地球意象与当代环境意识

Mortal Sights: Postcards from Earth

观看我们居住的星球有多种方式,将之"视"为一个栩栩如生的动态系统与从遥远太空获取其静态景象是迥然不同的。文章分析了一些流行的从地球上空不同地点所拍摄的地球形象,并将它们与盖亚科学相关的研究与叙述进行比较,重点讨论科技—文化创造地球意象的各种途径。虽然在阿波罗宇宙空间计划实施之时及其完成之后,这些地球意象被用来提升并促进环境倡议行动,但它们在早期也被表现、并被贩卖为一种地球幻想,一个可以被轻而易举地穿越、索取与耗尽的星球。文章简要地回顾了应用于气象、军事与通信等领域的远程地球监控可视化技术的发展历程,探讨了从太空拍摄到的地球意象,如何使各种视角更加混乱、如何削弱了地方性知识和地方性经验。论文试图追溯这些可以比较的制作地球意象的系统,如何影响了我们对于地球资源、对我们作为地球居民的角色以及我们对气候变化反应等方面的理解。

＂Seeing＂ the earth as a vivid dynamic system is radically different from the static and distant views obtainable from space. This paper concerns itself with techno-cultural approaches toward making images of the Earth by contrasting a body of popular photographic imagery of the earth from positions above its surface to the research and narratives associated with Gaian science. Although the images acquired during and following the Apollo space program were used to promote environmental initiatives, they were also used early to represent and sell fantasies of an earth that can be easily traversed, resourced and consumed. The text briefly reviews a history of remote earth monitoring visualization technologies for weather, military, and communications and speculates as to how images of the earth taken from space reinforce dislocated perspectives and militate against local knowledge and experience. The paper attempts to trace how these comparative systems of imagining the earth bear on how we apprehend planetary resources, our roles as inhabitants, and by extension, responses to climate change.