Today I attended the 3rd seminar of the Series on The Objects of Design and Social Science at Goldsmiths (London). The speaker was James Auger from the Royal College of Arts and the topic was “Critical and evocative objects”. While I was intrigued by the projects he described, I was unsure at first about how they related to the theme of critical and evocative objects. The first project was an audio tooth implant which was started as a student project, and then was exhibited at the Science Museum and got a lot of attention in the press as it was presented as a prototype. The aim was to start a discussion about the enhancement of human body by technology as well as about communication. Auger, and Loizeau with whom he has been working on many other projects, aimed to question the development of technology for the sake of technology without understanding its ethical and social implications. While some of these questions have led to the development of participatory design approach aiming to understand the context of use and the needs of the users and to involve them in the design process, Auger and Loizeau take a critical approach which intends to raise questions and trigger a reflection that would lead to “better” and more “conscious” design.

The objects they create are speculative in the sense that they are produced to raise questions and open a conversation about their implications. Auger said they tried to create objects that look “real” even if they are only prototypes, so that people can desire them and react to them saying “I want it” or “I don’t want it”. He also highlighted (very rightly) that many technology firms kept developing technology for technology sake, excited by the development of new features without thinking of their use, nor their implications in how they shape our communicative practices and our interactions. He also argued that many companies just kept doing incremental changes to the technology - such as a mobile phone, and he suggested that their work aims to suggest radical changes and new ways of thinking.

Yet someone in the audience raised the question of “how do you know you’ve been successful”. I do not think Auger (who in his talk often mentioned that their aim in their projects was to create a meaningful discussion), provided an answer to that question. My take on it is that this important question involves in fact two sets of questions.

First, who is your audience? Is it the “public”? Yet as Auger noted, when you “give” the object to the public, it gets “out of control” and it’s hard to monitor and assess the impact. More profundly, I’m wondering whether the fact that people reacted to the object by saying  “I want it” or “I don’t want it” is enough to say that the object has created a discussion and thus has become a speculative and critical object. The second audience is the technology people - working in technology companies or in research labs like the Media Lab. My intuition is that there a real discussion could be started but Auger did not mention examples of such a discussion. The last audience might be academics - designers as well as social scientists.

The second question is what is the “aim” of the project: is it to do research in the sense that you want to “prove” something, “show” an effect or analyze the reactions of various audiences to the object? Auger used some vocabulary such as validation that might make you think that it’s what he had in mind. However, as highlighted by some participants’ comments, this is difficult to achieve. The best “model” would not be a deductive model seeking validation, but more of an inductive model which would observe the different reactions and analyze the interpretations. Another possibility would be to get closer to the art perspective and see the object as open to interpretations which would not necessarily look for “answers” or validations. (I know when Aileen reads this point she will come and challenge me and clarify the status of such an object from the art perspective… and in fact, I’m hoping she will. :-)…).

This talk led me to think about the nature of building_space_with_words and its relationship to research, which is one we have discussed on this blog since the beginning of the project. We’ve been discussing it again lately with Aileen as we are working on a paper for an audience of organizational scholars. building_space_with_words is a speculative object: it originally was a speculative object for Aileen and I and then it became another type of object as the installation was designed as an attempt to raise awareness and questions from the public. Recently as I reflected on how it could be connected to the organizational literature, I became aware that it became a speculative and critical object questioning the meaning and use of the metaphor of virtual space in organizational studies.

An interesting talk which raised many important questions. A podcast of it can be seen at:  http://www.materialbeliefs.com/stream/dss3.php

Here’s an interesting series of seminar organized at Goldsmith College - at the intersection of two practices and two discourses, design and social science - with the “object” as the boundary… material object, object of interest …

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The Objects of Design and Social Science
Common to both design and (parts of) the social sciences is a shared
pre-occupation with objects. On the one hand, design is concerned with
making and interpreting objects including the finished article (e.g.
consumer products), ‘experimental’ design aids (e.g. prototypes), and
projective representations (e.g. scenarios). Recently, design has also
begun to re-engage with more speculative objects whose ambiguous
functionality contributes to the exploration of the social and the
material, the political and the aesthetic. On the other hand the
social sciences also work with objects, including categorical objects
such as race, gender, and health, empirical objects ranging from the
mundane to the exotic, and conceptual objects such as the notions
social scientists use to understand and theorize the social. Here, the
sociology of science and technology has been especially productive,
introducing notions such as boundary objects (Star & Griesemer, 1989),
epistemic objects (Rheinberger, 1997), immutable mobiles (Latour,
1990), quasi-objects , black boxes (Latour, 1988) to name but a few.
Accordingly, a focus on material, empirical and conceptual objects
brings into sharp relief overlaps and disjuncture between the two
disciplines and a rich space for dialogue.

