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Nonorganic Life: Encounters Between Frequency And Virtuality In Antarctica, Su Ballard

Su Ballard

This paper is not about Antarctica at all. In many imaginaries Antarctica exists as a virtualized yet real utopia. It is a place known through material productions that oscillate between the fictional and the scientific. The discovery of the Don Juan Pond lead scientists towards life formed by brine-derived nitrates (a kind of molecular self-organization by non-carbon sources) and onwards to the possibility of life on Mars. If it is autonomous, can reproduce and evolve, it must be life, mustn’t it? Amidst complex computational models, nonorganic matter is not static; it changes and tying it to either nature or culture …