Designed by Swiss studio Fragment.in, Paraboles ulx-56834 is “a sculptural, kinetic and sound work that proposes an analogy between the theme of breath (spirit) and waves - mainly electromagnetic - by bringing together their free, disruptive and sometimes demystifying character.” Displayed...
Spaceship dock or Bespin?
September 3, 2021, Skyway Monte Bianco (Courmayeur, Italy). The upper station of the cable car, feels like a spaceship dock (or the back of a fishing boat as mentioned by my friend Matthieu Duperrex). This big metal construction and the sky here made me think of Bespin, the cloud city of t...
Historical reenactment in the Alps
August 28, 2021. Quick a long hike to Mont Buet, near Chamonix in the French Alps with the Laboratory for the History of Science and Technology (Swiss Institute of Technology, Lausanne). Thea idea was to reenact a scientific expedition made in in the 18th Century by scientists from Geneva ...
Le poème de la chatière électronique
Bien aimé cette anecdote contée par Daniel de Roulet, d’une discussion avec Philippe Jaccottet (dans son livre Mondialité):"Malheureusement, nombre de mes contemporains considèrent que cette confrontation avec la science n’est pas une tâche littéraire digne de leur plume et disent : la littérature ...
Anthropologie et design spéculatif
Lu chez Emmanuel Grimaud, dans son Dieu Point Zéro (2021) , ce passage intéressant sur le lien entre design spéculatif et le travail d’anthropologie expérimental mené par l’auteur : ...
On scientific disagreements
Found a copy of Thomas Kuhn’s book the other day at the flea market. This quote struck me as particularly interesting… mostly because the author describes here an observation that fascinated me when I went from natural sciences to humanities and social sciences: Why blogging this? I wish...
Digital parlance #77
Worldscraping : a portmanteau term that refers to capturing data about the world from wearable cameras and sensors, probably via glasses. Could be useful for various applications: “archiving every word of every article and book you read for searching later, cataloging the movies and TV shows you’ve...
Details of Hummingbird Salamander
Just finished Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer. Not sure what to make of it. I certainly enjoyed the background details and the descriptions about our decaying planet, regarding “climate change, habitat destruction, international unrest, an encroaching pandemic, a litany of disasters” as r...
Candy and digital candy
Meiringen, Bernese Alps, May 9. The presence of networked artefacts (Bluetooth earplugs, Zalando cards) in between sugar products (candy, chocolate) is an interesting sign of technological normalisation. ...
"The challenge of our time is: how do we tell terrible stories beautifully"
An excellent quote from Anna Tsing, found in the episode 32 of the “Conversations in Anthropology” podcast series:“As I continue to read about the challenges around us, I have decided that’s not enough, we also gonna have to tell stories where we’re not winning, where there's just terrible things h...