Embodied Space in Google Earth: Crisis in Darfur

A tool of military surveillance to �love at a distance�? (Caroline Bassett, 2006). Google Earth, a culmination of remote sensing satellite technologies, mega database and 3D animations, is open to both kinds of critique. This paper focuses on the latter, on how the human faculty for compassion might be aligned with and elicited from the ways we search and apprehend the swirling visions of earth that Google Earth makes available. Haraway�s idea that new kinds of �prosthetic� vision constitute �active perceptual systems� resonates strongly with Hansen�s description of the digital image as a new kind of image that is produced through the process of searching rather than from passive viewing. My discussion of the Google Earth site,�Crisis in Darfur, investigates the subversive possibilities of compassion in opening up an aesthetic and yet mundane space of respite from the regimes of power inherent to Google Earth, a website with an undeniable prehistory of military surveillance

Film as Cultural Performance

This thesis investigates how Victor Turner’s concept of ‘cultural performance’ can be used to explore and analyse the experience of film. Drawing on performance theory, hermeneutics, phenomenology and Bakhtin’s dialogism, Sections One and Two develop this investigation through a theoretic discussion which relates and yet distinguishes between three levels of ‘performance’ in film: filmmaking performance, performances as text and cultural performances. The theory is grounded within four films which were researched for this thesis: Once Were Warriors (Lee Tamahori, 1994), Rats in the Ranks (Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson,1996), beDevil (Tracey Moffatt, 1993) and Link-Up Diary (David MacDougall, 1987). Section Three undertakes the close analyses of the latter two films. These analyses address specific cultural performances that are performed ‘across’ cultures and which are concerned particularly with Australian society’s relationship with indigenous Australians. ..

Can nuclear weapons fallout mark the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch?

Many scientists are making the case that humanity is living in a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, but there is no agreement yet as to when this epoch began. The start might be defined by a historical event, such as the beginning of the fossil-fueled Industrial Revolution or the first nuclear explosion in 1945. Standard stratigraphic practice, however, requires a more significant, globally widespread, and abrupt signature, and the fallout from nuclear weapons testing appears most suitable. The appearance of plutonium 239 (used in post- 1945 above-ground nuclear weapons tests) makes a good marker: This isotope is rare in nature but a significant component of fallout. It has other features to recommend it as a stable marker in layers of sedimentary rock and soil, including: long half-life, low solubility, and high particle reactivity. It may be used in conjunction with other radioactive isotopes, such as americium 241 and carbon 14, to categorize distinct fallout signatures in sediments and ice caps. On a global scale, the first appearance of plutonium 239 in sedimentary sequences corresponds to the early 1950s. While plutonium is easily detectable over the entire Earth using modern measurement techniques, a site to define the Anthropocene (known as a Ògolden spikeÓ) would ideally be located between 30 and 60 degrees north of the equator, where fallout is maximal, within undisturbed marine or lake environments

The geological cycle of plastics and their use as a stratigraphic indicator of the Anthropocene

The rise of plastics since the mid-20th century, both as a material element of modern life and as a growing environmental pollutant, has been widely described. Their distribution in both the terrestrial and marine realms suggests that they are a key geological indicator of the Anthropocene, as a distinctive stratal component. Most immediately evident in terrestrial deposits, they are clearly becoming widespread in marine sedimentary deposits in both shallow- and deep-water settings. They are abundant and widespread as macroscopic fragments and virtually ubiquitous as microplastic particles; these are dispersed by both physical and biological processes, not least via the food chain and the ‘faecal express’ route from surface to sea floor. Plastics are already widely dispersed in sedimentary deposits, and their amount seems likely to grow several-fold over the next few decades. They will continue to be input into the sedimentary cycle over coming millennia as temporary stores – landfill sites – are eroded. Plastics already enable fine time resolution within Anthropocene deposits via the development of their different types and via the artefacts (‘technofossils’) they are moulded into, and many of these may have long-term preservation potential when buried in strata

Colonization of the Americas, 'Little Ice Age' climate, and bomb-produced carbon: their role in defining the Anthropocene

A recently published analysis by Lewis and Maslin (Lewis SL and Maslin MA (2015) Defining the Anthropocene. Nature 519: 171–180) has identified two new potential horizons for the Holocene−Anthropocene boundary: 1610 (associated with European colonization of the Americas), or 1964 (the peak of the excess radiocarbon signal arising from atom bomb tests). We discuss both of these novel suggestions, and consider that there is insufficient stratigraphic basis for the former, whereas placing the latter at the peak of the signal rather than at its inception does not follow normal stratigraphical practice. Wherever the boundary is eventually placed, it should be optimized to reflect stratigraphical evidence with the least possible ambiguity

The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene

Human activity is leaving a pervasive and persistent signature on Earth. Vigorous debate continues about whether this warrants recognition as a new geologic time unit known as the Anthropocene. We review anthropogenic markers of functional changes in the Earth system through the stratigraphic record. The appearance of manufactured materials in sediments − including aluminum, plastics and concrete − coincides with global spikes in fallout radionuclides and particulates from fossil-fuel combustion. Carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles have been substantially modified over the last century. Rates of sea-level rise, and the extent of human perturbation of the climate system, exceed Late Holocene changes. Biotic changes include species invasions worldwide and accelerating rates of extinction. These combined signals render the Anthropocene stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene and earlier epochs

