Changing the Ground: SciArt Talk Series 2021-22

We live in fragile times – not only environmentally, socially, politically, but also epistemologically. The ground of it all is shaking, as governments, institutions and ‘the people’ are caught between traditional human values and algorithmic decisions and hidden motivations. The digital transformation has been creeping upon us without forewarning. While it is beneficial in many ways, it has created a global epistemological crisis by introducing automation not only in our communication, management, administration and transportation tools, but also in our minds. Derrick de Kerckhove, former professor at University of Toronto, will share his view on this topic.

Topic: Quantum Ecology

Dr Derrick de Kerckhove, PhD, is retired from the Department of French at the University of Toronto (Canada), where he was also formerly the Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology (1983-2008). He has participated in global art projects, such as Solstizio and ArtComTec. His research and publications have dealt with psychology, culture, art and communication technologies. His books have been translated into various languages and include: The Alphabet and the Brain (Springer Verlag, 1988), Brainframes: Technology, Mind and Business (Bosch&Keuning, 1991) and The Skin of Culture (Somerville Press, 1995). His next book, The Quantum Ecology, in collaboration with Stefano Calzati, is to appear next year at MIT Press.

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The Covid-19 pandemic and climate discussions around COP-26 have demonstrated that we face unprecedented challenges in science communication due to the “infodemic” of misinformation through social media. Beyond cases of deliberate misinformation, we are experiencing a growing divide between accelerating scientific and technological developments transforming society and increasingly fragmented wider public discourse. Legal scholar and social psychologist Dan Kahan coined the term „identity protective cognition“ to describe the way identification with different political and social groups determines whom we come to consider to be experts on contested matters of fact. My talk will explore how we need to reinvent our traditional approaches to science communication for the post-pandemic era, with a special focus on the role of place-based, embodied and social forms of science engagement.

Topic: Museum Science/History of Science

Prof Dr Michael John Gorman PhD; Founding Director of BIOTOPIA museum, a communication platform between sciences, culture and people (Munich, Germany). Founding Director of the Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin; founder and CEO of Science Gallery International. He was previously a Lecturer in Science, Technology and Society at Stanford University, and postdoctoral fellow at MIT and Harvard.

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In the 21st century, a spectre is haunting humans – the spectre of technology. From algorithmic predestination to internet addiction, from the technosphere to super-intelligent AI: technology is here to stay. This realization is not a neutral statement, nor does this entail an uncritical acceptance of the ways these technologies are being actualized. Instead, it is a wake-up call to be aware of where we are at – as individuals, as a society, and as a species. We can no longer think of technology in separation from humanity and ecology; its material production has to be taken into consideration as well. In order to understand technology in the era of the Anthropocene, we need a radical change in people‘s worldviews. Anthropocentric and human-centric values that are still ingrained in many societies, in and outside of Europe, are serious obstacles towards this shift, which is urgently needed in the rise of global catastrophes. In this talk, we will approach the human condition through the philosophies of posthumanism, by addressing humans as part of a planet, nets of ecological and technological emergencies, expressions of cosmic phenomena. We will understand together how each of us can help in tracing new horizons. This will be a journey of self-inquiry and self-discovery: into technology, into society, and most importantly, into ourselves…

Topic: Posthumanism, Technology and Society

Francesca Ferrando Ph.D., is an Award-Winning Philosopher. They teach Philosophy at NYU-Liberal Studies, New York University. A leading voice in the field of Posthuman Studies and Co-Founder of the Global Posthuman Network, they have been the recipient of international honors and recognitions. Their work has been translated into a dozen languages; they have delivered more than 100 lectures globally. In the history of TED talks, they were the first speaker to give a talk on the posthuman. Origin Magazine named them among the 100 people making change in the world. Their latest book is The Art of Being Posthuman (Polity); their previous book is Philosophical Posthumanism (Bloomsbury). 

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Society is based on the world described by physics. But which physics? The orthodoxy is that our minds are just complex machines that follow the laws of classical physics. Teaching this materialist worldview has naturalized an understanding of ourselves as fully separable individuals, for whom conflict is natural and cooperation is a problem (Hobbes). But what if people actually have quantum minds? In that case our individuality would be intrinsically relational rather than separable, entangled non-locally in socially shared wave functions of meaning. The classical worldview would be a social mis-construction of our nature, creating false consciousness of who we are. Social science would be complicit in sustaining unjust, classical institutions, and producing universal alienation – from the world, each other, and ourselves. In such a world, quantum pedagogy offers not just better social science, but in the long run, better people – consciously entangled individuals for whom cooperation is the norm and conflict the exception.

Topic: Quantum Physics

Dr Alexander Wendt, PhD, Mershon Professor of International Security and Professor of Political Science at The Ohio State University. His book Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge UP, 1999) has become a widely used text in the study of international relations“. His recent work, Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology (Cambridge UP 2015), explores the concept of humans as quantum wave functions.

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The “metaverse” concept whether proposed by Mark Zuckerberg or Microsoft or by any other big business project is not a new thing. The term was launched by Snow Crash, a novel by Neal Stephenson in 1992, and the concept was soon actualised by a succession of platforms such as Active Worlds (1995), The Palace, and later Second Life (2003) and others less successful. This suggests that the idea is not a fluke but is integral to the ongoing digital transformation. It is not only yet another simulation of human affairs in digital form, but also the predictable duplication of hardware by software extended to the whole human environment. That said, there is no reason to limit the prospect to mere entertainment or to a big business proposition. Instead, the "metaverse" idea extended not only to fictional environments but to real ones, may have enormous value for society.

