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International audience; During recent years, geocomputation has become increasingly entangled with so-called 4D visualization. The contemporary infrastructure of fossil fuel extraction depends on these software tools for geological data handling, interpretation and modelling of subterranea. This paper makes use of the contaminated and contaminating practice of figuration to plot stories that highlight some of the milestones of deadly collaboration, of optimised acceleration, and of sedimented damage. It engages with three figurations of timely extraction (Consortium, Borehole and Amalgam), to tell stories that provide a way to make present the time-space complexities that emerge from the connections between extractivism, computation and semiotic-material values. The Underground Division studies those rocky figurations to expose some of their interdependent articulations such as transnational alliances, gold mining and geocomputation and how they shape life/non-life temporalities. We argue that the dynamic crossings of time and matter that Consortium, Borehole and Amalgam are embedded in establish a dynamics of repeated damage, via latent regimes which maintain extractive forces, practices and modes. We amalgamate the clock time of turbo-computing with the megaannums at the timeline of digitally mediated rocks to present agential combinations of exclusion and occlusion that each create unique modes of discrimination and privilege.

This chapter unravels how execution holds — in enduring states — semi-living microbes in sites of petrochemical waste. By referring to semi-living I am not signalling a life sustained through technological means (Catts and Zurr 2002), but a living constrained and held in injured states by computation. I ask what type of activity is this execu- tion that derives from injury and how we might speculate on execution otherwise? \ud \ud Through ethnographic and speculative engagements with Critter Chips I will show how execution can be described as propelling semi-life, outlining how computation exploits the potential of microbial injury and death. I follow this with a discussion of the artwork Critter Compiler, a fabulation (Haraway 2013) that engages with contemporary microbial computing. Critter Compiler is a prototype for a microbial novella writer and a response to Rosi Braidotti’s call for experiments that “are non-profit and actualise the virtual possibilities of an expanded relational self that functions in a nature-culture continuum” (2013, 61). The artwork takes as its starting point toxic execution, and as a speculative experiment performs (or executes) these processes otherwise.

An increasing number of low-cost and do-it-yourself (DIY) digital sensors for monitoring air quality are now in circulation. DIY technologies attempt to democratize environmental practices such as air quality sensing that might ordinarily be the domain of expert scientists. But in the process of setting up and using DIY sensors, citizens encounter just as many challenges for ensuring the accuracy of their devices and the validity of their data. In this article, we look specifically at the infrastructures and practices of DIY digital sensing. Through an analysis of urban sensing in London as an environmental media practice, we consider the specific techniques and challenges of calibrating DIY digital sensors for measuring air pollution in order to ensure the relative accuracy and validity of data. We ask: How are DIY calibration practices expressive of particular political subjects and environmental relations—and not others? And how might we re-calibrate DIY as a digital practice and political commitment through engagements with the multiple genealogies and counter-genealogies of citizen-led inquiry?

When specific intra-active technologies of ultrasound and echography violently rendered real bodies, they wondered about the see-through space-times that were left in the dark. The crystals. They read, listened and gossiped with awkwardness, intensity and urgency. Lively and clumsily smoking cigarettes, they cried as coyotes: The crisis of presence that emerged with the computational turn was shaped by the technocolonialism of turbocapitalism! Through vibrations of feminist technoscience, through friends and lovers, they heard how sonographic images produced life and mattered “real bodies”. Convoked from the dark inner space-times of the earth, the flesh, and the cosmos, particular aclinical renderings evidence that “real bodies” do not exist before being separated, cut and isolated. Listen: there is a shaking surface, a cosmological inventory, hot breath in the ear. DIWO, recreational, abstract, referential and quantifying sonic practices are already profanating the image-life industrial continuum. Ultrasound is no longer (or never was) the exclusive realm of technocrats or medical experts.\ud These are your new devices, dim and glossy. In this partial imaginary, you’ll deep listen to their non-ocularity, following entanglements with images and imaginations; all the way into ultrasonic cosmo-dreaming, where poetic renderings and sonographies start to (re)generate (just) social imaginations. Let’s collectively resonate against technologies of ultrasound and echography and bet on practices that open up relational, semiotic-material, non-individualistic and non-anthropocentric notions of presence, that bring in transfeminist queer futures.

