Paper short abstract:

Workshop / Installation

Paper long abstract:

Food is material, yet it has the power to invoke feelings of both desire and disgust. In this workshop I invite participants to write a memory of: a fond memory of consuming food, a memory of disgust and repugnance in relation to food, and a formative sensory memory of preparing food. I provide craft materials to write and display participant's memories alongside my own curation of poems, photographs, objects, and technologies of food. Throughout the workshop I use highlighters to collate commonalities between participant's written excerpts and invite everyone to reflect on our ways of knowing food, its sensory material aspects and how we consume it. Certain types of food are endangered already with a movement to protect heirloom and indigenous varieties from being bred-out by industrial agriculture. In the anthropocene not only animals but specific foods that rely on industrial food production will also not be available for consumption for example bananas, coffee, avocado and chocolate. Activism and art based practice oriented to food may enact both awareness and open up a space for dialog about the kind of food futures we all want to create by reflecting on our own memories.

Paper short abstract:

Participatory art installation

Paper long abstract:

The Frictions of Futurity and Cure in Transplant Medicine project is a sensory ethnography and multimodal research creation study that follows the affective, temporal, and psychosocial challenges of solid organ transplantation in Canada. Experimenting with different methods that destabilize assumptions about il/legitimate forms of knowing, we invited people interacting across our field sites (clinicians, allied health workers, families, patients, visitors) to contribute their own doodles, sketches, and annotations to our project’s more traditional ethnographic field notes. Questions of how to understand and make meaning of these collective notes remain active for our project team. In this exhibition, we will stage an installation of collective field notes gifted to our project by individuals taking part in our sites of ethnographic research and public arts engagement including at art exhibitions, multidisciplinary salons, film screenings, and conference discussion lounges hosted by our team. A series of the collective notes will be threaded and hung in the form of a stabile—a stationary abstract mobile that plays with motion and stasis. We will engage 4S participants to take part in an emergent making practice, inviting viewers to use visual and haptic means of re-ordering and rearranging the notes (making iterations of the stabiles), inviting them to think aloud with us as we consider and reconsider together the meaning and role collective drawings and notations can play in ethnographic and arts-based research. In this way, viewers of the booth will contribute to our own attempts to play with collective practices for knowledge-making.

Paper short abstract:

Workshop with video and participants' interaction

Paper long abstract:

The Castelo Branco´s Living Lab cultivates a culture of food innovation and strengthens the city's connection with its food ecosystem.Here, we showcase how food innovation can serve to promote local and seasonal products. The local agrofood technology center (CATAA), one of the local partners of FUSILLI, leverages its food technology units to create and characterize new food products and innovative recipes. These products are then introduced to the citizens through monthly exhibitions at the municipal market and participation in food sector fairs and other events. Such initiatives not only highlight the potential of local and seasonal ingredients but also foster connections between producers and consumers. This approach was made to empower the consumers with knowledge to make informed choices for their health. Other initiatives of the Living Lab also highlighted the implementation of new school gardens and the improvement of already existing ones. Through educational activities and hands-on activities evidenced by the duplication of the number of school gardens and high adhesion on food producing workshops.Involving younger generations not only to influence the behaviour of these future consumers but also to act as a catalyst for shaping the attitudes of their families. Children can serve as effective messengers of new learnings, spreading awareness about sustainable practices and healthy eating habits. Overall, Castelo Branco stands as a pilot city, showcasing the importance of leveraging innovation in food and food production practices to tackle challenges and drive the change for a better and more resilient city´s food system.

Paper short abstract:

An interactive installation involving a virtual interface (an interactive website displayed on two screens and two tablets) and a physical interface for a multisensory experiment.

Paper long abstract:

This Making & Doing session guides participants through the “Rootling” website, a creative resource on pigs. The display includes a virtual environment created in collaboration with designers and a sensory exercise for anyone interested in multispecies research. The website is part of a larger inquiry into what a porcine research method might embody, and how it might challenge epistemological practices under neoliberalism. The website interface is designed with specific attention to the process and aesthetics of searching, navigating, and knowing as inspired by pigs. Wild and domestic pigs rootle to learn about their environment, using their snouts to socialize and dig, feed and play, find comfort and explore. Using the website, “rootlers” are encouraged to learn about pigs through an omnivorous movement of discovery via text, images, memes, and scientific data. Content is neither ordered nor linear but interconnected in a messy and heterogeneous manner to facilitate unexpected lines of inquiry and unearth contradictory ideas. Participants are also invited to engage with the research method through sensual, tactile DIY interfaces which will stimulate ideas by foregrounding nonvisual cues. To help navigate the virtual and physical environments, guides will prompt “rootlers” to attune to their trajectories, intentions, and feelings while exploring. The session is intended to generate reflections on how ideas can emerge from seemingly simple origins and disparate content; how everyday rootling practices- sometimes protracted, intuitive, and playful- are devalued within academic research cultures; and the ways in which symbiotic thinking opens avenues for experimental approaches to social research.

