Treasures of the Deep Book Club - The Media of Seaweeds

In this session, we will discuss ‘The Media of Seaweeds: Between Kelp Forest and Archive’, a chapter published in Saturation, edited by Melody Jue (University of Santa Barbara) and Rafico Ruiz (Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal).

Excerpt: While exploring the Algal Herbarium at uc Santa Barbara, I came across a folder containing an elegant sample of Macrocystis pyrifera, or giant kelp, collected from Imperial Beach, California, in 1964. The dried specimen spirals up the large sheaf of herbarium paper, positioning you to look at it as if you were a diver floating far above. Exhibiting a range of pigment intensity, the kelp blades appear like watercolors, fading from marigold to chocolate. In several places, the kelp had even bled orangebrown pigment into the paper behind, leaving it slightly warped and crinkled (see figure 8.1). …

About the Book

Bringing together media studies and environmental humanities, the contributors to Saturation develop saturation as a heuristic to analyze phenomena in which the elements involved are difficult or impossible to separate. In ordinary language, saturation describes the condition of being thoroughly soaked, while in chemistry it is the threshold at which something can be maximally dissolved or absorbed in a solution. Contributors to this collection expand notions of saturation beyond water to consider saturation in sound, infrastructure, media, Big Data, capitalism, and visual culture. Essays include analyses of the thresholds of HIV detectability in bloodwork, militarism's saturation of oceans, and the deleterious effects of the saturation of cellphone and wi-fi signals into the human body. By channeling saturation to explore the relationship between media, the environment, technology, capital, and the legacies of settler colonialism, Saturation illuminates how elements, the natural world, and anthropogenic infrastructures, politics, and processes exist in and through each other. Contributors. Marija Cetinić, Jeff Diamanti, Bishnupriya Ghosh, Lisa Yin Han, Stefan Helmreich, Mél Hogan, Melody Jue, Rahul Mukherjee, Max Ritts, Rafico Ruiz, Bhaskar Sarkar, John Shiga, Avery Slater, Janet Walker, Joanna Zylinska.

About the Author

Melody Jue is Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She completed her Ph.D. in the Graduate Program in Literature at Duke University, where she was a recipient of the Katherine Goodman Stern Dissertation Completion Fellowship and James B. Duke Graduate Fellowship. Prior to this, she worked as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant at the Open University of Hong Kong. Melody has published articles in Grey Room, Animations: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction, and has forthcoming work in Size & Scale in Literature and Culture. Her research and teaching interests concern oceans & the environmental humanities, American literature, digital media & media theory, science fiction, science & technology studies, and the relation between theory and practice. She has first-hand experience from scuba diving and uses case studies of ocean alterity to bring about shifts in consciousness and the critical practices of the humanities.

About Treasures of the Deep

A three-month pilot programme that takes the St Andrews Botanic Garden’s algal collection as its anchor and point of departure. Through a series of lunchtime talks, workshops, and an exhibition, we invite our audiences, local and international artists, writers, academics and organisations to explore seaweed as both a biological material and a medium for reflecting on broader environmental, social, and feminist issues. Together, we will examine how algal collections can inspire new ways of thinking, providing insights into our past, present, and future relationships with the natural world.

About the Reading Group

In this reading group, we’ll journey through texts that unearth narratives which encourage us to question, reflect, and reimagine what might come after the end. In shared conversation, we’ll ask what it means to live through moments of profound change, and how literature can equip us to witness and engage with these shifts.

Whether you are a seasoned reader of ecocritical literature, or someone simply interested in the intersection of the written word and the natural world, this group encourages diverse perspectives. We’ll be reading the chosen texts beforehand, and coming together to discuss them in a relaxed, open-minded atmosphere.

No matter your familiarity with the material, we encourage everyone to share their thoughts, and questions as we explore the themes together. As we go along, we’ll adapt our discussions to the group’s interests and pace, allowing room for both joint exploration and personal reflection.

Essential Information:

Minimum age 18. Please bring your own reading/writing materials.

The entrance fee covers access to the garden, as well as tea, coffee, shortbread, and water. Free RSVP for those with exisiting admission tickets for this date, students and Friends Members.

As this is an out of hours event, please meet at the main gate to the Garden at 6pm. If you are running late, please notify Anne Daffertshofer via adaffertshoferstandrewsbotanic.org (Subject line: late/book club).