Underground nuclear and military materials have been the subject of international commissions, tribunals, and wars. Yet subterranean facilities also commonly inventory a similarly volatile, though less noxious, resource: information. SubTropolis’s central location, solidity, and security have drawn technology companies, who host data centers in the mine’s massive pillared rooms. Many underground garrisons and command centers of the Cold War era have likewise become “data bunkers.” Given that industrial metaphors of “mining” and “smithing” have long pervaded the discourses of intellectual labor, it should be no surprise that we’re now data mining inside our mines. And alongside the subterranean servers and ...

Mecca is the holiest city in the Islamic religion and the birthplace of the prophet Mohamed. Located just off Saudi Arabia’s western coast, all Muslims are required to visit at least once in their life if they are physically able to. With air travel becoming easier, the number of pilgrims has been rising rapidly over the last few decades, with a record number of 3 million people visiting Mecca simultaneously during the 2012 Hajj. More recently, visa regulations have been made more strict to keep the situation under control. In this episode, we discuss with various experts how this rising number ...

This set of five pamphlets documents a seminar given recently by Alexander R. Galloway at the Public School New York, a self-organizing educational program where class ideas are generated by the public. “French Theory Today” explores a new generation of French voices—Catherine Malabou, Bernard Stiegler, Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, Quentin Meillassoux, and François Laruelle—whose work has, to varying degrees, only recently emerged in the English-speaking world. Each night of the seminar consisted of a lecture followed by questions from and discussion with class participants. As Galloway suggests in the online class proposal, the goal was “not to set in aspic a new ...

“Rosa Barba’s Somnium (…) draws together many of the key concerns that have emerged in the artist´s oeuvre over the past decade. Its point of departure is a short story by the German astronomer Johanner Kepler. Although framed as a dream, this tale of a lunar voyage was devised to validate the radically seditious thesis of a heliocentric universe. Published posthumously in 1634 and only rarely reprinted over the next three centuries, his text was finally rescued from obscurity when translated into several European languages. Soon gaining a reputation among devotees of science fiction, today it is widely recognized as ...

This full-spectrum audio trailer for Audint—Unsound:Undead features some of the sonic phenomena explored in the book, and pays tribute to some other spectres still close to us.