Gradcam
Epistemology in Science Technology, Art, Engineering and Maths
Staff Exchange (HE MSCA SE) 2023-2027
The main research objective of the Epistemology in Art, Science, Technology (EpisTeaM) consortium is to jointly develop through an international, intersectoral, interdisciplinary network with a common research programme for innovative strategies of technological mediation and innovation with a direct societal impact on knowledge construction (epistemology). The fundamental problem being addressed by the network is the negative impact of digital technologies (including machine learning) on the construction of knowledge and truth. This is an ‘epistemic crisis’ both inside and outside academia. The critical objective is to propose a model of epistemological diversification through transdisciplinary research that will be investigated through the intersections of Art, Science and Technology by an expansion of the boundaries between technological disciplines.
In the contemporary context of globalised computational conditions, the question of the impact of digital technologies on knowledge is often understood as a political misinformation (post-truth). However, there is also inbuilt epistemological conditioning taking place through the digital technologies themselves. To combat public distrust of science and technology, whether that be through climate denial or biased algorithms, there is an urgent need to interrogate how knowledge is being constructed through computational means. The traditional disciplinary epistemological frameworks and paradigms are currently being challenged by globalised computational models (AI), where reason and truth itself has been reduced to measurement, calculation, and probability. EpisTeaM will explore and challenge these dominant epistemological claims coming from AI and machine learning. Just as a biodiversity is necessary for the future sustainability of the planet, we argue so too is a ‘technodiversity’ within the ‘technosphere’ of globalised computation (Yuk Hui, 2023). A European consortium is ideally placed to develop new forms of technology based upon European values of social democracy. The EpisTeaM staff exchange is premised on the development of challenges to these dominant discourses by developing technodiversity, or other forms of technology, and noosdiversity, other forms of noesis (thoughts, cares, beliefs), through the development of a diversification of alternative Epistemologies with Art, Science and Technology.
The ECT Lab+ brings together leading researchers in the areas of Philosophy, Sociology, Media Studies. Most of the partners of EpisTEAM are successfully working together as part of the European University Initiative (The European University of Technology) and are members of European Culture Technology Lab+ (ECT Lab+), a pan European Research Institute developing questions of philosophy of technology including epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. Its networks are ideally placed to carry out this collaborative initiative. The ECT Lab+ partners are collaborating on Erasmus Plus Strategic Partnerships (KA 203), Ethics and Ecology in Technological Education and (KA220) Aesthetics, Ecology and Ethics in Technological Education. The main objective of EpisTeaM is to build on the findings and further the collaboration of these Erasmus Plus partnerships and to focus on the questions of epistemology at the intersection of Art, Science and Technology.
EpisteaM Consortium
The project will build on state of art research to further develop questions of digital technologies by investigating specific inter/transdisciplines and by offering alternative modes of epistemology including artistic and transdisciplinary research. Traditionally, epistemological questions have been addressed at a disciplinary level; EpisTeaM proposes to address these questions at a inter/transdisciplinary level. It is proposed that other forms of technology are necessary based on other modes of diversity where the calculation and probabilistic reasoning are challenged by the current climate crisis and a crisis of reasoning itself (post-truth, Chat GPT). The standardization of reason, language, interlocution through modes of optimisation and modes of value extraction through standardization, where value is solely conceived of as monetary value, needs to be challenged. The economic and ecological impacts of the current globalised technological crisis need to be addressed with new forms of transdisciplinary research which focus on the impacts digital technologies are having on the very construction of knowledge itself through art, science, and technology. The overall objectives are:
Reseach Objective (RO1) To develop a digital hermeneutic framework (WP1) and platform for deliberation (text, image, and speech) to demonstrate alternative epistemological processes in specific disciplines (Digital Studies, Architecture, New Media, Neuroscience and proton accelerator Physics).
Reseach Objective (RO2) To develop and implement a framework for responsible and ethical technological innovation (WP2), including technological impact assessments tools which incorporate a inter/transdisciplinary approach in specific disciplines (Architecture and the Built Environment, Neuroscience, and Media Studies).
