Biosphere 2, a research facility/tourist attraction outside Tucson, Arizona, is more a glass pyramid than a sphere, but it once served as a metaphor for a certain kind of totality, a particular anticipated future, a fully imagined microcosm that could be enclosed in a ball. In its premillennial hubris, Biosphere 2 aspired to simulate a minimally viable version of Earth on Earth itself, as if fast-forwarding through the slow environmental catastrophes humankind have already set in inexorable motion on the planet. Moreover, it staged this re-creation of an Earth purged of everything extraneous to human survival as a gratuitous spectacle, a way for humanity to contemplate itself in a purified, purely artificial condition, supposedly free from the random exigencies of the natural world.
Disalienation in the round
Disalienation in the round
Disalienation in the round
Biosphere 2, a research facility/tourist attraction outside Tucson, Arizona, is more a glass pyramid than a sphere, but it once served as a metaphor for a certain kind of totality, a particular anticipated future, a fully imagined microcosm that could be enclosed in a ball. In its premillennial hubris, Biosphere 2 aspired to simulate a minimally viable version of Earth on Earth itself, as if fast-forwarding through the slow environmental catastrophes humankind have already set in inexorable motion on the planet. Moreover, it staged this re-creation of an Earth purged of everything extraneous to human survival as a gratuitous spectacle, a way for humanity to contemplate itself in a purified, purely artificial condition, supposedly free from the random exigencies of the natural world.