Thermal Objects and The Nature of Data Centers: new double issue of Culture Machine

We are excited to announce the publication of the latest edition of the open access journal Culture Machine (http://culturemachine.net). This is a special double-issue, consisting of:

 

Culture Machine Vol. 17 (2019):  Thermal Objects, edited by Elena Beregow

Culture Machine Vol. 18 (2019): The Nature of Data Centers, edited by Mél Hogan and Asta Vonderau

The contents of each issue are provided below.

 

Established in 1999, Culture Machine is now edited principally by Gabriela Méndez Cota and Rafico Ruiz. Its aim is to seek out and promote scholarly work that engages provocatively with contemporary technical objects, processes and imaginaries from the North and South. Building on its open ended, non-instrumental, and exploratory approach to critical theory, Culture Machine is actively calling for creative proposals that contest and come up against globalizing technical narratives and the environmental logics of extraction.

Culture Machine is part of Open Humanities Press. 

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Vol. 17: Thermal Objects, edited by Elena Beregow

http://culturemachine.net/vol-17-thermal-objects/

 

Editorial: Theorizing Temperatures and the Social − Elena Beregow

Time, Temperature and its Informational Turn – Wolfgang Ernst

Hot and Cold Techniques in the Longue Durée of Media − Erhard Schüttpelz

Cooked or Fermented? The Thermal Logic of Social Transformation − Elena Beregow

Thermocultures of Memory – Samir Bhowmik

Natural Ice and the Emerging Cryopolis: A Historical Perspective on Urban Cold Infrastructure – Paula Schönach

Infernal Machinery: Thermopolitics of the Explosion − Nigel Clark

Thermal Violence: Heat Rays, Sweatboxes and the Politics of Exposure − Nicole Starosielski

As ‘index and metaphor’: Migration and the Thermal Imaginary in Richards Mosse’s Incoming − Niall Martin

Distance Runners as Thermal Objects: Temperature Work, Somatic Learning and Thermal Attunement – John Hockey and Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson

Posthuman Dance: Body Heart and Haptic Intimacy in ORA – Hilary Bergen

Thermal Envelopes: Heat and Warmth in Installation Art − Gunnar Schmidt

Performative Raw Clay Practices and Ceramic Firing Techniques − Agustina Andreoletti

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Vol. 18: The Nature of Data Centers, edited by Mél Hogan and Asta Vonderau

http://culturemachine.net/vol-18-the-nature-of-data-centers/

Editorial − Mél Hogan and Asta Vonderau

Resurrection from Bunkers and Data Centers − Adam Fish and Bradley L. Garrett

Emplacing Data Within Imperial Histories: Imagining Iceland as Data Centers’ ‘Natural’ Home − Alix Johnson

Silicon Forest and Server Farms: The (Urban) Nature of Digital Capitalism in the Pacific Northwest − Anthony M Levenda and Dillon Mahmoudi

The Second Coming: Google and Internet Infrastructure – Vicki Mayer

An Apple a Day: Listening to Data Centre Site Selection through a Sonospheric Investigation − Matt Parker

Managing Carbon and Data Flows: Fungible Forms of Mediation in the Cloud − Anne Pasek

The Data Center as Technological Wilderness − A.R.E Taylor

Data Centres as Impermanent Infrastructures − Julia Velkova

Storing Data, Infrastructuring the Air: Thermocultures of the Cloud − Asta Vonderau

When Infrastructure Becomes Failure: A material analysis of the limitations of cloud gaming services − Sean RM Willett

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