Situating the Sand Table in Media History

“Matthew Kirschenbaum (University of Maryland) has recently published an article at Critical Inquiry 50, 1 (2023) on sand tables—the moveable mineral media used in the military and many other contexts.”

“A sand table is an intentional structure that is an early, indeed ancient, interactive platform for visualization and simulation.”

“An intellectual furnishing that is also a tangible instance of speculative infrastructure, the sand table offers a tactile space for the rehearsal of tactics, staccato words whose roots lie in haptics and arrangement.”

“there is a direct line from this seemingly modest technology—an implementation of what has been called elemental media—to augmented reality and other tangible interfaces.”

“sand tables belong to the lineage of platforms for speculative thinking and world-building that culminated in the rise of the digital computer amid a Cold War complex of scenario-driven futurology (whose centerpiece was the so-called situation room)”

“It also suggests that sand, in its literal granularity—the physical affordances of the minute particulars of its particulate matter—offers an alternative to the binary regimen of ones and zeros that is the extractive product of the refined silica out of which semiconductors are still made.”

Commentator’s Note: Fascinating argument. Saved the full article for later. For now, compare Galloway, Laruelle: Against the Digital.