media
“In Living Surfaces, Gil-Fournier and Parikka offer a creative and ambitious archaeology of the vegetal-technological spectrum of surfaces and a starting point for future scholarly inquiry.” –Configurations
About The Author
Abelardo Gil-Fournier
Abelardo 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.
Jussi 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 Insect Media, A Geology of Media, What is Media Archaeology?, and Operational Images and a coauthor of The Lab Book.
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