Discussing a research project that investigates citizen sensing practices in relation to monitoring air pollution from hydraulic fracturing sites, this paper investigates the types of data that citizen monitoring generates, and the uses to which it might be put. The discussion is located within the wider context of the rise of environmental sensing technologies and practices that are emerging and that seek to enable citizens to use DIY and low-tech monitoring tools to understand and act upon environmental problems such as air pollution. These “citizen sensing” projects intend to gather data, which can indicate environmental change and give rise to political action. However, regulators often contest citizen-gathered data as inaccurate, and as collected through sub-standard instruments and practices. Drawing on a report developed by the US EPA, we use the concept of “just good enough data” to demonstrate that citizen-gathered data can have multiple other uses beyond regulatory comparison and compliance. Describing the collaborative development of an environmental monitoring kit, as well as the deployment of this kit within a participatory research setting, we suggest that the relevance of citizen-collected air quality data should not be solely evaluated through absolute criteria such as alignment to state- or federally managed air quality data, but rather should be incorporated for the unique citizen-based insights and perspectives it provides.

In this paper we address “Just good enough data” ,a phrase and concept that we use to address issues of accuracy in relation to citizen-collected data, and to expand the types of uses that might accompany these new types of data. “Just good enough data” draws attention to attempts to counter the reliance on high levels of measurement accuracy as the sole criterion by which data are evaluated. What different practices emerge when environmental data are engaged with in a more indicative register? What do these practices enable? And what other relations, connections and points of focus might “just good enough data” generate?

In this work the network asks “If I wrote you a love letter would you write back?” Like the love letters which appeared mysteriously on the noticeboards of Manchester University’s Computer Department in the 1950s, thousands of texts circulate as computational processes perform the questions (perhaps as an expanded Turing test) on its listeners. These questions are extracted in real-time from Twitter with the keyword search of the ‘?’ symbol to create a spatio-temporal experience. The computerized voice the audience hears is a collective one, an entanglement of humans and non-humans, that circulates across networks. If I wrote you a love letter would you write back? (and thousands of other questions’ ) (封不回的情書？千言萬語無人回 was commissioned by the Microwave International New Media Festival 2012.

We consider the increasingly blurred boundaries\ud between what has been termed the online/offline binary\ud through a discussion of the design and first stage\ud implementation of a ubiquitous ALife project,\ud TechnoSphere 2.0. This series of Android applications\ud (apps) use augmented reality, GPS, 2D and 3D printing\ud to create mixed reality environments in which the lives,\ud artificial and otherwise, of people and online creatures,\ud as well as online and offline spaces, are blended. The\ud design of these apps is situated in the specific\ud ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) environment, the\ud milieu, of Hong Kong and South East Asia.

Drawing on our own art/science practices and a\ud series of interviews with artificial life practitioners, we explore the\ud entanglement of developments at the artistic edges of artificial life.\ud We start by defining key terms from Karen Baradʼs agential realism.\ud We then diffractively read artificial life together with agential realism\ud to discuss the potential for interventions in the field. Through a\ud discussion of artificial life computer simulations, ideas of agency\ud are problematized, and artificial lifeʼs single purposeful actor, the\ud agent, is replaced by agential, an adjective denoting a relationship rather\ud than a subject-object duality. We then seek to reinterpret the\ud difficult-to-define term “emergence.” Agency in artificial life emerges\ud through what Barad calls entanglement, in this case between observers\ud and their apparatus, a perpetual engagement between observations\ud of a system and their interpretations. The article explores the\ud differences that this diffractive perspective makes to artificial life\ud and accounts of its materialization.

Adoptem la noció de difracció proposada per Karen Barad (2007) per reavaluar les relacions entre l'art contemporani convencional (ACC) i l'art dels nous mitjans (ANM), sobre les quals s'ha discutit durant molts anys com a part d'un debat un xic controvertit. La nostra lectura difractiva posa en relleu diferències, grans i petites però conseqüents, entre aquestes pràctiques artístiques. No suavitzarem les tensions que destaquen en anteriors debats sobre ANM i MCA, sinó que utilitzarem el terme de Barad, «embolic», per suggerir que hi ha «embolics» generatius, així com diferències productives, entre aquestes pràctiques. Ampliem el debat considerant quines diferències importen, per a qui (artistes, galeristes, científics) i com aquestes diferències emergeixen a través d'intraaccions materials i discursives. Propugnem un nou terme, «pràctiques artístiques difractives», i suggerim que aquestes pràctiques artístiques van més enllà de la bifurcació d’ANM i MCA per a reconfigurar parcialment les pràctiques entre art, informàtica i humanitats., We engage with Karen Barad’s notion of diffraction (2007) to re-evaluate the relations between mainstream contemporary art (MCA) and new media art (NMA) that have been discussed for many years as part of a somewhat contentious debate. Our diffractive reading highlights both large and small but consequential differences between these art practices. We do not smooth over the tensions highlighted in earlier discussions of NMA and MCA. Instead we use Barad’s term ‘entanglement’ to suggest that there are generative ‘entanglements’, as well as productive differences, between these practices. We extend the debate by considering which differences matter, for whom (artists, gallerists, scientists) and how these differences emerge through material-discursive intra-actions. We argue for a new term, diffractive art practices, and suggest that such art practices move beyond the bifurcation of NMA and MCA to partially reconfigure the practices between art, computation and humanities., Adoptamos la noción de difracción propuesta por Karen Barad (2007) para reevaluar las relaciones entre el arte contemporáneo convencional (ACC) y el arte de los nuevos medios (ANM), sobre las que se ha discutido durante muchos años como parte de un debate algo controvertido. Nuestra lectura difractiva pone de relieve diferencias, grandes y pequeñas pero consecuentes, entre estas prácticas artísticas. No suavizamos las tensiones puestas de relieve en anteriores debates acerca de ANM y MCA, sino que utilizamos el término de Barad, «enredo», para sugerir que existen «enredos» generativos, así como diferencias productivas, entre dichas prácticas. Ampliamos el debate considerando qué diferencias importan, para quién (artistas, galeristas, científicos) y cómo dichas diferencias emergen a través de intra-acciones materiales y discursivas. Propugnamos un nuevo término, «prácticas artísticas difractivas», y sugerimos que dichas prácticas artísticas van más allá de la bifurcación de ANM y MCA para reconfigurar parcialmente las prácticas entre arte, informática y humanidades.

