Flickering somewhere between figure and ground, Many Atmospheres Deeper probes the limits of visibility through global infrastructures of finance and resource extraction. The emerging frontiers of critical minerals are landscapes generated through remote sensing and market forecasts, artificial intelligence and digital twin simulations. That is, they demand supply chains not only of mines, ports and human workers, but also logistical networks of images, instruments and corporate lobbyists. Returning to the concept of the “abyss” to consider the vast unknowns that make a world known, Scheinman suggests a new paradigm of exalted encounter with three spatial imaginaries—the desert, the ocean and the swamp—that in this critical moment of energy transition are increasingly, or perhaps once again, coming into view.
Noah Scheinman is a multidisciplinary artist who makes research-based works that interrogate the politics, ecologies, and aesthetics of landscape. He recently founded S.E.D.I.M.E.N.T.S, a creative studio perhaps best described as the interplay between research and practice, art and architecture, laboratory and field. Engaging both conceptual and material-driven approaches, S.E.D.I.M.E.N.T.S realizes artworks, videos, and designs that explore questions of environment through multiple theoretical lenses and methodological approaches. Ongoing projects include Timber Limits, an investigation of forests, the cultural trope of “wilderness,” and the governance of the timber industry, and BAD EARTH, which materializes Canada’s Postnuclear Landscape through a cycle of film-essays and sculptural installations. Many Atmospheres Deeper is an early outcome of a new body of work, Critical/Mineral, that examines the media, geology, and logistics of the New Age of Metal and will also take the form of an experimental documentary tracing the emerging supply chains of critical mineral extraction as they proliferate across ever-shifting geopolitical and geological terrain.
