ABSTRACT
Aquariums are early and crucial sites for ecological experimentation and knowledge-making who simultaneously carry a great deal of aesthetic appeal. Susanne B. Schmitt’s contribution moves through different elements enfolding aquarium dwellers, their audiences and makers. In spite of the centrality of air within atmospherology, her chapter on aquarium atmospheres engages with the ‘how?’ of and the ‘what for?’ of the creation of underwater worlds across atmospheric substances like water, air and light. A range of aesthetical and ecological decisions inform the making of aquariums, who she calls “charismatic ecologies”, a more-than-human process task of making atmospheres that she situates ethnographically within an aquarium design company, historical records, as well as with curators of public aquariums.