Reseach Objective (RO3) To develop and investigate specific examples of contemporary epistemological challenges related to cognition and emotion (WP3) using machine learning. EpisTeaM will research the ethical and epistemological impacts of post-human embodied cognition leading to epistemic values.
Reseach Objective (RO4) To develop alternative epistemologies (WP4) through the new modes of experimentation (technological failures and fabulations) and alternative histories of technological evolution. These modes of experimentation will be embedded in specific techno-scientific contexts (AI, Particle Physics, Architecture).
EpisTeaM’s starting point is the complex process of mapping (mapping disciplinary boundaries, mapping epistemological positions, mapping of data) and a critical analysis of the multi-layered nature of contemporary epistemology. This research team proposes an epistemology that is located within a genealogy of thinking that understands epistemology and technology as a mode of technē (technical practices that influence the way in which knowledge construction takes place), that possesses an irreducible political and social dimension. Framing the question of contemporary technology (technics) through epistemology enables the critical assessment of the impacts of digital technologies on knowledge construction. Existing traditional paradigms of disciplinary knowledge construction and individual knowledge and identity construction, as open-ended processes, are being challenged by the current technological climate. Currently, computational modes (AI) have come to dominate disciplinary modes of knowledge production, short circuiting the very modes of individuation and thought construction by optimisation and standardisation techniques. The place of technology (including instruments, measurement, and AI) within this epistemological disciplinary construction will be critically examined through the lens of specific disciplines: Architecture, Neuroscience, Fundamental Physics, and New Media Arts.
https://www.nestproject.eu/
NEST is an intercontinental and intersectoral project that links academic research with social and artistic practices to carry out theoretical inquiry on the relationship between digital technologies, living systems and the production of knowledge within territorialized laboratories forming networks of localities. The project is based on contributory research: a method combining traditional academic, artistic, technological and industrial approaches with urban/rural research practices in order to constitute territorial communities integrating different forms of knowledge (practical and theoretical). The heart of the project is a mobility program for an international exchange of researchers and staff across academic and non-academic sectors of NEST actors, which allows the articulation of local territorial situations with planetary concerns in the context of the Anthropocene.
The project rehearses the potential of territorialized knowledge based on a hypothesis that digital diversification conditions the resilience of human societies and holds the key for redesigning the self-destructive model of economic development. Digital diversification – understood as noodiversity (the diversity of the forms of knowledge) and technodiversity (the diversity of technologies as the supports of knowledge) – is believed to support the revaluation of knowledge and to offer a sustainable alternative to the knowledge-unfriendly model of computing platforms.
The principle motive behind NEST is to respond to the generalized proletarianization (the loss of knowledge: the knowledge of how to live, how to do and how to think) asa consequence of the predatory cult of technological innovation, which drives short-sighted markets and destroys localities. Revaluating the vital link between knowledge and locality, the project seeks to invert the direction of technological development and to respond to the systemic crises of the Anthropocene: climate change, biodiversity loss, virological crisis, growing distrust of science, the excess of information, disinformation and the regime of post-truth, understood as the consequences of the misuses of technics and technologies.
The project rests on three Work Packages, each responsible for a set of situated research and practical actions.
