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- Convenors:
-
Michela Cozza
(Mälardalen University)
Sally Wyatt (Maastricht University)
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- Discussant:
-
Nina Klimburg-Witjes
(University of Vienna)
- Format:
- Combined Format Open Panel
Short Abstract:
In this panel (1) we will reflect on the role of creative interpretations of techno-scientific transformations; (2) at a later stage, we will open a call for a poetry, flash fiction and short story competition. We will organise workshops for people to receive feedback on their own creative writing.
Long Abstract:
Artists know that creativity can be a powerful force for reshaping our understanding of the world. This panel invites you to explore how different kinds of writing and performance inform our STS practice. We will delve into the fusion of different forms of writing and performance in STS. We aim to kindle the collective and individual imaginations of STS scholars by immersing ourselves in poetic, literary, and other creative interpretations of techno-scientific transformations.
Building on the first successful iteration of EASST conference engagements with 'techno-science fictional futures' (Cozza et al, 2022), this panel offers an extended space for such collective explorations.
We envisage two types of sessions (maximum of four), requiring different kinds of abstracts:
1. Reflections on creative (writing) practices: We seek abstracts that reflect on the diverse roles that various forms of writing and performance play in STS. These sessions offer a platform to discuss how art and creativity intertwine with STS practice, and how they can be mobilized to engage (with) non-academic audiences. Abstracts for these sessions must adhere to the guidelines provided by the conference organizers.
2. Creative writing workshops: Following the resounding success of the creative writing competition at the Madrid EASST conference (2022), we are thrilled to invite conference participants to contribute their own creative expressions. At a later stage, we will open a call for submissions of poems, flash fiction, and short stories that creatively delve into the conference theme of 'making and doing transformations'. During the open call, you only need to indicate if you intend to write one of these creative forms. These workshops provide a unique opportunity for participants to receive valuable feedback and hone their creative skills.
Michela Cozza, Nina Klimburg Witjes and Sally Wyatt (2022) First-ever poetry, flash fiction and short story competition. EASST Review 42(2): 58-59.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Ginevra Terenghi (Brunel University London - University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland) Chiara Poletti (University of Swansea) Beatrice Gobbo (Politecnico di Milano)
Long abstract:
In this reflection, we discuss an engaging activity undertaken as part of the three-year project "Shaping AI", which examines social and technical controversies (Marres, 2007; 2015: 2021) surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI). The activity gathered an extended peer community of experts (Funtowitcz and Ravetz, 1997) in AI including scholars, artists, and activists, to utilize our “shape-shifter” tool and reflect on current AI controversies in the UK. This tool equips participants with materials to analyse and reconsider AI debates and their societal implications (Gobbo et al., forthcoming; Poletti et al., 2023) using design and data-physicalization techniques (Jansen et al., 2015).
Our documentation of the activity's progress through photography, audio recordings, and annotations captured the dynamic gestures and interactions among participants. Recognizing the value of multimodal materials, we explored alternative presentation methods, including the creation of an annotated portfolio inspired by Research Through Design methodologies (Gobbo et al., forthcoming; Poletti et al., 2023). These portfolios vividly articulate design connections through a blend of images and text providing a rich portrayal of the design process (Bowers, 2012).
However, despite the efficacy of annotated portfolios for a research-oriented audience, this paper delves into strategies for leveraging their hybrid content, enriched with diverse multimodal resources, to reach a broader audience (Lupo et al., 2021). By exploring mediums such as comics and zines, we aim to enhance both the understanding and engagement with our work. We envision these hybrid formats as bridges between STS research and the public, fostering broader participation in related initiatives.
Veerle Spronck (HKU University of the Arts Utrecht)
Long abstract:
This presentation delves into the synergy between Science and Technology Studies and creative practices, specifically examining art and poetry as tools for engaging non-academic audiences. In 2023, a team of five researchers, designers, and artists collaborated to investigate the concept of digital citizenship at the Utrecht public library in the ‘ON the LINE’-project. The project did not result in academic papers, but in an exhibition of four new art installations. Focusing on the case of ‘ON the LINE’, I will analyse how art can function as a mediator between STS research and the broader public.
The analysis closely scrutinizes 'Pigment,' one of the artworks created within the project, that challenges the neutral perception of technological development. 'Pigment' is an installation featuring two enormous coloured screens, and four AI-generated poems, each offering a distinct perspective on human-technology relations. These perspectives, often overlooked in mainstream discourse, emanate from the vantage points of a bee, a child, the library as a non-commercial institution, and an AI machine itself. By inviting participants to physically step into these perspectives, the installation is meant to prompt reflection on technological development from diverse viewpoints.
