Incomputable Earth

Incomputable Earth radically interrogates the political epistemology underlying the Anthropocene hypothesis. This open access volume examines how this hypothesis functions as a master concept that simultaneously diagnoses human impact on Earth's climate while prescribing technoscientific solutions rooted in Western computational thinking.

Against the backdrop of new regimes of algorithmic classification and prediction, Incomputable Earth addresses the crucial need to rethink the meaning and inter-relationality of such terms as 'extraction', 'computation', and 'planetarity'. Beyond theory, it examines what cognitive and political capacities we need to grapple with the implications of this parallel intensification of datafication and the Anthropocene.

Through five interconnected sections, international scholars, artists, and theorists reveal how the Anthropocene hypothesis is inextricably linked to colonial histories of computation, emerging alongside the expansion of digital technological systems and new regimes of data positivism.

Examining new forms of subjectivity and resistance, this timely volume tackles urgent topics, from the racialized politics of climate change to feminist ecologies and planetary financialization. In an original, hybrid format reflecting its interdisciplinary nature, Incomputable Earth offers a vital intervention into the past, present, and future of computation and its inescapable impact upon our social, political, and planetary life.

This book emerges from the artistic research project "The Incomputable-Art in the Age of Algorithms," instigated at the IZK - Institute for Contemporary Art, Graz University of Technology, and funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport, and the Styrian Provincial Government Department of Economy, Tourism, Science and Research.

This book is available open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com It is funded by The Austrian Science Fund (FWF).