Work package 1: Critique of Computer Theory and Design of a New Ecology of the Digital extends the critique of digital technology already undertaken by the digital studies network. It aims to reconsider the foundations of computer theory in relation to the concepts of locality, negentropy, anti-entropy, data economy and networked AI by developing the concepts of technodiversity and cosmotechnics. The main objective of WP1 is to develop methods from the Digital Studies network in relation to singular ecological contexts where the questions of locality, negentropy and others can be addressed with regard to social practices. This is to defy the current context of big data and artificial intelligence, where thought (noesis) and language seem reducible to calculation and to computational models of language processing respectively. To question entropy (optimisation, standardisation) requires the encouragement of other forms of thought (noodiversity) by means of new philosophical concepts (e.g. cosmotechnics, technodiversity) and, consequently, the maximization of the negentropic (ecological) potential of digital technologies. WP1 explore historical computer foundations and current computer theory for the design of new ecological and organological forms of computation. This WP is led by IRI and UPL that have complementary experience in digital studies and noetic perspectives. Their critique of computation will go alongside organological research that experiments with human and computer functionalities in the living territories (see WP2 and WP3), combining the theory of computation with human computer interface design and artistic research. WP1 entails mobility between researchers from TU Dublin and Uartes and IRI and CSSD as well as exchanges between researchers from Paris Lumiere, TU Dublin, Uartes and Berkeley. The interaction between academic and non-academic partners will allow for the implementation of the theoretical models into specific contexts;
Work package 2: Existential Territorial Laboratories – Locality and Noodiversity aims to rehearse and introduce new forms of collective responsibility through territorial experimentation, enabling new forms of citizen participation in local governance by means of contributory research. This is to create ‘therapeutic niches,’ that is the local cultivation of knowledge via ‘therapeutic of diversity’ in order to recreate local dynamics between bio- and technodiversity and to reconstruct more sustainable urban, peri-urban and insular territories. WP2 has two main objectives. First, it aims to provide international experience of contributory research methodologies to academics and citizens. Second, it aims to enable researchers from different disciplines to engage in localized research projects (e.g. in Paris, Ecuador, Dublin, Dąbrowa Coal Basin). WP2 will include the development of research methodologies through digital studies, contributory research and artistic research to engage with citizens and localized, real world problems (for example: the implementation of scientific norms in relation to fishing Islands, the development of digital literacy for young adults and teenagers in relation to the use of social media within specific community). The leader and the main beneficiary of WP2 – UARTES – offers an outstanding experience in territorial experimentation and socially engaged projects. IRI and University of Silesia will support WP2 and learn from UARTES’ experience of contributory research and its implementation. Effects of WP2 will be discussed in an international forum generated during the ERs and ESRs secondments in these territories. All partners will be invited to take part in the development of a toolkit, which will be tested in a variety of social contexts. Among the expected outcomes of WP2 will be the toolkit for territorial experimentation and for smart territorial development and organization implemented by means of networking events (exhibitions, workshops).
Work package 3: The Archipelago of the Living intends to develop a network of territorial laboratories of digital contributory research in order to study constraints on living archipelagos with regard to the ecological niches of species that inhabit the same territories. This is to generate local understandings of singularities and functional cooperations between territorial laboratories and academics in light of the planetary threat. WP3 is a contributory research program that will bring together fishermen, farmers and inhabitants of insular territories exposed to tourism flows as well as academic researchers from various disciplines, including biologists, geographers, computing theorists, artists, economists and lawyers. WP3 aims to develop the modes of contributory research and contributive economies in local territories by drawing on the studies from WP1 and the experiments from WP2. WP3 will expand from the urban experimentations in WP2 to rural implementation in territories and islands (morphological and metaphorical) to systematically explore relations between humans and other species in the contexts of rurality and urbanity (urban agriculture, urban recycling and upcycling). The aim here is to develop intersectoral solutions (academic and non-academic) which take into account local contexts (localities) and which maximize the possibilities coming from digital technologies to harness the singularities and value of living territories and the cooperation between the living lab territories and academic laboratories. The secondments of WP3 will focus on the development of contributory research within different rural localities including L’Île-Saint-Denis, the Galapagos Islands, and Sherkin Island.
EU academic partners: – Technological University Dublin (Ireland) (consortium leader) – Institut de recherche et d’innovation IRI (France) – Université Paris Lumières (France) – University of Silesia (Poland) Third Country academic partners: – Universidad de las Artes (Ecuador) – University of California Berkeley (US) Non-academic partners, – Dublin City Council (Ireland) – Disnovation (France) – Conseil Départemental Seine-Saint Denis (France) – Fabryka Pełna Życia The Living Factory – The Galápagos Islands Government Council (Ecuador)
GradCAM is a partner of the newly established research centre for Arts and Humanities within the European University of Technology. Phd students and Staff within GradCAM are participating the development of the ECT Lab
The European Culture and Technology Laboratory, ECT Lab+, is a key component of the European University of Technology.
