Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
constructed (Latour 1987). These technologies do not simply act to introduce new
ways of seeing nature into pre-existing culture, but are formed and reformed by the
existing networks of the traditional zoo. The most compelling work emerging on
the geographies of cyberspace challenges the technological determinism implicit in
much comment about the advent of virtual reality by rendering us sensitive to how
the reality with which we are dealing is already 'virtualised' (Bingham 1996;
Robertson
et al.
1996). The traditional zoo does not construct a more natural image
of the animal world than the electronic zoo, and visual technologies have always
played a central role in the aesthetic and epistemological regime of the zoo.
However, in its extended networks for enrolling and representing animals through
the use of virtual technologies, the electronic zoo
does
remake forms of human
subjectivity and animal agency. In the networks developing here there are new
dimensions, bound up in the ways of enrolling animals through film and digital
technology, which have implications for the sorts of spatial practices, the kinds of
places and the forms of subjectivity encouraged by the electronic zoo.
At-Bristol is planned as part of the redevelopment of the old Bristol docks, and it
will bring a new multi-media science experience as well as the world's first purpose-
built wildlife and environment media attraction to the heart of the city of Bristol.
Funding for the at-Bristol development will be met by a partnership including the
Millennium Commission, English Partnerships, Bristol City Council and the
Harbourside Sponsors Group, with other private sector funding. The elements
making up the wildlife media centre include a botanical house, an IMAX® theatre,
a video theatre and space for talks, access to the ARKive species database and a
venue for the biannual Wildscreen wildlife film-making festival. Part of this exhibit
can already be accessed on-line: the ARKive or 'digital Noah's ark', which consists
of a storehouse of knowledge about the world's endangered species, is available on
the internet (http://www.arkive.org.uk/). Pre-publicity assures us that throughout
the displays 'models, graphics, live and pre-recorded electronic images, lighting
effects, sound and interactive systems will be used' to 'bring visitors face to face with
the extraordinary diversity of the world—in vivid close-up' (Wildscreen-at-Bristol
press pack 1999). This multiplicity of spaces and functions in the new electronic zoo
mirrors the heterogeneity of buildings in the traditional zoo, and gives some
indication of the different kinds of socio-spatial practices that constitute and are
constituted through these new developments.
The networks of the electronic zoo
The spatial processes of network-building around the electronic zoo bear many
similarities to the spatial processes of collection and trade supporting the traditional
zoo. Similar to the accumulation of animals in the zoo, the images of animals gain
value through their geographical displacement from the sites of filming to the sights
of the electronic zoo. This occurs in a number of ways, most evident through the
Wildscreen festival to be hosted in the Bristol Centre. This has become the leading
film festival for wildlife film-makers, attracting film and television professionals across