This seminar series will seek to bring into view and explore existing
objects of both design and social science as well as draw out objects
of novelty for both disciplines. In doing so we will seek to engage
with emerging issues and topics in both disciplines such as the
outputs of speculative and critical design, participation, engagement
and publics as well as addressing notions concerning heterogeneity,
process and event. This series will continue to serve as a platform
for opening up interdisciplinary research futures. (more…)

Attached is an essay by Yasmine Abbas (one of our blog members) on the co-production of space and the role of participatory and crowdsourcing practices.

c2-yasmineabbas.pdf

She discusses BSWW as an attempt of “communal space making”…

Please see below. An interesting event on the collaboration between social scientists and artists in which, Lucy Kimbell, one of our blog members is involved. If you happen to be in London, make sure you attend and please post your thoughts afterwards.

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Tactical Play
A one-day colloquium for social scientists and artists about playful enquiry as a tactic for research
Birkbeck Institute for Social Research
1 July 2009, 09.30am–5pm
Room GO1, Clore Management Centre, Birkbeck, University of London

Speakers include: Anne Douglas (Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen); Lynn Froggett (University of Central Lancashire); Pat Kane ( author of The Play Ethic); Lucy Kimbell (Clark Fellow in Design Leadership at Said Business School, University of Oxford); Justin McKeown (artist, Spartaction.com) and Christian Nold (artist, Softhook.com). Convened by Sophie Hope and Elaine Speight.

Informed by discourses of cross-pollination between art and social science, this colloquium will discuss the role of “play” as a tactic for social change within reflexive and performative social science methods and socially engaged art processes.

Positioning playful enquiry as both a method and meeting place between the disciplines, the event will seek to address the following questions through the presentation of case studies and open discussion:

- In what way do the essential characteristics of one discipline offer possibilities for “play” within the other?

- How is research through performance, fiction, collaboration and conversation employed by each discipline and what are the individual motivations for this?

- At what point does playful enquiry meet “hard edged” research, and what are the academic implications?

- In what way is “play” a politicised method, and how can members of each profession use it to antagonise the frameworks in which they operate?

To book a place go to: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bisr/news/tacticalplay

Cost (includes vegetarian lunch): £35 standard, £15 students.

Numbers are strictly limited, please register early.

Fantastic - I love this

Multidisciplinary encounters on Complexity in Arts and Sciences: an interesting event at IRCAM in Paris (co-organized with Centre George Pompidou) IRCAM, June 10-12, 2009 (for more information, see description below.

In case you’re in Paris at that time, it sounds like a very interesting event and completely in line with some of our discussions on the collaboration between artists and scientists.  

The event comprises of a three-days scientific symposium and twoart-science encounters in the evening.The whole event takes place inside the Ircam Agora Festival<http://www.ircam.fr/85.html>, june 8-19 2009, a major milestone in the French cultural landscape. It is also coupled with a Lars von Trierretrospective organized by the Centre Pompidou.

While the symposium will focus on conferences by prestigious scientists or art theorists, the evening presentations will give the opportunity toleading artistic personalities to confront their practices and ideology on the ground of complexity.Physics, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, epistemology, architecture, music, painting, litterature, cinema, theatre … a greatvariety of topics will be explored in an interactive fashion.Participants will take advantage of a selection of concerts during the Agora Festival program that have a unique connection to the idea of complexity.

For those based in New York and in line with our discussion about collaboration between science and art: an interesting public program will take place next week at BRICS Rotunda Gallery.

Applications of Medical Imaging Technology in Contemporary Artistic Practice

Tuesday, February 17 at 7 pm

Artists Robert de Saint Phalle and B.J. Vogt in discussion with curator Nina Horisaki-Christens.

Artists are pushing the limits of medical imaging technology through a range of practices that transcend the rigidity of current thinking, including: translating MRI reports into sculpture, applying form and color to standard procedural output, and manipulating data to create imagery. Robert de Saint Phalle and B.J. Vogt discuss the artistic applications of medical imaging technology in contemporary practice and in their own work with curator Nina Horisaki-Christens.
(more…)

Hi,

for those of you in New York, two of our contributors, Bruno Latour and Natalie Jereminjenko are giving talks this week and next week in New York.

- Bruno Latour gives a talk “Globalization: Which Globe? Which Politics?”Thursday, February 5, 2009. Rennert Hall, the Kraft Center, 6:15pmFind out more about the event online here:http://www.heymancenter.org/events.php?id=117

- Tuesday, February 10, 2009, 6:30 – 8:30pm, Natalie Jereminjenko will moderate a discussion on Light Patterns: A Forum on the Design Challenges of Urban Ecology and Biodiversity at Van Alen Institute. More at http://www.vanalen.org/html/02_021009_FlightPatterns.php

If you have any events to share with us - in New York, but not only in New York, please do so.Also if you go to these events, please share your thoughts with us.al