The Earth and its atmosphere are not a single ‘thing’ but a composite register of terrestrial sensor systems, individual collection points, and inferred information. Earth observation violates the impossible distance, objectivity claims, and presumptions of Western technoscience; it is recursive self-experimentation like “studying your own brain.” The North, and the Canadian North specifically, is both an imaginary and a real, technologised space where much of this planetary knowledge is seen to originate. Expansive Nordic landscapes provide a protectorate from which signals and warnings from the past and for the future seem to emerge perennially, fusing systems and cybernetic thinking, Cold War histories, “great outdoors” eco-naturalism, and an apocalyptic progressivism that reconstitutes the Earth itself as an infrastructure for media communication.
During this two-day workshop, we visited a hydro-meteorological station and discussed this visit alongside readings on the becoming-technological and becoming-communicational of planet Earth with “the North” as a particular thematic. We then ventured outdoors to design and build concrete forms that monumentalise, commemorate, and present earth-science collection practices, looking specifically at the atmospheric science of snow and ice. The group prepared samples for inclusion in this collaborative work, which forms part of the “Earth Observatory Array,” a global array of sculptural forms created as part of the Shift Register project, led by Jamie Allen. The Montreal Earth Observatory Array Element (#427) was collaboratively located, designed, and ceremonially activated by workshop participants.