For the purposes of media theory to think with nature is to understand how it works with culture. In exploring the way nature is posited in writing over time we can explore the contextualization of nature as a phenomenological object that was always a direct or indirect element of media thought. Karl Marx and Walter Benjamin thought of nature as a condition of perception and something to be dominated and separated from human; Donna Haraway saw it as an unanswerable question, neither incorporated by human nor appropriated; more recently, John Durham Peters pursues an elemental philosophy of nature: how sky, earth and sea as forms of media work with human/nature relations.

In examining nature with media theory an important objective is to look at the intersection of nature, human and technology as second nature. Second natures for this purpose are the adaptations performed by living beings in the habitual use of technology while not necessarily engaging in dedicated conscious thought. As an example, watching films as a form of perceptual habit is an adaptation of vision which comes with the availability of projection technologies that accommodate the ability of human sight. Watching films becomes second nature as a result of the combinations of human sight and film technologies creating perceptual habits.

Understanding the effect of modern industrialization on social relations of the human led Karl Marx to investigate and criticize the political economy of the capitalistic system. Part of his project would lead to an investigation of the roles of labour in capitalism. For Marx the understanding of the way 19^th century industrialization affected humanity would lead to an exploration of the worker as a labourer and the worker’s association with nature as a wholly separate entity outside of the individual:

“Thus, the more the worker by his labor appropriates the external world, sensuous nature, the more he deprives himself of means of life in two respects: first, the sensuous external world more and more ceases to be an object belonging to his labor – to be his labor’s means of life; and, second, in that it more and more ceases to be means of life in the immediate sense, means for the physical subsistence of the worker.” (Marx 29).

Marx’s writing framed the way of life of the average worker at the turn of the 19^th century. Thus, the workers themselves are contextualized as a product of the machine age when manufacturing technology dictated how labour would be used in order to make commodities. It was important to distinguish nature as a separate object and that prove that it could never be a part of daily life or work. At the same time this view of nature distanced the worker from nature as a means of life. By separating from nature, the labourer became an object of the technologizing of manufacturing:

“The worker's activity, reduced to a mere abstraction of activity, is determined and regulated on all sides by the movement of the machinery, and not the opposite. The science which compels the inanimate limbs of the machinery, by their construction, to act purposefully, as an automaton, does not exist in the worker's consciousness, but rather acts upon him through the machine as an alien power, as the power of the machine itself (Marx 693).”

Technology subsumes nature in its power over the human. This sublimation created a distancing Marx termed alienation, which could be seen as a distancing from nature. As nature is displaced as a separate object in Marxist theory, he recognized the disposition of second nature of human as a displacement of human from nature:

“Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature.” (Marx 706).

At the same time there was always remained a correlation between human and nature and for Marx this was through technology. The use of the nature of human from which all technology was derived, was transformed into objects that would directly or indirectly become part of the second nature of humans. Machine technology as an instrument of objectification was always central to capitalism, this ideology persists today.

In Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov 1929), the director demonstrates the second nature of human through machine as the product of film through a camera operator’s eyes. Camera as technology began to participate in cultural arts starting in the late 19^th century. This mediated technology displaced the individual’s way of looking through the use of the movie camera. The ability to record images and play them back led to the expansion the temporal space of the individual through the moving images of film. Mechanically expanding temporal space through film technology becomes second nature to human perception, an adaptation to understanding the depth of dimension of the natural world.

Taking up where Marx left off, Walter Benjamin explores how nature and the natural exist in art. Benjamin focussed on the aesthetic mediums of art, literature and film. In his 1936 seminal essay on The Work of Art in the Age of Its Reproducibility he would explore nature as the human ability to perceive:

“The way in which human perception is organized – the medium in which it occurs – is conditioned not only by nature but by history” (Benjamin 23).

His project including investigating what from a natural perspective changed over time to allow what he saw as a change in the way art was perceived. The way people saw art was conditioned by the cultural milieu of their time. The natural ability to perceive art was always a product of its historical time. For Benjamin art was always a matter of perception shaped by both history and culture.

