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- Convenors:
-
Makoto Takahashi
(VU Amsterdam)
Yelena Gluzman (University of Alberta)
Sjamme van de Voort (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Christianne Blijleven (Athena Institute)
Shachi Mokashi (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Laura Paschedag (Athena Institute, Vrije Universteit Amsterdam (VU))
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- Format:
- Making & Doing
- Location:
- Theater 9, NU building
- Start time:
- 17 July, 2024 at
Time zone: Europe/Amsterdam
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
The Making and Doing program includes a number of films, which will be screened in four parallel theaters on Wednesday afternoon. This is the program for one of those theaters.
Long Abstract:
The films and their times are as follows:
12:00-13:00 - BUILDING SPACES – A sensory ethnography
13:00-14:00 - Woodshedding and idea: uncovering the hidden in Iran and North Korea
14:00-15:00 - Against digital fatalism: resisting technology hype through hopeful and creative interventions with immersive futures
The STS Making and Doing Program aims to give visibility to scholarship that relates to our fields of study and action in generative ways, without adhering to the dominant image of impact. It highlights scholarly practices for producing and expressing STS knowledge and expertise that extend beyond the academic paper or book. Projects in STS making & doing provide equal attention to practices of knowledge expression and knowledge travel as integral to experimental practices of knowledge production. By increasing the extent to which participants learn from one another about practices they have developed and enacted, the initiative seeks to foster flows of STS scholarship beyond the field and expand the modes of STS knowledge production.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
documentary film/ visual ethnography
Paper long abstract:
What does research feel like? How does the place where knowledge is created shape the knowledge itself? And what knowledges remain neglected because we cannot transform them into written words? Academia has become a precarious work environment in which it is difficult to gain foothold and pursue a consistent career: fixed-term contracts, competitive pressures, financial constraints, mobility demands. Yet researchers manage to create spaces within this system where research becomes possible. In this ethnography from the field of Science and Technology Studies it gets clear: Research is first and foremost a sensual affair – a practice, a feeling, a place.BUILDING SPACES is a documentary film that follows four international social scientists in different positions through their lives in academia. It explores their already ‘post-digital’ workspaces, where every process is shaped by the digital – how we research, read, and write today is inextricably linked to the digital technologies we use to do so. Cinematically, it is about the mediation of a sensory experience: research, whether artistic or academic, is always a search, an emotional balancing act, a manual labour, a material work. The film puts into practice what it shows. Not all knowledges can be found in books, some must be learned through experience and discovered through filming.
Paper short abstract:
Experimental short film (run time 19 minutes; viewable at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR51ao6-_OQ)
Paper long abstract:
How have Western non-governmental experts used remote sensing to make public knowledge about the Iran and North Korea nuclear programs? From 2018-2020, I conducted ethnographic research to examine how nonproliferation experts gather around satellite images to uncover hidden nuclear objects on distant landscapes. I encountered expert practices that wove optical sensor datasets together with popular orientalist themes to inform public debates about nuclear dangers. But in the winter of 2021 – the pandemic winter – I was unable to continue in-person participant observation. So instead, I turned the lens inward. Holing up in a remote woodshed in rural Northern Michigan, I surrounded myself with all the cameras I could find – the webcams, GoPros, and old iPhones of everyday life – to create my own miniature constellation of optics. With cameras rolling, I used discarded objects from past lives to build a physical map of the epistemic community I had studied and tried to locate my own positionality in relation to the subject of my research. I then edited the resulting footage to produce video notes for the following articles:
C.C. Lawrence (2020), “Heralds of Global Transparency: Remote Sensing, Nuclear Fuel-cycle Facilities, and the Modularity of Imagination,” SSS 50(4):508-541 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312719879769)
C.C. Lawrence (2024), “Gathering Around a Satellite Image: Visual Media Cycles of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Complex,” SSS (accepted; https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SvlG3HAfxCuRDKAhU8TBKVxVc-_ES5Rm/view?usp=sharing)
C.C. Lawrence (working paper), “Muscle Memories of Revelation: Extending the Imaginative Exercise,” submitted to 4S, Amsterdam (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V262BA5s9cjExVk2y8etFr3ed0O4ReHC/view?usp=sharing)
The video will be followed by brief oral summary of the articles.
Paper short abstract:
Our contribution consists of an exhibition with three artworks, 1 short film, 1 VR game, 1 raspberry pi installation
Paper long abstract:
Technology hype has been the object of STS critique at a time of grossly inflated expectations and promises about artificial intelligence, the metaverse and other technological ‘frontiers.’ Such critical work has been vital to begin to challenge the soft power hype has in materially shaping the future and creating a downstream sense of inevitability, fatalism, or false hope. In resisting hype, STS scholars are now faced with the world-building imperatives implied in the field’s current turn to making and doing: What kind of practices and narratives could meaningfully supplant hype? How do we transition from just calling out snake oil and bull*hit, to creating more grounded, just and hopeful visions of the future? How can STS work empower diverse audiences to engage in critical thinking about the social, political and ethical aspects of emerging technologies? In our project ‘Against Digital Fatalism,’ we engage with these questions through an experimental and collaborative exchange with artists and creative practitioners. The project materialised in three artworks which touch on specific social and ethical issues linked to extended reality and the metaverse, namely digital escapism and injustice, power and financial speculation in virtual worlds, and hopeful and inclusive engagements with the digital. In this contribution we invite the audience to interact with each of these artworks and join us in a playful and collective exchange about hopeful futures.