roger malina talk on intimate science - artists use of scientific data-given at Banff in 2008

1. Intimate Science
Roger F Malina
Banff
August 2008

2. Arrhenius 1896

4. Modern Science Doesnt Make
Common Sense
• Most knowledge about our world now comes
through scientific instruments
o Few people have experience of mediated senses
o Much science is now done by experiments on data rather
than experiments on the world
o The Galilean Fallacy…The End of Theory
• Most of the world isnt on human scales
• Our intuition, languages, metaphors, arts are built
training on the wrong data for survival

5. Inhabiting New Scales
cf Cheese Diagram Guardans, Czegledy
SLOW........................................................................................................
• FAST
• SMALL OUR SIZE LARGE

7. New Senses: Gravitational Wave
Observatories-
LIGO in USA ,VIRGO in Italy

8. New scales: The Antares Neutrino
Observatory under the Mediterranean

9. Modern Science doesnt Make
Common Sense
• We need a new sensuality
• We need a new scientific method
o Most science is done in protected semi monastic enclaves
• We need to understand the world
o « society » no longer think science is a priority for
government spending or for peoples careers
o Need the « hard humanities »
WE NEED A NEW CULTURE

10. • Micro Science: .
• Coupling Common Sense to Common Science
• Micro-Science
o Micro Science is to the National Science Foundation
What Micro Credit is to the World Bank
• Making science intimate
o Owning data about your own environment
o Science creating communities own their knowledge
o Building intution, language from mediated sensory experience

11. Muliple Modes to Intimate Science
• INTIMATE SCIENCE: «
ownership of the data
about ones own
environment »
• New AMATEUR
SCIENCE: « public
science »
• CROWDSOURCING :
» distributed and open
science »

12. Intimate Science
Pigeon Blog ( B Da Costa) Inside Outside Handbag (Katherine Moriwaki )

13. Mediated Sensuality
1904 2004
Cezanne: Mont St Victoire.........Sabine Raaf: Translator II

14. Immersion in Extreme Environments
Antarctica......Deserts…Oceans…
eg Marco Peljham and Macrolab

15. Hybrid Bodies
eg Marcel.li Antunez Roca

16. Nano Intuition
Sommerer/Mignoneau

17. Inhabiting New Worlds
cf Cheese Diagram Guardans, Czegledy
High Gravity.......................................................................................
• Zero G Seeing
• Gamma Rays X Rays UV Visible Infra Red Micro Wave Radio

18. People’s Science, New Amateur Science
• Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti:
Indian People’s Science
Networks
• Brazil Digital Culture
projects
• Sergipe « Human Project »
o Humbi Umbi in Brazil
• Srishti School, Bangalore
• Ubiquitous micro science
producing communities

19. Calm Technologies/Distributed Sensing
• Weiner 1991 Xerox Parc
• Eg Eric Paulos, Intel
• www.urban-atmospheres.net/
CitizenScience
• active participation in basic
scientific data gathering
• richer, finer-grain data sets
for modeling and analysis
• mobile phone as a tool for
grassroots participation in
government and policy
making

20. Crowd-Sourcing
• Distributed Science
• BOINC : Berkeley
Open Infrastructure
Network Computing
o SETI@home search
for extraterrestial
intelligence
o climateprediction.net ,
climate modelling
o malariacontrol.net

21. Innocentive: « open innovation »
• Organisations can submit
problems for solution
• Together with award
incentive
• Over 200 problems
solved to date
• Problem solving
communities outside
the Academy

22. The way we do Science carries within
in the seeds of its own failure
Vesna/Gimzewski
• Failure of the
enlightenment
• Science is done in
guarded monasteries
• Science education and
outreach from the top
floor not from the
ground floor
• More science education
will not help
• Science must be
systematically
culturally redesigned

23. How
• Artists in Labs
• Scientists in Studios
• Town Scientists
• Micro Science funding for artists
• Open sourcing of data about your own
world
• Developing the ‘hard humanities’ to
change the content and direction of
science

24. ArtsActive Network
Artists in R and D Labs Programs
• Art in Labs, Switzerland, Jill Scott • Observers: James Leach, Emmanuel
• ANAT/Synapse, Mahe (Orange), Bronac Ferran,
Sammuelle Carlson
• Symbiotica Australia • List of patents filed by artists
• Dissonancias, :Laboral, Spain • Exchange of Intellectual Property
• Art and Genomics: Holland approaches
• ECTOPIA; Portugal • Jurying systems
• • Announcements
FUSE/CADRE: .Climate Clock • Scientists in cultural organisations ?
• UK ITEM, ArtsCatalyst, FACT/
Blue Sky Residencies
• Leonardo - UCB Space Sciences • www.artsactive.net
• Leonardo/POP SUD France
• TRANSGENESIS; Czech rep

25. Berkeley: Art and Space Exploration
Residencies
• Space Sciences Lab
• NASA and UK Arts
Council
• Rejane Spitz: web media
• Semi Conductor: data
sonification, infographie
• Liliane Lijn: robotique, new
materials
• Joanna Griffin: data
visualisation, education
• CNMAT STEREO Satellite
sonification “Sounds of
Space”…Marty Quinn

26. SemiConductor residency
• Secret Life of Magnetic
Fields
• Interviews of Lab
scientists on limits of
scientific knowledge
• Brilliant Noise
Installation= repurposed
solar data

27. Liliane Lijn:
Silicon Aerogel Sculptures
Solar Hills = solar robots

28. The Sound of Trees Growing
• David Dunn (composer,
sound artist)
• Jim Crutchfield
( complexity scientist)
• Artist driven recording
of sounds of trees
growing led to research
project in the coupling
of ultrasound from
trees, beetles, forest
fire system dynamics

29. Thanks
• rmalina@prontomail.com
• www.leonardo.info
• www.olats.org