A Short Incomplete History of Technologies That Scale

The word scale is tricky. It invites many definitions, orientations and connections to ourselves, our surroundings and our tools. However, to think of scale as solely technical is reductive and omits the relations, feelings and beliefs that come with such measurements and images. In this book, eight authors come together to challenge our conventions and understanding of scale as grounded in the human. In their texts, Asia Bazdyrieva, Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, Anthony Downey, FRAUD (Audrey Samson & Francisco Gallardo), Chris Lee, Jussi Parikka and Laura Tripaldi expand our understanding of scale to the more-than-human, trace its movements and frictions through histories, and question the way scale generates political power. Demonstrating how we can think with scale, they introduce us to scalar thinking, its urgency in our socio-technical present and its potential for making new maps, new representations and new kinds of measurements.

A Short Incomplete History of Technologies That Scale is a joint publication by Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, and transmediale in Berlin. The publication reflects back the shared theme of transmediale’s 2023 festival edition a model, a map, a fiction and of Aksioma’s programme Tactics&Practice #14: Scale and came together from a common desire to think collectively about how measurements and maps create both politics and feelings in the world.