Melt: encountering Antarctica through remote sensing technology

• Main Authors: King, L, Tamsin, S
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Uro 2022
• Subjects: 1201 Architecture; Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10453/154156

The paper explores the role of remote sensing in remote cryospheric landscapes. To encounter the precarious Antarctic landscape is to engage simultaneously with extreme wildness and hypatechnocivilisation. Antarctica is a hostile place for the human body; scouring katabatic winds and sub-zero temperatures make movement difficult, combined with frequent storms and ice instability, hinder human habitation of the continent. Yet the remote polar south is a calibrated register of human activity, deeply connected to global transfer and planetary exchange stored in the re-inscription of ice during a time of accelerated glacial melt. Novel tools to landscape architectural thinking, these remote technologies make the cryosphere a laboratory at the site of planetary climatic tipping points.