Is the Anthropocene distinct from the Holocene? [abstract only]

The inaugural meeting of the Anthropocene Working Group of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy in Berlin (Oct. 2014) produced a consensus statement that “humans have altered geologic processes across the Earth system sufficiently to cause a planetary transition to a new interval of geological time”, with the timing of the onset the focus of continued debate, but with a majority in favour of a mid-20th century beginning. The name has driven the assumption that the Anthropocene should be an epoch, but are its signatures truly driven out of the range evident for most of the Holocene, or are changes comparable or subsidiary to Holocene stages? The evidence rests upon a broad range of signatures reflecting humanity’s significant and increasing modification of Earth systems. These are visible in anthropogenic deposits in the form of the greatest expansion of novel minerals in the last 2.4 billion years and development of ubiquitous materials, such as plastics, present in the environment only in the last 60 years. Globally distributed spherical carbonaceous particles of fly ash represent another near-synchronous and permanent proxy. The artefacts we produce, the technofossils of the future, provide a decadal to annual stratigraphical resolution. These materials and deposits have in recent decades extended into the oceans and increasingly into the subsurface both onshore and offshore. These anthropogenic deposits are transported at rates exceeding those of the sediment carried by rivers by an order of magnitude, fluvial systems themselves showing widespread sediment retention in response to dam construction across most major river systems. The Anthropocene is evident in sediment and glacial ice strata as chemical markers. CO2 in the atmosphere has risen by ~45 percent above pre-Industrial Revolution levels, mainly through combustion of hydrocarbons over a few decades. Although average global temperature increases and resultant sea-level rises are still comparatively small, the shift to more negative δ13C values in tree-rings, limestones, speleothems, calcareous fossils and δ13CO2 in ice forms a permanent record. Nitrogen and phosphorus contents in surface soils has approximately doubled through increased use of fertilizers to increase agricultural yields as the human population has also doubled in the last 50 years. Industrial metals such as Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, Zn and persistent organic compounds have been widely and rapidly dispersed. A clear novel signature is radioactive fallout from atomic weapons testing, initiated in 1945 but becoming global in 1952 and in the case of Pu239 representing a long-lasting marker event. The Earth still has most of its complement of biological species, though many now as small populations: current trends of habitat loss and predation, if maintained, will push the Earth into the sixth mass extinction event in the next few centuries. Dramatic elapsed changes include trans-global species invasions and population modification through agricultural development on land and contamination of coastal zones. Although these changes are not synchronous, within near coastal environments microfauna/flora commonly show pronounced assemblage changes in the mid-20th century. Considering the entire range of environmental changes reflected in stratigraphic signatures, the global, large and rapid scale of change related to the mid-20th century is clearly distinct from previous Holocene signatures, consistent with interpretation of the Anthropocene as a potential epoch

The Anthropocene is a prospective epoch/series, not a geological event

The Anthropocene defined as an epoch/series within the Geological Time Scale, and with an isochronous inception in the mid-20th century, would both utilize the rich array of stratigraphic signals associated with the Great Acceleration and align with Earth System science analysis from where the term Anthropocene originated. It would be stratigraphically robust and reflect the reality that our planet has far exceeded the range of natural variability for the Holocene Epoch/Series which it would terminate. An alternative, recently advanced, time-transgressive ‘geological event’ definition would decouple the Anthropocene from its stratigraphic characterisation and association with a major planetary perturbation. We find this proposed anthropogenic ‘event’ to be primarily an interdisciplinary concept in which historical, cultural and social processes and their global environmental impacts are all flexibly interpreted within a multi-scalar framework. It is very different from a stratigraphic-methods-based Anthropocene epoch/series designation, but as an anthropogenic phenomenon, if separately defined and differently named, might be usefully complementary to it

Resolving the ancestry of Austronesian-speaking populations

There are two very different interpretations of the prehistory of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA), with genetic evidence invoked in support of both. The “out-of-Taiwan” model proposes a major Late Holocene expansion of Neolithic Austronesian speakers from Taiwan. An alternative, proposing that Late Glacial/postglacial sea-level rises triggered largely autochthonous dispersals, accounts for some otherwise enigmatic genetic patterns, but fails to explain the Austronesian language dispersal. Combining mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), Y-chromosome and genome-wide data, we performed the most comprehensive analysis of the region to date, obtaining highly consistent results across all three systems and allowing us to reconcile the models. We infer a primarily common ancestry for Taiwan/ISEA populations established before the Neolithic, but also detected clear signals of two minor Late Holocene migrations, probably representing Neolithic input from both Mainland Southeast Asia and South China, via Taiwan. This latter may therefore have mediated the Austronesian language dispersal, implying small-scale migration and language shift rather than large-scale expansion