Paper short abstract:

This is a video game demonstration followed by a discussion with the creator, so the form is flexible. It can be included in an exhibition or be an artist talk.

Paper long abstract:

Female pleasure is a subject that’s often overlooked: the gap between male and female sexual satisfaction remains significant in heterosexual relationships, partly due to a lack of knowledge about the clitoris (Andrejek, Fetner, and Heath 2022). We thought it would be an intriguing subject for an “expressive video game” (Genvo, 2012, p. 128). Expressive games usually highlight problematic life experiences without necessarily aiming to provide a concrete solution (Genvo 2012). More broadly, expressive games are inspired by the personal experiences of their designers. Furthermore, expressive games align with feminist epistemologies, emphasizing the importance of situated knowledge. This encourages the expression of diverse viewpoints to construct new understandings of the world (Anderson 2014), crossing traditional knowledge barriers. The goal of our game is to emphasize the significance of the clitoris, demystify it, and firmly link it with pleasure (no pornography).It’s crucial to stress that the process of creating the work itself serves to break down barriers. The game is a research-creation, meaning that both the process and the product are documented and analyzed, similarly to Latour’s endeavour in his book Aramis or the Love of Technology (1996). As a researcher and creator, I (the game director) chose to realize the game with students, both in their coursework and through research internships, and with the assistance of industry professionals. This creates a network of various actors with very different interests. The showcase of the game prototype is a great way to spark numerous intriguing discussions regarding women's experiences and tacit knowledge.

Paper short abstract:

Workshop

Paper long abstract:

In the field of cybersecurity, it is a common frustration for authorities and cybersecurity experts that people in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) do not follow official advice. At times, the ‘incompliant behaviour’ of SMEs is even depicted as a severe risk for digitized societies such Denmark. A hole in the national defense so to speak. Stepping into this rather tense situation of shaming and blaming narratives, we have conducted a large ethnographic study of 30 Danish SMEs. Through more than 50 interviews we examined the intricacies of local practice, and we uncovered what we described as “’good’ organizational reasons for ‘bad’ cybersecurity practices” (Kocksch & Elgaard Jensen 2023). We found that many cybersecurity problems in SME do not come in the shape of a clearly defined problems which can be solved by a technical solution. Instead, SMEs often encounter cybersecurity problems as dilemmas they must endure or manage in ad hoc and sometimes clumsy ways. To bring these practical realities to the attention of authorities and cybersecurity experts we have developed a dilemma board game. Each game starts with the dramatized depiction of a dilemma we have encountered in our field work. The 3-4 players are then asked to develop ideas for handling these dilemmas. The game includes a series of cards that suggest various resources and strategies that are often available to SMEs. The Making & Doing presentation invites participants to play a 20-minute version of the dilemma game.

Paper short abstract:

Workshop featuring a series of interactive ‘Experiencing Soil’ activities interspaced with personal stories from the organizers and with room for collaborative reflection on the impact of such events.

Paper long abstract:

Humans have diverse relationships with soils that can be shaped by personal, cultural and sensorial experiences. Soils matter at many levels since people can feel a deep connection with soil as a source of identity, sustenance and belonging. The academic perspective on soil commonly provides soil scientists with a very particular experience of soils, and they communicate their soil knowledge through publications, graphs and tables. During the Wageningen Soil Conference 2023 we organized an event that invited soil scientists to discover ways of experiencing soil with all their senses, with the goal of increasing their capacity to connect with society and inspiring them to make connections and share their work in ways that resonate with society. We have also shared this Experiencing Soils event with the Wageningen municipal community. During this Making and Doing contribution, we will bring our event to the conference. Participants will explore multiple ‘stations’ dedicated to experiencing soils in unexpected and creative ways (such as via touch, taste, smell, poetry, theater, sounds and painting). In organizing this event, we have brought together a diverse group of early-career scientists and started an ongoing collaboration to broaden the experiences of and perspectives on soil that are accepted in the soil scientific community. Therefore, we will share our motivations, experiences and personal reflections on this process and interact with the audience to collectively increase the impact of such events. Our approach can be of interest to many transdisciplinary scientists exploring innovative connections from the ground up.

Paper short abstract:

An audio exhibit for deep listening to oral histories of our changing environment and of collaboration to solve environmental problems.

