Ancient empires transformed rivers into an instrumental apparatus to maintain their autocratic control. Throughout history, the relationship between human chronicle and natural flux has been deeply intertwined, to the point where one cannot be distinguished from the other. Over time, rivers have been shaped as products of design—through surveying, measurement, and diagrammatic representation—reflecting a desire for control and order.

In the Anthropocene, rivers take on a planetary magnitude, transcending local and global perspectives, demonstrating that regional control is ineffective. This shift calls for new sensibilities and knowledge of water bodies beyond the diagrammatic understanding of rivers.

Accordingly, there is an urgent need for alternative technological thinking and new epistemes, articulated via Cosmotechnics:

the unification of cosmic and moral orders through technical activities. This transformation challenges the long-standing delineation between land and water, dry and wet, and instead emphasises a logic rooted in flows, processes, and entanglements.

In China, it is impossible to escape hydro-politics, as river management has been a key element in exercising state power for millennia. Despite its advancements in modernisation, China has yet to address technological thinking. The prevailing mindset treats technology as a universal instrument, overlooking that various cosmologies understand and construct technology in distinct ways. This perspective reflects a variant of Cartesian dualism which creates a dichotomy between technology and culture, as well as between society and nature. Within this framework, the environment is reduced to a passive backdrop and object of governance—all rationalized in the name of stability and control.

In June 1938, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the destruction of the Yellow River embankment at Huayuankou in a drastic move to thwart an advancing Japanese army. This action, intended as a military strategy, led to one of the most environmentally destructive events in world history. This infamous environmental war later reshaped the political landscape of the nation. After assuming control of the nation in 1949, the Communists demonstrated a willingness equal to their Nationalist counterparts, perceiving rivers as potentially destructive forces requiring state intervention and control, which drove China's extensive dam-building campaigns. Since 1949, over 87,000 dams have been constructed again displacing millions.

Recently, China has shifted from a singular focus on economic growth, which often sacrificed environmental habitability toward a more resilient approach that harmonises economic development with ecological conservation. The concept of "Ecological Civilisation(生态文明)" has been integrated into the state's overarching governance framework, marking a departure from rigid control mechanisms and introducing adaptive strategies like "Sponge Cities”.

This approach to river governance is rooted in systems engineering and necessitates the support of vast amounts of data from diverse sources. It remains tapped into the limitations of modernity thinking: first, there is a prevailing assumption that quantifiable approaches and system simulations can resolve any problem; second, this localized governance presets the separation of local and global contexts, instead, both are inseparable and entangled in planetary feedback loops.

The difficulty of understanding and responding to the complex transformations of our earth in contemporary times reveals the limitations of mono-technological paradigms and singular knowledge structures, as the complexity of the Earth System far exceeds our capacity to govern it effectively. Therefore, we need new sensibilities, and aesthetic and technological understanding of rivers, as envisioned through cosmotechnics.

Gardens embody distinct modes of territorialities that are interwoven with unique cosmologies, embodied by different architectural, representational and cosmotechnical thinking.

Traditional European gardens, such as the Palace of Versailles, embody a mechanical worldview that reflects Descartes’s natural philosophy, characterised by straight pathways, geometrical subdivisions, and symmetrical axes. It manifests a systematic territorial governance, underpinned by knowledge in military defence, hydraulic engineering, and roadworks.

The Yuanming Yuan (圓明園), built as the summer palace of the Qing Dynasty, represents the emperor, the empire, and the cosmos as a harmonious whole. In this garden, there is no clear distinction between technological intervention and the natural landscape. Its formation involved assembling images rather than adhering to an overarching plan. It is not a landscape dotted with incidental architecture; rather, it is a space where architectural elements are integral to the environment, navigating spatial experiences that resist geometric patterns and linearity.

Chinese gardens, one of the most characteristic examples of cosmotechnics, differ from the notion of technology rooted in western modernity, which exemplifies Heidegger's concept of ‘Gestell’.

Similarly, Earth Observation is distinct from diagrammatic representations of scientific objects, providing non-retinal sensing of liquid water, vapours, clouds, mist and sediment plumes. It engages with a non-geometric technology that generates new images of water bodies in the anthropocene.

Wetness is everywhere; we do not simply live with rivers but exist within the conditions they create, which require us to continuously navigate within circularity and recursivity. Rather than focusing solely on inputs and outputs, technical interventions should become iterative acts of care—centred on mediation, assembly, and adaptation.