it's not the end of the world, but you can see it from there

June 9, 2015 8:50 PM

The Unknown Fields Division is a "nomadic design research studio that ventures out on expeditions to the ends of the earth to bear witness to alternative worlds, alien landscapes, industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness."

Projects:
Showreel 2013
Lithium Dreams
Alien Encounters
0-180 Degrees Longitude
Prospecting In Dreamtime

previously: The Worst Place On Earth

posted by the man of twists and turns (4 comments total)

Ming Vases from Toxic Waste
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:55 PM on June 9, 2015

They should do a side project of Joy Division songs and call themselves Unknown Pleasures Division.
posted by symbioid at 9:03 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

The remote territories of the Australian Never Never are anything but empty. The history of these landscapes is one of nuclear testing, rocket launches and black military technologies.

There's a 40,000+yr old extant culture that would like to give you a history lesson.

and the dying languages of Australia’s indigenous culture are recorded onto the gold bars dug out of the very ground of their homeland.

See 'extant' above.

This gold plated headphone jack has embedded within it an aboriginal songline from the place its gold was abstracted. Once the landscape is disturbed by mining machines, its songlines become dislocated from their lad, encoded into and spread by the gold. The aboriginal stories and song survive in the ore extracted.

Oh really? And what's with the adjectives in place of proper nouns?

From here Oliviu, in our Experimental Flight Lab, is launching a choreographed flock of autonomous gliders, to drift through the air in silent protest. Floating on engineered thermal currents their wingspan antennas broadcast white noise through the electromagnetic landscapes over Australia’s Pine Gap military base, momentarily jamming their telecommunications signals.

This is cool.

But the ignorant and disrespectful cultural appropriation bullshit? Not so much.
posted by Thella at 9:27 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

They should do a side project of Joy Division songs

Actually, at some point in the Alien Encounters photo sequence, I started singing "The magical mystery tour, is coming to take you away..."
posted by happyroach at 1:41 AM on June 10, 2015