Paper long abstract:

Agriculture and nature conservation are often pitted against each other in narratives of land use, food production and ecological crisis. In the UK, agricultural and environmental protection communities have long been fragmented and siloed, from each other and internally. Lessons from the past about how (not) to work together across issues, sectors, organisations, types of expertise or other difference are forgotten.

As part of RENEWing Biodiversity - a large scale, multi-sited project investigating people’s involvement in biodiversity renewal, our embedded team of STS scholars and oral historians has been capturing stories of environmental collaboration. This is through ethnographic research documenting transdisciplinarity in real time as the project unfolds; as well as through oral history interviews about the life experiences of academics, naturalists, policy makers, campaigners and others. We are preparing an audio exhibit and live listening sessions to take to agricultural and environmental communities in 2024-25, telling stories that juxtapose the experiences of people across ordinarily siloed spaces and domains: academia and professional practice; natural and human sciences; conservation and agriculture, to prompt conversations and reflections on division, common ground and working together.

This Making and Doing stand presents an early version of the exhibit, exploring the potential of deep listening to stories of our changing environment (and of collaboration to solve environmental problems) to create dialogue between stakeholders, past and present. We invite you to listen, reflect, and share your own stories, as well as thoughts on how we could incorporate our ongoing ethnographic fieldwork into the exhibit.

Images: - Pinecone at RENEW Collaborations Workshop. Credit: Angela Cassidy. - Man and two children. Credit: John Marshall. Courtesy of John M Marshall. - Men in field. Courtesy of John M Marshall.

Paper short abstract:

Paper-based and online version of the game. Visitors are invited to play and/or see evaluation of test-run with actual CDR-stakeholders. Presented by Nils Matzner, Danny Otto, Linda Heenemann.

Paper long abstract:

In addition to massive reduction of CO2 emissions, it will be necessary to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Numerous studies have explored the governance of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), modeled pathways, outlined scenarios, or analyzed demonstration projects. A critical gap in the literature are regional CDR case studies investigating dynamics that affect adoption in specific locations. In this making and doing session, we present a playful approach to jointly envision possible CDR landscapes.We developed a serious game called “Carbon Cascadia” that enables stakeholders to express their regional carbon landscape imaginations. Players have the possibility to arrange different biomass production processes and biomass-based CDR methods in cascades. These cascades picture flows of biomass and allow for individual and group reflections on resource usage. The in-game setting brings farmers, foresters, biochar start-ups, CO2 storage operators and other stakeholders together to develop and discuss the most (cost-)effective, long-term and sustainable processes to remove CO2 from the atmosphere using plants and store it long-term. Only with a joint effort and reflections on synergies and trade-offs can such biomass-based CDR measures also function as cascades, i.e. a series of removal and utilization processes. The game is design for online and offline usage. It consists of CDR gaming cards that can be arranged on digital or paper playing boards. The cards provide information on CO2 removal potentials and biomass usage or supply. It enables a novel way to materialize and accessibly discuss about pathways of CDR governance, organization and deployment.

Paper short abstract:

Multimedia installation

Paper long abstract:

In the Shadow of Ashes is an immersive, multi-media installation that sheds light on a dark chapter of British colonial rule. Engaging experimental modes of knowledge production, this counter-narrative aims to generate new reflections of the Batang Kali massacre, its subsequent concealment by successive British governments, and the amnesiac consequences of these injustices. The project presents newly found archival materials and weaves them alongside first-hand testimony by a victim of the massacre. Automated lights and projectors are activated as the narrative unfolds.The installation is set into motion by an audio composition introducing a dialogue with Lim Kok, whose father was massacred by British colonial officers in Malaya, 1948. This conversation makes reference to the arrangement of materials presented on three overhead projectors that activate in succession during the exchange, highlighting various elements. Once the medium of choice for disseminating colonial propaganda, projection is employed subversively in the installation as an ‘anti-redaction’.The exchange proceeds to reveal a shocking discovery: a cover-up by the British Colonial Office known as Operation Legacy. Abruptly, all lights go dark, replaced by the soft glow of an old monitor screen in the corner of the room. Discovered in the private collection of a diplomat stationed in British-colonised Aden, the video depicts people throwing classified documents on the ground, before setting them alight. “I never heard about this,” responds Lim in the audio piece, seeing the footage, “with that extra evidence… we may have won the [court] case.”

Paper short abstract:

The workshop will start with an introduction an example story. Then participants will be allocated to groups to develop their stories. It will close with a plenary and a reflection.

