The Great Pacific Garbage Catch: Müll als Medium einer ›Plastic Oceanography

The article is dedicated to a three-fold media-becoming of garbage in oceanographic research. First, it deals with attempts to condense washed-up flotsam through media operations, such as searching, identifying, classifying, or networking it into data on ocean currents. Second, it investigates computer-assisted approaches to collect and recycle accumulated debris found in «garbage patches» by means of drifting barriers. Third, it examines the tracking of sensor-reinforced buoys used to follow the dispersion of marine debris. As an effect, the oceanic interference object plastic waste is included as an element of media-technological operations that make tangible the systemically interlocking circulation of global ocean currents and globalized waste production.