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Short abstract:

This paper contributes to knowledge on how a project juxtaposes fiction and non-fiction, frivolity and seriousness, to communicate science for transformation – as the exhibition of a giant robot, called the Gundam, constitute technoscientific futures to transcend the limits of 20th-century thinking.

Long abstract:

In this paper, I study how frivolity and seriousness conflate in public engagement in and for transformation. The empirical focus of this study is an exhibition of a thoroughly impractical 18-metre tall humanoid robot, called RX-78F00 or the Gundam. The Gundam stands overlooking Yokohama Yamashita Pier at an exhibition called Gundam Factory Yokohama for the 40th year celebration of the anime Mobile Suit Gundam. The robot, as a material representation of popular culture, engages the public with familiarity and an impression of playfulness. The Gundam evokes emotion and awe, with the anime serving as a powerful cultural frame of reference and a common language – not only for the stakeholders responsible for the exhibition, but also for their public engagements. Yet behind its frivolous façade, it is a site for collaboration, innovation and science communication – represented through the earnest attempt to materialise the fictional into the real. Through a fieldwork of the exhibition, complemented with the official book and documentary of the robot’s construction, I critically analyse how the exhibition enacts an exuberant representation of technoscientific knowledge. I investigate how their material-discursive enactment is said to be able to constitute a technoscientific future beyond the limits of 20th-century thinking, supposedly eliciting imaginative yearnings of what more could be made possible. This paper then contributes to further our knowledge on science communication practices that juxtaposes fiction and non-fiction, frivolity and seriousness, in the exhibition's attempts to engage the public for the constitution of new technoscientific futures.