Research Catalogue

Body Weathering - poetic nebular intentions consists of two parts: a theoretical part i.e. reflections on the so called body weathering created by Min Tanaka that is applied and developed here further by the author of this exposition. Another part of the text is more practical and descriptive and that is called intermission or intermissions. Here the earlier made exersices of body weathering are explained. The exposition moves on smoothly and as a topic it is interesting and relevant, and gives new and fresh ideas and practical advices how to beome more sensible about the weather conditions and atmosphere around us in the everyday life. 

Here I am not going to explain more about the content of the article but will pay attention to some of the problems of the text especially in the so called theoretical part. 

However as a whole I found the topic very relevant and knowledgeable if the writer considers to make some small revisions. 

First of all I think that the concept of cloud is used in a little bit too obscure way: sometimes clouds are  real matter and experienced sometimes as metaphors so that the reader has hard to follow the argumentation. Actually 'cloud' could mean here real clouds in the sky, metaphorical clouds such as an information storage i.e. Cloud  that also situate in-between real and imaginary, or cloud could also be understood as a semiotic sign following Hubert Damisch use of  the concept in his Théorie du Nuage.

The author doesn't have to make a long description about her way of using the word cloud but a short notice on definition would already improve the text's legibility a lot. 

One encounters a similar ambiguity in the way 'atmosphere' is used. What really is "atmosphere making practice"? Is it connected to weather or climate or is it more like atmosphere understood as a feeling? Some more ideas of G. Böhme's notion of atmosphere would perhaps be in place.  

The text contains many fascinating ideas although they become visible only vaguely because the reflection and elaboration of the ideas  are not clarified enough, and this means that the argumentation is not plausible. I suggest for example that the author would replace or open up long quotes in the theoretical chapters and rewrite these sentences by herself with her own language.  Now the long citations remain almost empty phrases and the rest of the argumentation written by the author of the exposition follows the citation quite freely but does not make really a sense in a way it could if it was clearly written. So I think that the text would benefit a lot if the quotations were changed to the normal body text. Now the citations govern too much the argumentation not the writer herself.

One example of this is how John Durham Peters’ book on ‘The Marvellous Clouds’. Peters’ (2015, p. 30) is handled. It is used well in principle but instead of making these long direct citations here it would make sense to tell and open up what Peter’s book is about and what he is doing in his well-known book. For exampe that it has been developed within a computer and information science and that clouds have double meaning. It will be frightening to think what will happen for our concept of knowledge if we do not make it clear how we use terms and in what kind of context.

Later when John Law's  (2004, p. 2) thoughts are introduced the text moves on much more fluently  and it is easier to follow but here also the direct citations could be shorten a bit. 

As I said earlier I think the exposition is interesting and there is a balance between practice and theory. The practice is well recorded in these short documentations that works as a pair to the descriptions of the body weathering exercises.  So I suggest that the exposition will be published but I recommend  that the theoretical chapters would be written again and edited so that the argumentation becomes clear.