Culturally the origins of art for him was created in service to ritual practices. This made art a magical object that was separated and not necessarily for public consumption. Art value historically was in its ability to be a functional representation of perceived objects either materially or spiritually; cave paintings and statues of gods. (Benjamin 24). This separation of art work from human everyday life allowed for an objective differentiation of nature from human. During the classical period art became a practice and the ability to display art for others to view began the transformation of the nature of art. Art now had an exhibition value. Moving on to the industrial age, the change in the nature of representation was intensified through the technologies used to create the art. In order to proceed with the capability to exhibit art, technology would be developed that allowed for a closer interaction between nature and human. This would be done through the development of technologies like photography and film which would change perception through the ability to reproduce reality. To understand films and photography, human perception needed to adapt to understand what was being shown. New technologies of this time both film cameras and photography altered the perception of the material world and at the same time made it a cohesive reproduction of the world. In order to do this the social role of film and reproductive arts needed to be used in a way that collaborated with human nature’s ability to perceive. Benjamin’s understanding of nature demonstrated this need to create a separation that divided human from nature in order to distinguish reality from art.

In Man with a Movie Camera, Vertov emphasizes the art of filmic reproduction by providing various views of a city in a way that would become second nature in viewing films. The film’s edited scenes were done using a variety of aesthetic techniques that mimic a natural way of looking: close-ups, low-angle shots, medium and long-shots. However, the scenes are differentiated by non-traditional views including shots from under a train, from a moving car, and from high atop a building in an urban setting so that many people are visible at the same time. The variety of what can be seen is put together in a way that extends perception beyond a quotidian gaze. In this film Vertov also goes beyond natural ways of looking by demonstrating other ways of looking that may not be natural; canted shots of buildings, film spliced together to show images of buildings joined at an angle on any street where the separation of streets is elided. These reproductions of perception distance human from nature while at the same time create new ways of looking.

The ability of technology to reproduce the natural and for Benjamin, to duplicate art, would significantly change perception from the natural experience of looking, technologically unaided. As second nature, habitual viewing of films by the masses in an age when the capitalist mode of production became embedded in all aspects of western society demonstrated the domination of the technological over nature and the subsequent perceptual adaptation that evolved from this domination.

To include technology in thinking about nature and culture is to release the dependencies of one upon the other. In her ironic thinking with cyborgs, Donna Haraway opened up possibilities of how to experience media and technology alongside nature and not apart from it:

“Nature and culture are reworked; the one can no longer be the resource for appropriation or incorporation of the other” (Haraway 151).

There are no clear delineations that create a divide between nature and culture. With a seamless conjuncture of nature, culture and technology in a material object like the cyborg, there is no need to master nature since all of these are already incorporated in the way we live with technology. The closer nature is examined the less clear it is that nature could be a separate object. In thinking about nature at this juncture in history nature is always coupled with technology:

“… the certainty of what counts as nature – a source of insight and promise of innocence – is undermined (Postmodernist strategies, technological determinism, textualization of everything)” (Haraway 152).

For Haraway, writing in the 1980s the union of technology and life is a given, they are indistinguishable from each other. Biology, animal rights, cyborgs, and modern machines all transcend the separation that was once a divide according to Marx between machine and labour and to Benjamin between nature and culture. Now this relationship becomes a collaboration as nature is seen as being incorporated into science, technology and politics.

Cyborgs for Haraway was a way of representing the hybridity of all beings. Technology and nature are all combined in every living thing. Historical events like the discovery of DNA during the 20^th century was not only facilitated by technology but helped confirm that on a molecular level there were many more similarities than differences between all living things biologically. Using the cyborg as representative of both a history of nature and a history of technology makes sense in that both are unified through the ability to evolve. Both are affected by their environment, can expand or contract based on humanity’s ability to preserve, inherit, acquire or destroy nature.

Vertov’s relationship to the camera could be seen as a precursor to the cyborg, the embodiment of a technology that was created by human, and in its operation allowed for the regeneration and reconstitution (Haraway 181) of how to be with technology. Vertov not only filmed scenes of modernity in a large urban centre full of people and machines (traffic, masses of people, busy telephone operators etc) but reveals how the film is put together through the images of a woman (his wife) working with film strips, combining scenes interspersed with images of woman sewing. The interplay of people with technology to create a mise en abyme of media within a media image emphasizes the assemblage of human, machine and nature. Nature is shown through the modern urban human in Vertov’s film. His representation of how to live with technology is what is becoming natural; filming, editing and projecting film.

