RCSC Ocean Colloquia: Sonic Pipelines and the Value of a Whale

Lisa Yin Han, Arizona State University

Monday, May 15, 12-1 pm CET

in-person: EOS N 01.520

On-line:  https://radbouduniversity.zoom.us/j/88130881553?pwd=R21TTmdDZzBMcHRucUF6dUp6dnBRdz09

As part of the forthcoming seminar on The Ocean, The RCSC presents:

‘Sonic Pipelines and the Value of a Whale’

Lisa Yin Han, Arizona State University,

In the postwar era when offshore drilling was just emerging, petroleum companies like Union Oil, Shell Oil, Macco Corporation, and their affiliated researchers worked to develop the means to mediate the seafloor with photographic precision. Since the 1940s, the bangs of petroleum surveys have changed the sonic environment of our oceans, transforming the seafloor into a resource frontier and space of potential profits. In this talk, Lisa Yin Han questions the epistemological premise of the survey and its pursuit of ocean transparency and comprehensive media coverage, considering how prospecting techniques like petroleum seismology have not only figuratively transformed our oceans, but also affected the material space of their interventions. In particular, she attends to the way that cetaceans and other marine animals are recruited into ocean media assemblages, both as casualties and as coworkers in ocean observation. What are the stakes of producing informatic bodies through processes that simultaneously produce carcasses? While we often imagine a distinction between a curious scientific gaze and an extractive gaze, Han contends that the two have always been intertwined. From towed hydrophones to networked observation, she describes how the hunt for energy resources has paved the way for high resolution imaging of the ocean floor and vice versa, despite devastating ecological casualties. 

Lisa Yin Han is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at Arizona State University. Her research is situated at the intersections of environmental media studies, science and technology studies, and the blue humanities. She is currently working on a book entitled, Deepwater Alchemy: Extractive Mediation and the Taming of the Seafloor, which examines how media operations in deep ocean environments pave the way for extractive industry. Her work can be found in journals such as Configurations, Communication, Culture & Critique, and Media + Environment. Lisa is also an affiliate of the Humanities for Environment North American and Asia-Pacific Observatories and a Senior Global Futures Scientist with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory.