The Oceanic Turn: Presentation Pamphlet

The Oceanic Turn

A presentation by graduate students from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design focusing on the wet world of oceans, asking how are we shaping it, and how is it shaping us.

Friday, May 16, 2014 11am-2pm Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Quissett Campus - Clark 507 Cape Cod, MA

field of uncontrollable, indivisible processes. Its contested, catastrophic characterization as imperiled environment, coastal risk or contested territory overlooks great potential power.

As open and fluid infrastructure, the space of the ocean supports contemporary urban life in ways practically unimagined, and unseen.

It critically and intellectually challenges the dry, closed, and fixed earthbound frameworks that shape today’s industrial, corporate, and economic patterns. Re-examining the ocean’s historic and superficial remoteness through a telescopic lens, this presentation of graduate research projects issue profiles an alternative optic of the ocean as contemporary space and cultural subject of material, politic, and ecologic significance.

DES 9132 - Advanced Research Seminar Harvard Graduate School of Design Course Coordinator: Pierre Bélanger Teaching Assistants: Noam Dvir, Daniel Rauchwerger Postgraduate Research Fellow: Alexander S. Arroyo Advanced Leadership Fellow: Torsten Thiele Visiting Fellow: Mariela Pedraza with special thanks to guest lecturers, hosts and colleagues: Jennifer Baichwal & Edward Burtynsky, Neil Brenner, Hali Felt, Christien Meindertsma, Ashley Carse, Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Rick Galat & Liz Drenkard (WHOI), Mark Monmonnier, Philip Steinberg, Ajantha Subramanian.

The Other 67%

High Seas & the International Seabed Authority Justin Jackson

Third Climate

Emergence of Cold Chain Infrastructures Kelly Murphy - Martin Pavlinic

Porta Nova

Landlocked Countries & Pathways to the Ocean Maynard Leon - Joe Bivona

Means & Migrations

Changing Coasts & Contours of Urbanization Elizabeth Yarina

Whose Seas?

The BOEM, EEZs & the Pacific Matthew Brown - Chris Bennett

Gulf of Gulfs

Latitudes & Longitudes of Oil Extraction Erin Wythoff - Adriana Chavez - Phoebe White

HPH & PRD

The Logistical Ecologies of Global Maritime Shipping Jinhui Huang

The Myth of Sea Level

Emergence, Death & Persistence of the Ocean as Datum Anya Domlesky

Degrees of Doubt

Forecasting & Weather Measure in an Age of Indeterminacy Sean Connelly - Andy Wisniewski

Oceans of Information

Telecommunications Infrastructures, Networks, & their Strategic Islands Noam Dvir - Daniel Rauchwerger

Graduate & Postgraudate Student Works

Inland or offshore, water surround us all. Yet, as liquid landscape, the ocean represents a glaring blind spot in our field of urban vision. Catastrophic events sometimes remind of its influence—a shark attack, a lost airplane, an oil spill, an underwater earthquake—but we tend to ignore the extensive and intensive scales that the oceanic takes on. Meanwhile, its space and surface continue to be radically instrumentalized like land: offshore zones territorialized by nation states, high seas crisscrossed by shipping routes, estuaries metabolized by effluents, sea levels sensed by satellites, sea floor lined with submarine cables, sea beds plumbed for resources.

The ocean has become a vast logistical landscape and a system of technological systems.

It is both a frame for regulatory controls and a

A Harvard - MIT Research Platform exploring the subject, state, and space of oceans as landscape and infrastructure. @lowlowtide http://goo.gl/zR1LMo http://goo.gl/SUPkyk

“Ocean as Measure”

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (Cape Cod) With a singular purpose “to know the ocean”, WHOI researches and explores the ocean as a defining feature of the planet and crucial to urban life , yet as one of the planet’s last unexplored frontiers. For this reason, WHOI scientists and engineers are committed to understanding all facets of the ocean as well as its complex connections with Earth’s atmosphere, land, ice, seafloor, and life—including humanity.

“Ocean as Process”

Nepf Environmental Fluid Mechanics Lab (MIT) Research and exploration of the physical mechanisms that shape shallow water ecosystems, such as rivers, wetlands, and coastal zones, with a particular emphasis on vegetated systems.

“Ocean as Scale”

“Ocean as Scale”

“Ocean as Scale”

“Ocean as Acoustic Space”

“Ocean as Climate”

“Ocean as History”

“Ocean as Media”

1962 Time Life Magazine

“Ocean as Economy”

→

“Ocean as Sensor & Measure” “Ocean as Scale” Helen Reynolds: “Every body is like a miniature ocean.”

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (Cape Cod) With a singular purpose “to know the ocean”, WHOI researches and explores the ocean as a defining feature of the planet and crucial to urban life , yet as one of the planet’s last unexplored frontiers. For this reason, WHOI scientists and engineers are committed to understanding all facets of the ocean as well as its complex connections with Earth’s atmosphere, land, ice, seafloor, and life—including humanity.

“Ocean as Flow”

Nepf Environmental Fluid Mechanics Lab (MIT) Research and exploration of the physical mechanisms that shape shallow water ecosystems, such as rivers, wetlands, and coastal zones, with a particular emphasis on vegetated systems.