Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control

Elements

by Yuriko Furuhata

In Climatic Media, Yuriko Furuhata traces climate engineering from the early twentieth century to the present, emphasizing the legacies of Japan’s empire-building and its Cold War alliance with the United States. Furuhata boldly expands the scope of media studies to consider technologies that chemically “condition” the Earth’s atmosphere and socially “condition” the conduct of people, focusing on the attempts to monitor and modify indoor and outdoor atmospheres by Japanese scientists, technicians, architects, and artists in conjunction with their American counterparts. She charts the geopolitical contexts of what she calls climatic media by examining a range of technologies such as cloud seeding and artificial snowflakes, digital computing used for weather forecasting and weather control, cybernetics for urban planning and policing, Nakaya Fujiko’s fog sculpture, and the architectural experiments of Tange Lab and the Metabolists, who sought to design climate-controlled capsule housing and domed cities. Furuhata’s transpacific analysis offers a novel take on the elemental conditions of media and climate change.

Genres: Environment, Japan

256 pages, Paperback

Published March 25, 2022

Reviews

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nakaya then embarked on re-creating snowflakes inside the Low Temperature Science Laboratory, which simulated outdoor climatic conditions. To produce artificial snowflakes, Nakaya and his team experimented with various materials—from a thread of silk to a strand of spider web—in order to grow snow crystals inside the laboratory envronment. To his delight, rabbit hair, with its uneven surface, proved the most effective base for growing snow crystals. (34)

Settlers bring with them the climate of their home—or one they regard as ideal—and engineer the interior atmosphere of these shelters and domed cities to suit their biological and social needs. (100)