A S+T+ARTS Symposium to reflect on impact and shape the future

29th & 30th October 2024 – Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Barcelona

Download the full programme

Over the past seven decades, the discourse on the dialogues and intersections between the arts and sciences has undergone a profound transformation since the inception of the “two cultures” debate. Today, numerous publications, institutions, organisations, academic associations, and funding programmes, such as S+T+ARTS in the European context, testify to the burgeoning emphasis on transdisciplinarity. However, amidst this progress, persistent questions and concerns remain, particularly with regard to the dissemination and impact assessment of projects within these transdisciplinary fields. A key challenge is to develop effective methods for observing, monitoring, evaluating, and identifying key variables illuminating project findings and respecting their inherent complexity. This symposium addresses these needs by convening an international dialogue that spans academic discourse and practical applications. By fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange, we aim to explore new strategies for accurately addressing, monitoring, and measuring the multiple impacts of projects situated at the intersection of the arts, technologies, and sciences, within the global challenges of contemporary society.

Exploring the intersections of Arts, Science, Technology and Society as catalysts for change is a symposium organised within the framework of S+T+ARTS in the City project, runned by six S+T+ARTS Regional Centres: GLUON, HacTe, Ars Electronica, Inova+, Kersnikova Institute and MEET, Digital Culture Centre.

FULL PROGRAMME

Tuesday, 29 October 2024

09.30 – 10.00 | Front desk U Building
Registration

10.00 – 10.30 | U0.2
Welcome words

10.30 – 11.30 | U0.2
Opening Talk: The Art-Science Complex: Observations from the Field
– Keynote speaker: Chris Salter, Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)
– Respondent: Veronika Liebl, Ars Electronica

The Art-Science Complex: Observations from the Field
This talk examines the “art science complex:” a certain set of genealogical and epistemological assumptions about the histories, theories, methods and practices involved in the long gestation attempts to bring together artists and scientists to enable new forms of knowledge production. Despite radically different contextual, socio-technical-political and aesthetic motivations and institutional setups, a certain narrative continues to operate that seeks to smooth out the frictions in what is in reality a much more messy, conflict-prone and turbulent arena. In effect, in order to understand what lies beneath the art science rhetoric, I aim to examine these inherent frictions within socio-technical networks linking artists, scientists, research and innovation agendas. Such frictions include the problematic of “epistemic cultures” in how knowledge itself is constituted and contested in the arts as compared to the sciences, the much ballyhooed (but rarely criticized) concept of interdisciplinarity and the continued belief in the unity of the sciences (from the arts) and the unity of the arts (from the natural/human/social sciences). Going below the surface of these socio-technical networks thus reveals larger issues of dynamics, disruption and change in the sociology of innovation as well as the ongoing tension in art-science collaborations between the production of durable, representational and normative knowledge versus the deployment of aesthetic strategies inherited from the genealogies of the avant-garde such as ambiguity, confusion, agonism and defamiliarization.

11.30 – 12.00: U0.1
[Open Space] Coffee break 

12.00 – 13.30 | U0.2
I Panel Discussion: Towards Hybrid Research Scenarios

13.30 – 15.30
Networking Lunch 

14:00 – 15:30 | U0.1
[Open Area] Poster and Audiovisual presentations

15.00 – 15.30 | U Building Hall
Opening of Invisible Voice installation, by Mark Farid. Hosted by UOC.

15.30 – 17.00 | U0.2
II Panel Discussion: Confronting Values and Measures in projects and policies

17.00 – 18.30 | U0.2
III Panel Discussion: Embracing social and ethical challenges

Wednesday, 30 October

09.00 – 09:30 | Front desk U Building
Registration 

09.30 – 09.35 | U0.2
Welcome words

09:35 – 11.00 | U0.2  
Round table: S+T+ARTS dialogue
The discussion will focus on the experiences and challenges of the S+T+ARTS programme, with particular emphasis on its impact in the potential role of Regional S+T+ARTS Centers (RSC) in leading rooted transdisciplinary innovation and promoting cross-cutting collaboration between European regions.

Participants:

• Christophe De Jaeger, Gluon
• Rosanna di Nuzzo, MEET Digital Culture Centre 
• Jurij Krpan, Kapelica Gallery for Contemporary Investigative Art
• Veronika Liebl, Ars Electronica
• Tere Badia, HacTe
• Moderator: Pau Alsina, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

11.00 -11.30
Coffee/Tea Break

11.30 – 13.30 | U0.3
European and Regional Policy Workshop (closed session)
This workshop aims to address the present and future of S+T+ARTS initiative, that deals with disciplinary and sectoral transversality as a main innovation strategy to face contemporary challenges in European territories.

Moderator: Gabriele Rosanna

11:30 – 12:00 | U0.1
[Open Area] Poster and Audiovisual presentations

12.00 – 13.30 | U0.2
IV Panel Discussion: ​​Epistemologies and Methodologies

13.30 – 15.00
Networking Lunch 

14:00 – 15:00 | U0.1
[Open Area] Poster and Audiovisual presentations

15:00 – 16.00 | U0.2 
Legacies of Transformative Collaborations: Insights from S+T+ARTS in the City
This session will critically examine the methodologies developed by the S+T+ARTS in the City to assess the impact of collaborative projects between artists, scientists, and technologists. Presenters will articulate the framework employed for generating assessment processes and share key findings and insights from the evaluation of the residency programme and the academies implemented across six European regions. The discussion will focus on enhancing transdisciplinary collaborations and will propose strategic tracks for future S+T+ARTS projects. 

Participants:

• Elisenda Ardèvol, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
• Laia Blasco, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
• Alba Colombo, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
• Anna Pinotti, HacTe
• Moderator: Aurélie Delater, GLUON

16.00 – 17.00 | U0.2 
Closing talk: Arts, Science, Technology and Society intersections: how to navigate them in practice?
– Keynote speaker: Nerea Calvillo, Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick
– Respondent: Laura Benítez, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

The intersections of Arts, Science, Technology and Society look good on paper, but they are inevitably messy, exciting, challenging and fragile – the ingredients required for innovation and change to emerge. However, how to navigate these intersections in practice? What is at stake at personal, professional, collective and institutional levels? Who -with whom, where, when- has the capacity, desire, courage – and privilege- to do so? What are the conditions that can facilitate, support, enhance, trigger or encourage these processes? The talk will explore these questions through the experience developing In The Air, an ongoing collaborative project to make visible – and sensible, knowable, questionable and an object of design – the material components of air and its pollution. Initiated in 2008 at a workshop in Medialab Prado (Madrid) and expanded through multiple iterations with different teams across countries, it allowed to grasp the material, institutional, affective, spatial, economic, elements that, looking back, were needed. 

Calvillo will also unpack how science and technology studies, feminist technoscience and transfeminist, intersectional and queer approaches have contributed to In The Air, both in theory and in practice. They have been the lens and sensibility that have shaped her and the project’s critical approach – and its contribution. They have also helped to navigate the ASTS intersections and to bring ethics and politics into the processes of knowledge, art and technology production. To -hopefully- contribute to more just changes.

17.00  – 17.30 | U0.2
Closing words

17.30 – 20.00
[Open Space] Closing reception and mingle

LOCATION

UOC, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. U Building. c/ del Perú, 52. 08018 Barcelona

S+T+ARTS in the City is co-funded by the European Union under grant agreement LC-01984766 under the STARTS – Science, Technology and Arts initiative of DG CONNECT. It is also supported by Generalitat de Catalunya.
HacTe is a member of Red ACTS.

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