How to Look at a Culvert Reflection

My favorite quote from this article is "Culverts are hidden injuries; the roads may look fine, but the culverts are evidence of what has been done to the landscape". This is such a beautiful metaphor. This article is a reminder of how sometimes some of the most ignored parts of infrastructure are the most important. Culverts are like scars to remind the environment of its past, and are usually only seen if they are being specifically looked for. This reminds me of Ingrid Burrington's article on Invisible Infrastructure, as well as the project Invisible-5. I, myself, have not personally explored or even think I've seen a culvert, but the description in this article of Elkins exploring a large one as a child has inspired me to do the same next time I am near one.

Sound Work Reflection

One audio piece I find very interesting is Materials Recovery Facility by Ernst Karel. These are a collection of short clips from different parts of the materials recovery facility. There is a focus on the sounds of recyclable materials. The concept is almost like hearing what recycling sounds like; the rhythm of recycling.  I love how beautiful the plastics in particular sound, with the instrumentals in the background. It's such a clever concept of making recycling into music. It could even inspire and encourage people to recycle more. These labeled clips cover different areas of the recovery facility, giving a sonic tour to the listener. This reminds me of the project Terra Incognita mentioned in Infrastructural Tourism, a game which aims to have the players "perceive the city as an infinitely expanding assemblage of puzzles." If the separate clips weren't labeled in Karel's piece, this piece could achieve the same effect. Each recording is like a separate puzzle piece. It could turn into a game where viewers try to guess which materials or machines are making which sound to decode the infrastructure of the recovery facility.

Week 2 response

Infrastructural Tourism

Shannon Mattern

Parts of this article talk about being able to see and becoming aware of the not so obvious underlyings of an area, using the field guide Invisible-5 as an example. I find it interesting how although infrastructure means below the ground, not all of them are actually ‘below’. Unless you’re a passenger, railways are ground level. In an article by Ingrid Burrington, she states, “'Invisible' is a word that people use to describe things—cables, networks, systems, people—when they don’t want to admit they are still learning how to see”. I think people try harder to understand infrastructure when it’s in the form of art. A concept I found interesting were “antenna trees”. Using cell phone towers to look like trees is a great way to make infrastructure aesthetically pleasing. Upon realization that it's not just a tree, curiosity sparks in people to learn more. Art is a useful tool to get the general population to understand and care about infrastructure systems. Invisible-5 is almost like a game, which engages the public. Unconventional ways of presenting infrastructure can have an important impact on people.

Reference: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/how-to-see-invisible-infrastructure/401204/

Reading Responses Week 1

Should we be suspicious of the Anthropocene idea?

This article really emphasizes how everything is man-made, and that a true natural world doesn’t exist anymore. Amartya Sen’s observation that natural catastrophes aren’t in fact natural, but the product of political and economic systems. In theory it seems like a good thing that humans have control over the environment and have the ability to change things for the better by making changes to our political system. However, in reality it's not that simple and the changes for the better have not been happening. One phrase that really stood out to me in this article is, "a slow crisis feels normal. It feels, in fact, natural.". This phrase sums up the relationship between people and the changing environment. We have gotten used to the fact that human activity is damaging the earth, and just kind of accept the idea as a fact that we cannot individually change. The term 'global warming' has been thrown around so much for such a long time that it does seem normal. Some of these ideas tie into a current event that I was reading, Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming Has Already begun (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/science/flooding-of-coast-caused-by-global-warming-has-already-begun.html?_r=0). Even the title implies that so many people don’t pay attention to these issues unless they are affecting them in the current moment. Many people are used to the idea of global warming as something that’s happening slowly, that they often don’t realize the effects are happening right now.

The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure

Brian Larkin's article gave me a little more information on how infrastructures work. At one point he explains how everything in one infrastructure is dependent on each other. Bigger and powerful items in an infrastructure are made up of smaller items working together which are made up of smaller items and so on. A part that interested me was, “They  become infrastructures when either one technological system comes to dominate over the others” (pg. 330). The dominance and dependence of infrastructures reminds me somewhat of a food chain.

Before reading this article, I never thought about how networked infrastructures must survive in other environments with differing conditions as well. This makes me wonder if there are any infrastructure systems that could only work in one specific place, or were designed customly for a specific place. I also found it interesting how some infrastructures, like the one described in South Africa, produced a “new sort of citizen.” This relates back to the previous article about the Anthropocene idea about how people shape the infrastructure; infrastructure shapes people as well. We effect the environment just like the environment affects us.