In line with the ambition to “change the ground” of the audience’s perception, what this talk will offer is how a city in all of its complexities can be represented for all citizens by combining the existing and future resources of the ‘smart city’, the ‘digital twin city’ (e.g., Singapore) and the metaverse in what could be generically called the “meta-city”. The talk will address questions of feasibility and further possibilities as well as evaluating the risks and benefits for society.

Topic: Metaverse/Changing the Ground

Dr Derrick de Kerckhove, PhD, is retired from the Department of French at the University of Toronto (Canada), where he was also formerly the Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology (1983-2008). He has participated in global art projects, such as Solstizio and ArtComTec. His research and publications have dealt with psychology, culture, art and communication technologies. His books have been translated into various languages and include: The Alphabet and the Brain (Springer Verlag, 1988), Brainframes: Technology, Mind and Business (Bosch&Keuning, 1991) and The Skin of Culture (Somerville Press, 1995). His next book, The Quantum Ecology, in collaboration with Stefano Calzati, is to appear next year at MIT Press.

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When many people think of an art gallery or museum, they picture a serious place where visitors stand quietly contemplating rows of paintings on white walls. But art institutions are far more than containers and displayers of art objects – they are complex reflections of the cultures that produced them and continue to produce them. Directors of art institutions are increasingly aware of their role within the broader social, political, and cultural landscape, and the responsivity that is needed to serve the intellectual, cultural and social needs of their diverse communities. Most also struggle with issues of social relevance, elitism, and ownership. My talk will explore an approach to directing a contemporary art institution in which ‘curating’ is centred in developing cultural collective inquiries that involve artists, scientists, researchers, audiences and participants in addressing an important societal topic. In this case study, the topic is our shifting perceptions of race, identity and migration.

Topic: Art/Art activism

Nicola Triscott PhD is a curator, researcher and writer, specializing in the intersections between art, science, technology and society. Since 2019, Nicola has been Director/CEO of FACT (Centre for Film, Art & Creative Technology) in Liverpool, UK, where she curated the exhibition And Say the Animal Responded? in 2020. Previously, Nicola was the founding Artistic Director/CEO of Arts Catalyst (from 1994 to 2019).

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We will debate the illusions of the hypertechnological, hyperconnected civilization and its ongoing anthropological transformation. Including: 1) the “tyranny of concreteness” and “great mistake”: the belief that all problems can be solved by delegating solutions solely to technology, and that (hyper) complexity can be measured, managed and predicted through data, algorithms, formulas and statistics. 2) The fracture between the sciences and the humanities, and between the natural and the artificial represented by “false dichotomies”. 3) The illusions of social control and elimination of error. 4) The vision of an ordered, regular society occasionally interrupted by “black swans”, without recognizing that emergency, error, uncertainty and unpredictability are intrinsic to all complex adaptive systems, which follow an irreversible arrow of time.

Topic: Hypercomplexity

Prof. Piero Dominici, Associate Professor at University of Perugia, is Sociologist and Philosopher, Educator and Systems Thinker; he is Scientific Director of the International Research and Education Programme CHAOS on Complex Human Adaptive Organizations & Systems. Fellow of the World Academy of Art & Science (WAAS), Vice President of the World Complexity Science Academy, he is Official Delegate to UNESCO & UN expert and invited speaker. PhD in “Social Theory and Research” (Sapienza University of Rome), he teaches Education Towards Complexity and Unpredictability, Sociology of Social Complexity, Public Communication, Sociology of Culture and Communication and Intelligence, Networks, and Complex Systems at the University of Perugia. As scientific researcher, educator, author and international speaker, his main areas of expertise and interest encompass (Hyper)complexity, Transforming Education, Paradigm Shift, Transdisciplinarity, Complex Systems and Knowledge Sharing. For over twenty-five years, in addition to teaching and striving to rethink and reinvent education, he has been conducting scientific research in the fields of Education, Systems Theory, Technology, Innovation, Intelligence, Human Security, Citizenship and Communication.

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The COVID pandemic continues to expose the fault-lines in human society – including lack of diversity, equity, and mutual understanding. In this age of hyper-flux, what role can art, science and technology play in helping society ride the waves and shifts? Why is ecology often left out of this discussion? And what are the implications of all four working together in sharing and shaping our world and humanity? Drawing on the work of theorists Karen Barad, vital materialist Jane Benett, philosopher Timothy Morton and indigenous scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer this talk will be illustrated by key international artists whose work shows the way.

Topic: Art & Science practice

Founding director and designer of the Arts at CERN programme (2009-2015), Ariane is an independent specialist consultant, curator and producer in art science and technology. She works for example as creative partner to the Cavendish Arts Science programme, (Cambridge University UK), curator and creative producer of Earth Water Sky, environmental arts science residency (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy). She is on the Advisory Board for the JRC SciArt project and in 2021 was a Creative Director at the Venice Biennale.

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As our understanding of the world changes over time, our mental models and philosophical categories must also change. No-one has done more to challenge out-of-date mental models and engineer new, creative, and practical alternatives than the late Michel Serres (1930-2019), member of the prestigious Académie Française. This talk explains how Serres helps us to rethink three fundamental oppositions that structure almost all Western thinking across the sciences and the arts: nature and culture; knowledge and myth; the subject and the object. The effort constantly to renew our conceptual toolbox is not just a dry philosophical exercise: the complex problems that we and our children will face in the future cannot be solved with the rusty old intellectual implements invented by our great grandparents.

Topic: Post-structuralism

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Australian Research Council (ARC), Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer in European Languages at Monash University, Mel- bourne Australia. Dr Chris Watkin writes on philosophy, theology and society, and his recent books include Michel Serres: Figures of Thought (Edinburgh UP, 2020) and French Philosophy Today (Edinburgh UP, 2016).

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