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THIS IS THE YASMIN-DISCUSSIONS DIGEST
Today's Topics:
1. WWWWASP Discussion (YASMIN DISCUSSIONS)
2. WWWWASP Discussion - Reply to Annick Bureaud 2?
(YASMIN DISCUSSIONS)
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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2019 11:22:22 +0800
From: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr>
To: "=?utf-8?B?eWFzbWluX2Rpc2N1c3Npb25zQG50bGFiLmdy?="
<yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr>
Subject: [Yasmin_discussions] WWWWASP Discussion
Message-ID:
<mailman.6.1573406761.22026.yasmin_discussions_ntlab.gr@ntlab.gr>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Jing (CJ) Chen, Professor of Arts, Associate Director of the Art and Cultural Innovation and Creativity (ACIC) Lab, Nanjing University.
Based at the School of Arts in Nanjing University, the Art and Cultural Innovation and Creativity (ACIC) Lab is pursuing to merge the gap between the arts/culture and science/technology and provide the hands-on opportunities for non-trained students from the different disciplines to work together and with experienced scientists, researchers, and technicians from universities, enterprises and institutes. We launched this project in 2017 and have organized a series of workshops on Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Service Design, Geographic Information System, and Text mining, etc. and more than 500 students have been taken the courses and started their projects.
The idea behind the lab is that we think students are potential scientists and artists without a fixed and stable indemnity of scientists or artists. They may work in different fields but with the scientist thinking, creative ability, artistic aesthetics, and digital literacy, which are embedded in the workshop, courses, seminars, and lectures designed by us. The lab plays the role of platform and coordination and provides the opportunity for students to try something new, get in touch with some person they want to know and experience things they never expected.
However, doing this in China or Chinese universities is not very easy. Firstly, we have a very strong discipline tradition so all the resources are distributed based on the disciplines. The lab is cross-disciplinary and requests the fund and faculties from multi-disciplines. It?s even harder for us to collaborate with scientists in our university than others. Secondly, the students we recruited are mostly from humanities rather than sciences and engineering which causes additional difficulties for teaching since humanities students don?t know much about the technology, software, and tools. We are adjusting our strategies all the time to find a better way to get students into the environment comfortably and confidently. Thirdly, the collaboration between us and scientists in China is still rare. It happens mostly at the individual level and hard to get funds supported. The biggest obstacle is the revaluation of the outcome. The two or three culture idea is widely accepted by scientists, artists/humanists, which make them don?t think it?s necessary to talk to each other. Recently because the AI booming in China, more scientists and artists notice the value of the combination of art and technology but there is still a big gap between the two sides. They don?t know how to talk to each other due to lacking understanding.
I have faith in young people but I also think what we do is important. If we can bridge the gap and provide more dialogue opportunities for artists and scientist then the young people would be easier to get understand and practice with two parts without fear and hesitation.
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2019 13:09:48 +1100
From: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr>
To: yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr
Subject: [Yasmin_discussions] WWWWASP Discussion - Reply to Annick
Bureaud 2?
Message-ID:
<mailman.7.1573406824.22026.yasmin_discussions_ntlab.gr@ntlab.gr>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
I had the feeling that my last reply to Annick was slightly soft, in the
sense to propose a kind of balance between micro-actions and institutional
engagement. And this could be kind of good practice: equilibrium, balance,
dialogue, ... However, maybe in our highly conflicting present we should
try, or to push to harder statements. Let s see how it goes:
In the same direction of the re-designing science program, I think Art/Sci
institutionalization could serve as a framework to stop a possible
fake-science scenario. This is just entering into a deep political action,
although educational too. Nowadays, science research is governed by
excellence and elite criteria, and I m sure that the same is happening in
all research areas. So, we are quantifying our research validity by
rankings, impact factors, number of papers, ... We are just including
marketing and economical criteria into our science method, as for example
pay to publish, publish or perish, ... All of this is just re-defining the
meaning of science productivity, and indirectly could be is affecting the
self science core: our methods.
With our actual stability crisis (it is very hard nowadays to find a
permanent research position, ..., and being general, to ind a permanent
job) it is very difficult (may be even impossible, or just even
intentionally not possible) to not deviate our science objectives just to a
personal CV objectives, which in practice now is occupying most of our
careers time. Someone could say that this happened always, and in some
extent can be true. Not sure. But maybe nowadays is much more intense. You
can just check the medium age to be established in academia. > 40. But,
academia, ... this word is intriguing too. Does it mean nowadays anything?
So, may be now science is just personal company business? Isn't this what
entrepreneur means? What does it mean Academia today?
All these, for sure, is affecting to our methods, and research approaches.
Today it is much more relevant to publish a super high impact factor paper,
than to publish a relevant scientific result. And this is feed by our
market trajectory. One can argue that one (market) just feeds the second
(scientific result), as it happens in the housing market (the higher the
price, the higher the quality). However, in my point of view, we are very
close to just establish a new fake word here: fake science.
This can be a very long debate, but in my point of view the art/sci program
could modify, or maybe amplify, these frictions inside science. With
art/sci institutional support you can pull the flow in one direction, or
just in the opposite. Art/sci inside science can be understood just as
another marketing tool, just to visualize and sell in a more attractive
fashion our "personal-named-company" products, or, just in the other case,
serve as a stimulus to recover a different approach to define our science
productivity, or to recover it from the past.
In summary, Art/Sci institutional support could help for the science
activism, long term productivity and knowledge not market biased, to join
directions like open science, slow science, citizen science..., where may
be an old understanding of what science mean is trying to be preserved. In
essence, Art/Sci institutional support it can help not only to do better
science (via including higher technological ways to represent, visualize
and interpret data), but to preserve the sense of its own long term
productivity, where the outcomes are not easily visualized, and where
difference and diversity are necessary research items.
Of course this can be done via the micro-actions too, and maybe even more
intensely, or more effectively, as it is kind of conflicting social issue.
But for sure it could represent an opportunity window in this direction.
So, may be the balance approach is not bad at all.
Best wishes,
Guillermo.
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End of Yasmin_discussions Digest, Vol 18, Issue 1
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