Recent decades have witnessed a drastic increase in the amount of data gathered from the Baltic Sea with the use of digital technologies. These data gathering practices demonstrates multiple functions of collecting and interpreting data, and how mediating technologies are situated in the “traffic between nature and culture”.
The aim of this project is to illuminate the traffic between nature and culture by analyzing technologies which mediate the Baltic Sea. To do so it focuses on three areas having drawn particular attention to the Baltic Sea region: surveillance, transportation, and sustainability. The project is divided into three case studies: 1) Monitoring the Baltic Sea: the Submarine Crisis , 2) Logistical media and traffic on the Baltic Sea, 3) Environmental media and the science of the Baltic Sea.
The project contributes to the currently expanding fields of elemental media and ocean humanities. Within these fields, the proposed project is designed to empirically illuminate the multiple dimensions of mediation, temporalization, technological change, and conceptual history. The project contributes to the knowledge about the Baltic Sea region by the fact that the three aspects chosen – surveillance, transportation, and sustainability – all have been experienced and explored locally, perhaps to a higher degree than in any other maritime region.