Lisa Yin Han – Deepwater Alchemy and the Ocean Pacemaker

How did a space once imagined to be empty and unfathomable come to be thought of as a treasure trove of resources? We often take for granted the sensing and imaging processes that have made deep sea activities such as offshore drilling, deep sea mining, and nautical archaeology possible today. Yet media technologies such as sonar-based surveys, hydrophones, underwater cameras, seafloor observatories, and more have played a key role in representing the seafloor as a space of potential profits, even when they are also used for environmentalist aims. Set against the backdrop of climate change, energy transition, and the expansion of industrial offshore extractions, Deepwater Alchemy: Extractive Mediation and the Taming of the Seafloor makes the case that the hunt for resources has driven the imaging of the ocean floor and vice versa, imperiling fragile deep ocean ecosystems in the process.

Reflecting on how underwater imaging and sensing techniques impact nonhumans, this talk will delve into the book’s exploration of the interspecies intimacies fostered through marine mammal telemetry and tagging. From early attempts to capture the “beating hearts of giants,” to the production of a “fitbit” for the oceans as a whole, emerging media techniques such as animal borne sensing are indebted to terrestrial knowledge regimes, colonial notions of the frontier, and anthropocentric perspectives on environment. Han contests the narratives that cast depth as a problem that can be solved through the technologization of nature, arguing that a multispecies perspective on underwater mediation dismantles our existing hierarchies of knowledge and sense.