Paper long abstract:

The workshop aims to contribute to the transformation of the technology industry by harnessing collaborative and individual scenario planning and feminist imaginaries to empower women and marginalised groups. As part of a bigger project which seeks to challenge existing biases and amplify diverse voices through innovative methodologies, we invite participants to storyboard alternative worlds, envisioning futures that promote diversity and inclusivity in the technology sector. It is by creating parallel worlds in which marginalised groups are not marginalised that will enable the participants to uncover how our world could be changed.The project, and this workshop embrace techno-feminist perspectives, which view technology as a socially constructed entity intertwined with gender relations. It acknowledges the mutual shaping of technology and gender and advocates for a flexible and anti-essentialist approach. Additionally, it aligns with feminist methodologies, emphasising the importance of inclusivity, representation, and critical reflection. It recognises the need for intersectional perspectives that account for multiple dimensions of identity.The workshop draws inspiration from the Fashion Futures project , which uses scenario planning to navigate the complexity of the future in the context of fashion and nature. Scenario planning encourages creative and abstract thinking, fostering inclusivity and diverse decision-making processes. Those wanting to take part in the workshop will come with a point of history to be transformed in mind, to transform the narrative of the current day, and it will be these that are built upon in groups through storyboarding exercises.

Paper short abstract:

Interactive installation incorporating audio-visual storytelling devices, field equipment, background videos playing on loop, posters, booklets, food tasting. 4 media players will be used for 4 different containers with 4 earphones attached.

Paper long abstract:

How can we understand concerns for sustainable development, food security and sovereignty beyond longstanding mainstream agricultural production schemes? When we focus too much on yield and feasibility, we ignore the mutual meanings of landscapes that were (or are becoming) plantations and the species that live (or used to live) within them. To foreground these relations, our interactive installation complicates olives by revealing more-than-human, infrastructural, and sociopolitical relations through the method of interactive storytelling. Employing a plethora of sounds, images and materials, we invite the participants to lose their sure footing in an oily world, where olives stop becoming just food and are called to appear and become significant in their other forms; as seed, fruit, tree, wood, symbol, landscape, companion and tool. We invite you to taste, touch, smell, listen and walk through the olive stories of our representation (do not mistake it for a concrete reality!). We complicate the matter of knowing and producing olive oil, as well as of knowing sustainability and development through comparing, contrasting and reflecting on stories of olive entangled lives and landscapes in Turkey, Palestine, Italy and Spain. As we invite olives to become agents in their own stories, we also make noticeable the agency of other non-humans. Instead of mastery over them, or a letting be that falls within the old dreams of a pristine nature, we propose an uneasy companionship and mutual affection within the smelly, messy and oily relations of future olive landscapes.

Paper short abstract:

Storytelling with code

Paper long abstract:

The project explores the logics of GeoAI – the integration of geography and artificial intelligence – to unravel the web of dependencies between data and code in the making of AI models. Because of the instability of GeoAI, I follow a dual track development strategy that allows me to reflect on a territory as a humanist, while at the same time engaging with the territory through the very technical methods defining the territory under observation. The result is a cook-book, a companion book for code centric exploration that accompanies a traditional printed book. Topically, my inquiry is centered on the confluence of multi-spectral, high-resolution satellite sensor data, Geographic Information Systems and classification processes enabled by GeoAI at various levels of computational intensity. The project describes how daily updates from remote sensing assets in the sky create a novel paradigm of planetary assessment, and how this condition alters industries from desktop computing to agriculture, insurance, and compliance. Specifically, I describe field studies in Indonesia that demonstrate how the nexus of artificial intelligence and geospatial practices applied to mapping sustainable land use practices impact post-growth strategies and land use conflicts in the Alas Mertajati of Central Bali, Indonesia. I will show and tell the story of how GeoAI in the tropics came to be, and include with the cook-book a demonstration of the technical infrastructure that enables the first machine learning enabled local knowledge inclusive representation of agroforestry on the island of Bali. Code: https://github.com/realtechsupport/cocktail Cook: http://35.226.46.43:8501/

Paper short abstract:

Participants explore how STS lenses can be transformed into the mechanics and storytelling techniques of (video) games, creating STS-infused game ideas for the broader public.

Paper long abstract:

This workshop is an express-version of a one-week teaching format for multidisciplinary groups of students (STS, Games Engineering, STEM programs), offered at the Technical University Munich (TUM).

At the Making & Doing edition, the STS-participants will create their own video game idea through three steps, covering STS as a starting point and media-specific elements of games such as game mechanics, storytelling techniques and aesthetics.

During this process, the participants explore how STS lenses can be transformed into the mechanics and storytelling techniques of (video) games, creating STS-infused game ideas for the broader public.

This approach can be useful for science communcation and public engagement e.g. in museums as well as to explore the possibilites of speculative fabulation and responsible storytelling. Further, transdiciplinary collaboration and co-creation can be fostered through the production of video game (ideas), especially in educative settings.