ECT Lab+, as a transdisciplinary collaborative structure, conducts cutting-edge research and in-depth investigations into the nature and function of technology. Its objective is to clarify and promote a specific European model around technology while helping legal and regulatory frameworks to evolve in a relevant direction.
Following its formal establishment on February 4, 2020, ECT Lab+‘s mission is to:
ReaLsMs (Real Smart Cities) is a 3 year Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action funded research project conducted under the auspices of RISE (Research and Innovation Staff Exchange). The overarching objective of the ReaLsMS is to develop and implement a critical perspective on the Smart City and Smart City discourses through critical humanities research and innovation.
ReaLsMs notes that our relationship to the city has changed radically with the development of the Smart City and Data City technologies. The use of digital technology in the management of urban life is being celebrated through its potential for enhancement. Underpinning ReaLsMs’ mission, however, is the recognition that it is necessary to retain a space for critical engagement in conjunction with the incorporation of technological developments, especially as Smart Cities are transforming the rights and responsibilities of urban inhabitants.
Our research will be achieved through the collaboration of academic and non-academic partners based across Europe and Ecuador, and facilitated through an extensive series of secondments of established and early stage researchers between partner organisations.
The joint research fields of ReaLsMs will be the development of historical and philosophical underpinnings of the Data City and the implementation of the Smart City within local governance structures. Taking a transdisciplinary approach, the key to this Research Exchange is developing new modes of participation for citizens in the Smart City while providing opportunities for engagement through the illumination of technological infrastructures.
https://twitter.com/ReaLsMsRISE
GradCAM with Prof. Noel Fitzpatrick is a founding member of the Digital Studies Network based at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris at the Institute of Research and Innovation. This network is lead by the French Philosopher Bernard Stiegler and has for aim the critical examination of Digital Technologies and their impact on the construction of Knowledge (epistemology) and on cultural production (Aesthetics). The research hub based at Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media in Dublin has for focus the critical examination of technologies and cultural production. The Graduate School has a number of PhD researchers and Staff undertaking research in this area at the intersection of artistic practice and the use of new technologies. GradCAM hosts the Digital Studies Seminar which takes place at the Campus in Grangegorman for further information see seminar pages on this website.
“Today every academic discipline is affected by digital technologies, but we do not possess sufficient theoretical models to study how they influence knowledge, on an epistemological level (in the sense of Gaston Bachelard). We believe that this issue should be analyzed across all academic disciplines, each of which should maintain their differences whilst also recognizing common appointments, and hence the consequences of this at an epistemic level (in the sense of Michel Foucault). This idea is the basis of what we call “digital studies”.
The Digital Studies Network was launched by the Institute for Research and Innovation during the 2012 Talks on the New Industrial World. It brings together researchers from many countries who share in the fundamental thesis of “digital studies,” and informally explore, through seminars and workshops, as well as a contributory website (digital-studies.org). All network members can participate in this contributory research by publishing their own web content (e.g. text, video, audio recording, etc.).
The call for Digital Studies is available here Digital Studies, other members of the Digital Studies Network include University of California, Berkeley, CalArts, Tufts University, Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne, Goldsmiths London, Durham university, Leuphana University of Luneburg, Institut de recherche et innovation, Universite Technologique de Compiegne.
For further information about the Digital Studies Network and its activities see the Digital Studies Website.
GradCAM is the lead partner of the SHARE project. ELIA and GradCAM, Dublin jointly coordinate SHARE – Step-change for Higher Arts Research and Education. The European Commission has selected the project for structural funding over the period 2010-2013.
36 graduate schools and institutions engaged in third-cycle research in the arts take part, representing almost all European countries.
SHARE consists of three networks, working independently:
Further working groups are concerned with the validation, advocacy, and dissemination of artistic research; conferences in Copenhagen, London, and Brussels are planned.
GradCAM is a lead partner in the European Artistic Research Network and will be host ‘Thinking on Stage’ EARN symposium in Dublin in May 2014. See European Artistic Research Network for more information : EARN
