ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the interdigitation into a common course of action of a diverse patchwork of different kinds of spaces and representational technologies by differently positioned actors working together to take samples on an oceanographic research vessel. A most salient characteristic of oceanographic ships as work sites is their heterogeneity. Among the heterotopic places described by Foucault (1986) are theaters and the cinema, "a very odd rectangular room, at the end of which, on a two-dimensional screen, one sees the projection of a three-dimensional space". The screens provide not just a window into the sea but the resources required to move other inscription devices within it including some of the machines that are producing these very representations. Points of convergent diversity are thus characterized by interrelated heterogeneity and it is instantiated concretely in some of the tools used on the ship. One of the most important tools used by physical oceanographers is the CTD.
