To seize the Earth (geo) with its forms and phenomena through a description or writing (graphein) that permits one to orient and situate oneself spatio-temporally within an ever transforming planetary movement is at the heart of the geographic sciences. It is not my aim, however, to discuss geography as a synoptic undertaking with its overlap of the physical sciences and the human sciences but rather to investigate how three artists, Jean-Pierre Aubé, Steve Heimbecker and César Saëz, deploy distinct geographic approaches in their practice. Approaches that gaze through the lenses of art to reflect upon the contemporary configuration of our errant celestial body and what role we may play upon it. The three artists will be evaluated under the sign of travel, of a constant transformation not fixed in a set path, and this with the aim of gaining some sense of orientation from their respective vantage points that may indicate alternative trajectories to our current anthropologically overdetermined global course.
The contemporary state of the planet is one that is characterized by what McKenzie Wark has termed a ‘virtual geography’ made up of a vast array of globe-spanning information flows that supersede any sense of fixed territory and which has led to the emergence of a ‘third nature.’1 First nature comprised the natural world in its raw state, and second nature that of humankind’s gradual ‘civilizational taming’ of nature to stake out a territory that has culminated in the reification of culture as ‘our’ environment; while third nature is born of a new relationship to the Earth marked on the one hand by a blurring of inherited territorial boundaries and the instauration of a globalized reign of ubiquitous connectivity and propinquity, and on the other by the conflation of first nature and cultural second nature into a mutually impacting entity, the most prominent features of which are climate change and ecological crisis. Third nature thus envelops both second nature (accumulated human impacts) and first nature (as both an impacted and active/reacting system) and this has given rise to a geography in which cultural and physical geography can no longer be clearly dissociated as was the case in classical studies in the field. It is within this turbulent planetary configuration that the artists respectively set out to find their bearings.
For his journey, Jean-Pierre Aubé wandered forth with a device known as very low frequency or V.L.F. radio apparatus (hence the title of the project V.L.F., 2000) to track electromagnetic waves generated by the Earth’s magnetosphere. Steve Heimbecker’s approach is based on a rigorous mapping process that allows him to extrapolate data from physically and naturally manifest phenomena such as wind which he then transposes technologically to craft original multimedia work. In a different vein, César Saëz points his compass towards geographical regions that have more to do with geopolitical territories and the search for as-of-yet uncolonized spaces for art. With his never fully completed Geostationary Banana Over Texas─GBOT (2006 – 2008) project the artist launched a far-reaching allegorical critique of our globalized geography.

Wave Paths Far and Near

Jean-Pierre Aubé’s approach can be likened to a romantic explorer-scientist who sets out into an unmapped wilderness to capture phenomenon that escape the attention of ordinary urban or rural dwellers. This is the impulse behind the V.L.F. (2000) project, the objective of which is to render the electromagnetic activity generated by the Earth’s magnetosphere—and in particular northern lights—perceptible though the use of V.L.F. radio (a.k.a natural radio). This quest has led Aubé to travel to remote boreal areas for two geographic reasons: one being that natural electromagnetic waves are mainly present around the polarregions, and the other that the increasing third nature emission of electromagnetic waves...(Extract)

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