Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Material zones. -- Imagination and matter / Gaston Bachelard -- On the importance of natural disasters / Walter De Maria -- In conversation with Dennis Wheeler / Robert Smithson -- Systems aesthetics: conversation with Jeanne Siegel / Hans Haacke -- Looking at, and overlooking, women working in land art in the 1970s / Suzaan Boettger -- In conversation with Linda Montano / Ana Mendieta -- A nomad among builders / Michael Auping -- Scapeland / Jean-François Lyotard -- Between space and time / David Harvey -- Flow city / Mierle Laderman Ukeles -- Topologies: Michel Serres and the shapes of thought / Steven Connor -- Heather and Ivan Morison: Earthwalker / Emma Cocker -- On TechnoSphere / Jane Prophet -- Mind and body shifting: from networks to nanosystems / Victoria Vesna -- Vibrant matter: a political ecology of things / Jane Bennett -- Curie's children / Vilém Flusser -- A brief history of art involving DNA / George Gessert -- Interactive plant growing (1993) / Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau -- Art that looks you in the eye / Eduardo Kac -- In conversation with Thyrza Nichols Goodeve / Aziz + Cucher -- The extended body / Oron Catts & Ionart Zurr -- Evolutionary ideas. -- Creative evolution / Henri Bergson -- The biosphere / Vladimir Vernadsky -- Chance and necessity / Jacques Monod -- Steps to an ecology of mind / Gregory Bateson -- The three great movements / Arne Naess -- The three ecologies / Félix Guattari -- Nature and culture / Peter Halley -- Experimental geography / Trevor Paglen -- Remote possibilities: land art's changing terrain / Claire Bishop, Lynne Cooke, Tim Griffin, Pierre Huyghe, Pamela M. Lee, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Andrea Zittel -- On ecocivility / Helen & Newton Harrison -- In conversation with Stefano Boeri and Hans Ulrich Obrist / Tomás Saraceno -- Art in the age of technoscience / Ingeborg Reichle -- The history of telepresence: automata, illusion and rejecting the body / Oliver Grau -- A cyborg manifesto / Donna Haraway -- From psycho-body to cyber-systems: images as post-human entities / Stelarc -- No ghost / Tom McDonough -- Cognition and conscience. -- The natural fantastic / Roger Caillois -- What is it like to be a bat? / Thomas Nagel -- The animal that therefore I am / Jacques Derrida -- The open: man and animal / Giorgio Agamben -- In conversation with Robert Rosenblum / Alan Sonfist -- In conversation / Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman -- In conversation with Mark Dion / Andrew Ross -- The world we live in is a revelation / herman de vries -- Crossroads community (The Farm) / Bonnie Sherk -- 7,000 oaks: conversation with Richard Demarco / Joseph Beuys -- Notes on art as/and land reclamation / Robert Morris -- In conversation with Fareed Armaly and Ute Meta Bauer / Mel Chin -- In conversation with Shane Danaher / Mary Mattingly -- In conversation with Tim Chamberlain / Brandon Ballengée -- Please don't feed the animals / Jesse Ashlock -- Marcus Coates / Mark Sheerin -- Rachel Berwick: Zugunruhe (2009) / Denise Markonish -- Justine Cooper: the awe of natural history collections / Carl Zimmer -- Earth sound research revival: conversation with Jörg Heiser / Henrik Håkansson -- The politics of life itself / Nikolas Rose -- Contestational biology / Critical Art Ensemble -- Zhao Renhui: The blind / Paul Tebbs -- Will non-humans be saved? : an argument in ecotheology / Bruno Latour -- Biographical notes.

This anthology considers how the rise of transdisciplinary practices in the post-war era allowed for new kinds of artistic engagement with nature. It provides an overview of the eclectic scientific and philosophical sources that inform contemporary art's investigations of nature.