Images Out of the Deep: Ecologies of Extraction and Regimes of Visibility

这个博士项目研究的是图像表面和地球深度之间的关系。面对生态灾难和采掘破坏，对地下的高度关注看到了与所谓的人工智能、深度学习或数据挖掘相关的当代“深度”中心地位的平行。深度的范例从地质学延伸到机械认知领域，但这种延伸并不纯粹是隐喻：正是通过这些“深度”的感知和认知方式，人类才能看到并挖掘地球的深处。从对地质学和图像制作的殖民谱系的分析出发，我认为，如果不对帝国视野和地质想象的历史共同产物进行批判性检查，就无法理解当今提取和可见性制度的纠缠。为了达到这个目的，这个基于实践的研究项目调动了一系列相互交织的、典型的历史和当代案例，通过电影和图像制作来探索超越人类的观看方式与地质柱之间的多尺度关系。一方面，该项目考虑了对提取和可见性的纠缠理解可能有助于扰乱表面与深度、人与机器、表现与操作之间的对立。另一方面，它探索了知识生产的视觉形式的潜力，以促进恢复性环境和社会正义的进程。

This doctoral project investigates the relationships between the surface of the image and the depth of the earth. In the face of ecological disaster and extractive ruination, a heightened attention to the underground sees a parallel in the contemporary centrality of the 'deep' in relation to so-called AI, deep learning, or data mining. The paradigm of depth extends from geology to the domains of machinic cognition, yet this extension is not purely metaphorical: it is precisely through these 'deep' ways of sensing and knowing that humans can see, and excavate, the depths of the earth.Departing from an analysis of the colonial genealogies of geology and image-making, I argue that the present-day entanglement of extraction and visibility regimes cannot be understood without a critical examination of the historical co-production of the imperial scopic and geological imaginations. To this aim, this practice-based research project mobilises a series of entwined, paradigmatic historical and contemporary cases to explore the multiscalar relationships between more-than-human ways of seeing and the geological column through film and image-making. On the one hand, the project considers the ways in which an entangled understanding of extraction and visibility can contribute to unsettling the opposition between surface and depth, human and machine, representation and operation. On the other hand, it explores the potentials of visual forms of knowledge production to foster processes of restorative environmental and social justice.