In this presentation, I will discuss the practical work involved in making this creative intervention, and examine how, if at all, the artwork held varied meanings for different viewers. Can art, if resulting from a research process, function as 'boundary object' that not only bridges the gap between STS research and the public, but also accommodates new interpretations relevant to STS researchers themselves?
Justyna Jakubiec (Utrecht University) Tamalone Eijnden (University of Twente) Virginie Amilien (Oslo Metropolitan University)
Long abstract:
This contribution to "reflections on creative (writing) practices" explores the bond between urban gardening and utopian imagination to advocate them as modes for creative transformation. Rooting our focus in fieldwork we performed in urban gardening initiatives in Oslo, Utrecht and Amsterdam, we look into how they can be seen as turning the landscape into an expressive and nourishing medium that probes how the world could be. To broaden our focus, we introduce utopian imagination as a specific mode for transformation whose relevance goes beyond verbal communication and concerns imagination as a productive process that creatively prefigures and engenders new ways of social and ecological being. By taking Starhawk's solar punk novel "The Fifth Sacred Thing" (1993) as our inspiration, we will solidify the proposed bond between urban gardening and utopian imagination. To this end, we will engage with Paul Ricoeur’s approach to imagination to understand it as a form of negotiation with the environment beyond concepts and perception and, as such, an ecological endeavour. Engaging with a close reading of the repeated expressions of visions of a utopian future as found in the novel, we will explore how these become the means by which this very future is materialised within the storyworld. We will approach close reading of the novel as a nutritious, creative and reflective tool for imagining existing and future urban gardening. Thus, we aim to contribute to the larger field of STS by proposing utopian imagination as a medium for doing and making transformations within our foodscapes.
Nina Kivinen (Uppsala University)
Long abstract:
Fukushima, Chernobyl, the Manhattan Project, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When nuclear power is mentioned, memories are triggered, feelings stirred. Societies are trying to manage these embodied responses through strict legislation and rigorous standards. There is a renaissance for nuclear power in Sweden and Europe, as nuclear is seen as giving hope to the battle against climate change. Technology can thus simultaneously invoke feelings of hope and despair when the need for new technology is framed by a sense of emergency. Emerging plans for new nuclear power plants offer an interesting site to study technology and affect.
This study follows the efforts to build new nuclear power plants in Sweden and Finland. The project asks: What does the affect of nuclear technology do to the organizing of new nuclear power? The study will be multilocational and follow sites where the future of nuclear power is discussed, developed, and worked upon.
Joining the re-emerging interest in studying technology and organization, I draw on research in affect in management studies as affect offers us ways to explore the everyday experiences of encounters between the human and non-human.
Affect allows us to see how technology can simultaneously disrupt and maintain processes and mediate change and how we try to manage, control and limit some emotional responses while embracing others. This changes how nuclear power plant projects are talked about, managed and organized.
For the conference, I want to explore affective writing about nuclear technology.
Inge Römgens (Maastricht University)
Long abstract:
Artistic research practices are troubled, exactly because they aim to explore possible synergies between academic and artistic practices aimed at gaining knowledge (Borgdorff, 2012). In my PhD project, I argue that staying with this trouble is necessary for being able to understand artistic research as hybrid practice. And that this requires deliberate reflection. How exactly to practice this reflection within the (shifting) context(s) of artistic research projects is not clear. Therefore, I calibrate an experimental writing practice, informed by performance writing and theater practices, in order to accompany different project participants from two artistic research projects that I studied in the field. This way, I experiment with forms for building dialogue, empathically, across (art/academic) differences (Tröndle and Warmers, 2011).
Hence, my dissertation is an attempt at writing an imaginative and analytical story that includes various forms of dialogue (in different languages). I use the ‘materials of language’ (Law, 2004) to explicate and respond to the multivocality that I found within the projects in the field. This way, my project connects to the call in the ‘Routledge Handbook of ASTS’ “… for a set of tools to study collaborations that value the positions of both the artist and the scientist in considering the results of such enterprises.” (Rogers and Halpern, 2021, p.39).
When participating in this panel I am happy to bring and share excerpts from my dissertation that could serve as a starting point for discussing examples of my experimental writing strategies.