Living Surfaces

“Living Surfaces is a thought-provoking read for scholars and students across diverse disciplines. Even those outside of media studies will be intrigued by this book’s thoroughly investigated, real-world examples without being overwhelmed by its rich theoretical lineage.”
—Media Theory

“Living Surfaces is an impressive work, drawing together a wealth of research from the history of science, technology, agriculture, photography, and media studies with a sharp theoretical approach to understanding how life, matter, and technology co-constitute one another. Rich with illuminating examples and case studies, Living Surfaces constructs a new aesthetics of life, light, media, and planetarity that deserves attention from anyone seeking to better understand human-environment relations and the ecological crises that characterise those relationships at present.”
—British Society for Literature and Science

“Living Surfaces examines the Earth as a surface, a medial, ecological, thermal skin that we mostly perceive as an assemblage of images… It is a process that the two authors define as ‘environmental imaging’…. Gil-Fournier and Parikka have been working together for some time, merging theory and practice in texts and art installations. This includes the related Lumi, a video essay in which historical photographic datasets are organised through the lens of a fictional synthetic intelligence programmed to ‘repaint landscapes’ as part of a ‘climate restoration initiative’ – the perfect complement to this excellent book.”
—Neural Magazine

“Living Surfaces is an important contribution to ecological media studies, offering a new perspective by positioning plant surfaces as active mediators in media systems, not just passive objects.”
—Journal of Environmental Media

“In Living Surfaces, Gil-Fournier and Parikka offer a creative and ambitious archaeology of the vegetal-technological spectrum of surfaces and a starting point for future scholarly inquiry.”
—Configurations