Abstract

Climate as a Thing
Working with the politics and debate on climate change, you quickly realize that it is not merely a scientific fact but a complex issue that calls for a paradigmatic change affecting both how we understand our surroundings and how we deal with them socially, culturally and politically. Bruno Latour makes a distinction between objects and Things, where the latter contain both the object out there and “an issue very much in there”. Suggesting ‘Thing’ as a concept, he highlights a dialogical aspect of things where the scientific viewpoint concerned with facts, at a distance of the observed world, has come to an end. As Latour points out, the word Thing is etymologically related to the Germanic and Scandinavian “tinge” meaning both a thing and an assembly.

• Christian Ulrik Andersen (DK), professor at Aarhus University and chair of Digital Aesthetics Research Center, researches within the field of interface aesthetics and criticism. He mainly works with ludic aspects and the public interfaces of digital urbanity.
• Søren Bro Pold (DK) has done research in media-, digital and interface aesthetics and art currently mainly related to urban and public interfaces. Forthcoming is “Interface Criticism – Aesthetics Beyond the Buttons”, co-edited with Christian Ulrik Andersen.

Full text (PDF) p.  165-167