“Media of Extraction and Abstraction”
Lecture by Hanna Rose Shell, 2135 SSMS, UCSB
“Media of Extraction and Abstraction” begins with a discussion of the medium of clothing, more specifically of textile waste; its industrial reprocessing shaped forms of meaning and media making in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. The talk then turns to the nexus of industrial mining and solar astrophysics, excavating the space – literal and figurative, aesthetic and technological – of the so-called Climax High Altitude Observatory. Built on the Continental Divide at 11,500 feet above sea level, on and with the support of the Climax Molybdenum Company, then the world’s largest and deepest underground mining operation in 1940, Climax housed a massive instrument that simulated a solar eclipse, as well as a darkroom for developing solar films and photographs. Both the information abstracted from the solar imagery, and the metals extracted from the tunnels beneath, had profound strategic importance to a World War fought thousands of miles away. Close analysis of the site provides the aesthetic, philosophical and creative center for a multi-modal exploration of extraction and abstraction at the limits of human sight, and of foresight.