Cutaneous sensitization of CBA mice with oxazolone was followed 3 days later by increased cell proliferation in the regional lymph nodes and spleen, as measured by incorporation of radiolabelled 5-iodo-2'-deoxyuridine. The thymus was reduced in weight and contained fewer proliferating cells. Other mice were part-body irradiated, with shielding of the anterior three-quarters of the body, and injected with CBA-T6T6 bone marrow cells. Half of them were subsequently sensitized with oxazolone. The frequency of dividing cells of bone marrow origin in the thymus of sensitized and control animals was estimated cytologically 3–70 days later. There was a significant tendency for sensitized mice to have more dividing cells of donor origin in the thymus than controls.

The stem cell potential of thymusless nu/nu mice measured in terms of CFU ratio and the capacity to reprieve lethally irradiated mice was similar to that of nu/+ and CBA mice. The thymus of nu/nu→T6T6 rediation chimaeras was repopulated by donor cells. Proliferation of donor cells, presumed to be T-lymphocytes, was observed in regional lymph nodes 3 days after sensitization with oxazolone.

The concentrations of immunoglobulins in the sera of congenitally thymus-less `nude' (nu/nu) mice of various ages were studied by single radial diffusion and compared with those in phenotypically normal nu/+ controls. γM was present in normal concentrations. γA and γG2a concentrations were greatly reduced. γG1 was normal at the time of weaning (28 days of age), but fell progressively thereafter until it was indetectable in most animals more than 60 days old. The primary response to 4 × 107 sheep erythrocytes was studied by haemolytic plaque and serum haemagglutination techniques. Nu/nu mice made subnormal quantities of 19S and little or no 7S antibody. Subcutaneous grafting of neonatal CBA/H thymus at 10–25 days of age was followed by increased survival of nu/nu mice and by the appearance of normal concentrations of γG2a and γG1 globulins and near-normal concentrations of γA. Intraperitoneal injection of 108 CBA/H thymus cells resulted in still higher concentrations of these three proteins. It is concluded that the establishment of normal serum concentrations of γA, γG2a and, especially, γG1 depends upon the presence of funtional T-lymphocytes. γM shows no such T-dependence.

Citizen sensing, or the use of low-cost and accessible digital technologies to monitor environments, has contributed to new types of environmental data and data practices. Through a discussion of participatory research into air pollution sensing with residents of northeastern Pennsylvania concerned about the effects of hydraulic fracturing, we examine how new technologies for generating environmental data also give rise to new problems for analysing and making sense of citizen-gathered data. After first outlining the citizen data practices we collaboratively developed with residents for monitoring air quality, we then describe the data stories that we created along with citizens as a method and technique for composing data. We further mobilise the concept of ‘just good enough data’ to discuss the ways in which citizen data gives rise to alternative ways of creating, valuing and interpreting datasets. We specifically consider how environmental data raises different concerns and possibilities in relation to Big Data, which can be distinct from security or social media studies. We then suggest ways in which citizen datasets could generate different practices and interpretive insights that go beyond the usual uses of environmental data for regulation, compliance and modelling to generate expanded data citizenships.

