Big fan of Evariste Richer’s work “Fulgurite” (2008), seen at the Musée des arts et métiers in Paris this weekend. When lighting—very hot lightening—strikes silica or other common (semi-)conductive minerals or substrates, it creates a fulgurite (<Lat. fulgur = lightening), strangely shaped rock-like objects. But here, the fulgurite is crossed through by a beautifully industrial blue neon tube. The museum notice sees in all this an emblem of Latour’s nature/culture problem…
USB-JFK took too long, but allowed for some reading and thinking about talking with animals, via (a) a re-viewing of Herzog's fabulous Grizzly Man about Timothy Treadwell and (b) discovery of the Interactive Fiction Lost Pig (playable here), in which the player becomes an orc (i.e. a humanoid akin to a goblin) who searches for a pig that has escaped from a pig farm. I won't elaborate here, especially as I haven't got far into Lost Pig, but there are many interesting questions that the two works raise about the question of, and limits to, talking with non-human animals, imagining the non-human animal, etc:: Treadwell's longing for communion vs. Herzog's "that bear's blank stare expresses only hunger" vs. chasing an escaped pig vs. the estrangement of being an "orc" (not-quite human), etc. Leading the way in thinking about human-non-human connections in the context of French early modern is Louisa Mackenzie (Washington U. eg. this on Guillaume Rondelet and Bruno Latour). For further reflection.
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Project THE HUMANIST anthropoceneis a thought archive and workspace of Phillip John Usher (NYU) at the crossroads of early modern humanism and the problems and insights of the Anthropocene. Main Research Page. Categories
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