Digital Culture Media Initiative presents Melissa Charenko.

Much of the world cannot be measured or observed directly. Instead, we use "proxies" to understand the world "out there." Proxies can include epistemic stand-ins, measurement tools, models, and surrogates for (among other domains) genetic, chemical, or engineering problems. Charenko explores the history of knowledge production by proxy, focusing on the ways these stand-ins shape, distort, and stabilize scientific understanding and the knock-of effects of their assumptions about the world. These objects and practices function within a broader ecology of delegation, where humans and nonhumans alike are called upon to represent, embody, or stand in for what is too distant, dangerous, or unruly to observe directly.