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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the potential of creative sample manipulation in ethnographic fieldwork. While mangling samples recorded in CERN and on cross-border trains, we examine the newfound harmonies and rhythms we detect in our data and ask what epistemic role creative sampling may play in our research.

Paper long abstract:

Whereas sampling usually refers to the extraction of data, in music, sampling may also include the transformation of this data into something new. This sample-based synthesis, also known as sample mangling, is then used to inspire or form part of new compositions, giving the original samples new meaning. Although recording audio has long been important in ethnographic fieldwork, it is usually anathema to change samples in any way. In this paper we will challenge this taboo and explore the potential of sample-mangling techniques in ethnographic data creation and analysis.

Merging creative ethnology (Kockel 2011) with ludic anthropology (Dippel 2022) and sonic ethnography (Gershon, 2018; Mackie 2024) our aim is to play with sound in a creative way in close co-laboration with audio synthesis techniques. Sample-based synthesis presents us with various tools to transform audio samples, such as modulation, subtraction and addition, and the infusion of probability and chaos. As these creative techniques already rely heavily on scientific approaches, can we also borrow from them and add them to our ethnographich toolbox? And by exploring samples from this creative perspective, can we uncover new sides to them which otherwise we may have missed?

By mangling samples gathered in the Large Hadron Collider and the Anti-Matter Lab at CERN, and in cross-border trains in Europe, we will ask what kind of new harmonies and rhythms we can detect in our data and whether these may lead us to unforeseen insights, thereby exploring the epistemic role creative sampling may play in our research.

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Paper short abstract:

This study focuses on the use of electron microscopy in materials science for sample collection and observation. Electron microscopes impose strict discipline on operators' body. Scientists who have acquired tacit knowledge gradually become a symbiont with the instruments in the embodied practice.

Paper long abstract:

Electron microscopes are widely used in materials science and their ultra-high resolution allows scientists to study the micro-structure and characterization of materials in detail, promoting the development of science.

This article adopts a qualitative research methodology in which the author conducted a four-month field work in a national large-scale instrumentation center in China. The laboratory's electron microscope equipment is among the top in the world, including several scanning electron microscopes and transmission electron microscopes.

This study adopts a symmetrical perspective, focusing on the use of electron microscopy in materials science for sample collection and observation. The work shows that the electron microscope, as a central actor in the laboratory, imposes strict discipline and various restrictions on researchers' body. The electron microscope can only function effectively providing researchers' eyes, arms and torso remain in a specific position, which is extremely crucial for the production of scientific results. Meanwhile, the scientists, who gradually acquire tacit knowledge of the electron microscope, utilize their empirical body as an important research tool. Well-performing scientists eventually become a symbiont with the instruments during the embodied practice. The body, which has rich connotations, interacts with micro-technology and is enabled by technological extensions.

It is a new dimension to understand the contemporary making and doings of materials science. Additionally, the study aims to enhance the current laboratory research by providing a story with Chinese characteristics and present the latest developments in the field.

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Paper short abstract:

The reality of deep sea mining has evolved from an undesirable and impractical industry towards a hegemonic sense of a deterministic, objectified, and imminent irreversibility. We trace the role of organizations, individuals, science, and data in the fixation of this future to understand how future expectations become objectified as present facts.

Paper long abstract:

The deep sea beyond exclusive economic zones, referred to as ‘the Area’ in governance discourse, covers approximately 260 million km2, spans an estimated 72% of the global oceans or near 60% of the Earth’s solid surface, and contains an abundance of mineral deposits that hold rare earth elements. Deep sea mining was traditionally considered an unviable and impractical industry with many technological, financial, and regulatory challenges due to the complex governance regime and the extreme deep sea environment. This is in stark contrast with contemporary discourse, in which a hegemonic sense of imminent inevitability prevails. Mining companies, the principal governing body of the Area, and numerous States describe deep sea mining as irreversible and urgent. Stakeholders traditionally critical of deep sea mining increasingly adopt this frame by focusing on mitigation, responsible exploitation, and calls for precautionary pauses. Discourse is thus increasingly fixed on when, rather than if, a ‘deep sea gold rush’ ought to occur. We trace the role of organizations, individuals, science, and data in the diffusion of an increasingly objectified, deterministic, and irreversible future that casts deep sea mining as inevitable since the peak of disinterest in 1994 up to now. This can ultimately help to understand how space-specific (global) commons can become hegemonically fixed as inevitable sites of extraction and sacrifice at the expense of alternative futures.

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Paper short abstract:

Uncertainty is known to play many roles and can be useful to enable action. In the case of human-induced seismicity, tracking the trajectories of seismic monitoring tools allows us to understand what stakeholders want to know and what they don’t know, thus highlighting a genuine (dis)interest in it.

Paper long abstract:

The Lacq gas field in southwest France is crucial as the largest hydrocarbon deposit in the country since its eruptive discovery in 1951. While extensive commercial gas extraction was the priority until the field became depleted, wastewater injection into the gas reservoir later initiated the transformation of the Lacq basin into a chemical industrial hub. Today, amidst strong criticism, a proposal is being made to explore geological carbon capture and storage in the reservoir. However, fluid manipulations (extraction and injection) have induced hundreds of earthquakes as unintended side-effects, forcing the industry to implement costly seismic monitoring networks. Despite the tremendous amount of data collected through these networks, data quality has highly varied due to network overlaps and abrupt shutdowns. This article examines the history of different monitoring tools used (such as networks, sensors, and algorithms), looking at how they have contributed to a fragmented body of knowledge about Lacq seismicity. Based on semi-structured interviews and archival research, this paper challenges singular accounts of seismicity, revealing that stakeholders (such as industry, regulator, scientists, citizens) have distinct knowledge interests. If substantial efforts have undoubtedly allowed a better understanding of induced seismicity, the divergence of knowledge interests has also led to undone science, having different impact and profits on stakeholders. In conclusion, this paper suggests that studying the history of monitoring tools can be a promising way to highlight the gap between stakeholders’ discursive statements and their implemented measures in knowledge, unveiling a certain (dis)interest in critical issues such as human-induced seismicity.