Republication of essay

We propose that mutated forms of death are emerging with neoliberalism’s biopolitical financialisation of life. Thinking of such forms as commercial extinction and social death, how do we begin to frame these outside of a quantified rhetoric of surplus? These questions aim to provoke a discussion about these terms that can be interpreted as modes of exhaustion, while maintaining particular biological, social or economic conditions of life. When we are confronted with capitalism’s failure to fulfil resource exhaustion, a model of conservation by dispossession1 might emerge within what Rosi Braidotti calls “new and subtler degrees of death and extinction” (2013, 115). In this text we want to think with other conditions of death and extinction that can help to move beyond the missing item of an inventory, a carved rock along a fossil road or a set of pre-emptive actions to be executed beyond a certain threshold. Thus, we ask if there could be figures, which rather than narrating death as a biological or geological concept, open it up to other equally violent forces that are nevertheless materially situated. More importantly, will we ever be able to think of extinction beyond ideas of absence or frame death from social or economic realms as an emerging mode of living? In order to address many of these questions we dissect a critical example of extinction, that of the brown shrimp (Crangon crangon) as it flips between commercial (albeit not yet biotic) death in the ex-fishing grounds of the South East corner of the UK, and the social death embedded in the labour-power of the ex-processing factories of the Special Economic Zones of Tangier and Tetuan in Morocco.

This collection brings together artists, curators, programmers, theorists and heavy internet browsers whose practices make critical intervention into the broad concept of execution. It draws attention to their political strategies, asking: who and what is involved with those practices, and for whom or what are these practices performed, and how? From the contestable politics of emoji modifier mechanisms and micro-temporalities of computational processes to genomic exploitation and the curating of digital content, the chapters account for gendered, racialised, spatial, violent, erotic, artistic and other embedded forms of execution. Together they highlight a range of ways in which execution emerges and how it participates within networked forms of liveliness.

This collection brings together artists, curators, programmers, theorists and heavy internet browsers whose practices make critical intervention into the broad concept of execution. It draws attention to their political strategies, asking: who and what is involved with those practices, and for whom or what are these practices performed, and how? From the contestable politics of emoji modifier mechanisms and micro-temporalities of computational processes to genomic exploitation and the curating of digital content, the chapters account for gendered, racialised, spatial, violent, erotic, artistic and other embedded forms of execution. Together they highlight a range of ways in which execution emerges and how it participates within networked forms of liveliness.

How does erasure execute knowledge production? The following is a tour through a collection of erasure that provides a glimpse into the many directions that this question may take us, through the lens of a series of artistic interventions, academic research, experiments and artefacts.\ud \ud I present these items from a collector’s point of view. For achieving completion of this collection of erasures would be, in the words of Jean Baudrillard, like death. That is to say that the desire to complete the series, to achieve the perfection of its imaginary ending, is that which creates the elusive object of desire. As such, in the same way that a collection can always extend itself laterally, or spark a new one ([1968] 1996, 113), I am presenting it as an object of desire, fuelled by the impetus of neoliberal growth, which can never be complete and will forever expand into new meanings of execution, always towards the elusive erasure of death.

This collection brings together artists, curators, programmers, theorists and heavy internet browsers whose practices make critical intervention into the broad concept of execution. It draws attention to their political strategies, asking: who and what is involved with those practices, and for whom or what are these practices performed, and how? From the contestable politics of emoji modifier mechanisms and micro-temporalities of computational processes to genomic exploitation and the curating of digital content, the chapters account for gendered, racialised, spatial, violent, erotic, artistic and other embedded forms of execution. Together they highlight a range of ways in which execution emerges and how it participates within networked forms of liveliness.

In this chapter we discuss how the edited collection "Executing Practices" brings attention to what Isabelle Stengers (2005) describes as the particular demands of practices that propel execution. Practices are parsed as processes by which execution stabilises and takes hold in the world (Stengers, in Gabrys 2016, 9). Rather than considering the stability of execution as the norm, which we might approach with dystopic or paranoid dread, the authors in the book engage with and make interventions on the problems of execution.\ud \ud We outline that "Executing Practices" alerts us that access to instructions that drive execution is only one account, and even then, our understanding of execution might always remain partial and speculative.

This collection brings together artists, curators, programmers, theorists and heavy internet browsers whose practices make critical intervention into the broad concept of execution. It draws attention to their political strategies, asking: who and what is involved with those practices, and for whom or what are these practices performed, and how? From the contestable politics of emoji modifier mechanisms and micro-temporalities of computational processes to genomic exploitation and the curating of digital content, the chapters account for gendered, racialised, spatial, violent, erotic, artistic and other embedded forms of execution. Together they highlight a range of ways in which execution emerges and how it participates within networked forms of liveliness.