Haraway shows us that we have always been cyborgs through embracing technology as second nature and as these forms, remain fluid with nature, technology and being.

Since Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, evolution in different technologies came together to form the network of machines that became the Internet. Digital communication and interaction became intensified amongst many technologized societies. Today digital media in the form of journals, books, film, music, art are the underpinning of what is accessed as popular media. But John Durham Peters understands that there is a deeper history of media that ties very closely to nature:

“As Jochen Hörisch notes, ‘Well into the nineteenth century, when one spoke of media, one typically meant the natural elements such as water and earth, fire and air.’” (Peters 2).

Returning to the examination of nature, understanding what exists and how it can be investigated and analyzed as media in and of itself is very important during this period in media theory. The environment is ever more closely examined for effects of the Anthropocene, something that is communicated throughout many forms of media. This period of humanity is characterized by the understanding that people have done more damage than good; that extinction of multiple species of living beings is common; that climate experiences are more extreme and more devastating than ever before. In light of this, Peters’ observations about the importance of nature and taking a closer look at how nature is media is relevant and deserves closer attention.

Watching Vertov’s film one can see a recent history of humanity captured by media. There is a predominance of machines and people strewn throughout the film. Scenes of manufacturing and telephone switch systems displaces images of any natural environment that could exist. Scant depictions of nature include the overcrowded beach scenes where people are playing, lying and enjoying the sun leaving not much of the beach itself visible. Further on focusing on modes of transportation (train, street car, airplane, car) it would appear that there is very little natural space to experience in this filmic world. Technology, orderly chaos and the celebration of humanity would seem to be what was important. Capturing this moment in time through visual images helps us understand some of the origins of a society filled with technology, the lack of interest in nature emphasizes a missed opportunity for honouring the environment.

Enclosures are important for today’s digital technologies according to Peters. Hidden infrastructures of technology that allow for digital media to make relationships invisible through reducing face to face interaction. Contemporary digital media allows for precision in storing and retrieving information, finding exact locations of people and things through technology so that cameras can now be used in an even more mobile fashion than in Vertov’s time but also can be left unattended to monitor traffic, people, animals and homes. This overwhelming presence of technology is a reason to step back and examine nature as a form of media. During this moment of environmental awareness, knowledge and understanding of nature can help us reflect and be more aware of nature as mediating lives even more than digital technologies. Sky, earth, and sea all offer material ways of understanding media through their ability to provide a means of adapting and organizing life events. These elements are all already technical and contain mediating capabilities that through translation and transformation manifest different material outcomes.

Skies are a medium through which temporal placement has historically been managed. For example, stars (including the sun) have been and are used for navigation, daylight and night skies signal awake and sleep time, and clouds can provide information on upcoming weather patterns (Peters 170). Earth as a medium has been used as a way to read evolution through examining changes in geology over time and understanding how these changes led to today (Peters 358). And lastly sea as a medium, is something that requires a little more effort to penetrate for land animals. On the surface it is used as a method of transport via swimming or ship, but below there are other forms of life that make use of its medium through non-visual methods. Herman Melville and Jacques Cousteau would participate in the popularization of whales and other underwater mammals and fish by providing visual images of these beings. Below the sea, sound carried by water rather than visual images forms natural perception for water creatures. Second nature in dolphins and whales consists of adaptations to sound without mechanical apparatus, they can navigate and sense without the need of GPS technology (Peters 81). Going back to nature and back to forms of media from nature helps us better understand the transformation of knowledge that media facilitates through understanding the phenomenology of the environment.

The interaction with sky, earth and sea is second nature for all living beings. The ability within nature to mediate, allows for the translation of nature into a qualified and quantified sensory perception that can be understood and experienced. Understanding certain elements need to go through media in order to transform and communicate knowledge to living beings is an adaptation of nature that has always already been available to all forms of beings in the world.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of its Reproducibility. 2^nd Version.” The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008.

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. “Cyborg Manifesto.” Manifestly Haraway. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.

Marx, Karl. “Estranged Labour.” Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. New York: International Publishers, 1964.

Peters, John D. The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media, 2015.

Man with a Movie Camera. Dir. Dziga Vertov. Chelovek S Kinoapparatom. Moscow:Vufku (Ukraine) 1929.