Workshop 1: The Experimental Condition - blogs now online
On Thursday 15 and Friday 16 October, around fifty people gathered for the launch event of the Experimentality programme. Participants enjoyed twelve papers that explored the notion of experimentality in relation to a variety of domains, a performance of Ringside by the performance artist Mem Morrison, and a great deal of very lively discussion. The blog postings on the presentations and discussion from the workshop can now be viewed online.
Many thanks to Diana Stypinska for her hard work getting the posts online. To view all of them, go to the tag 'workshop 1' (they'll display in reverse chronological order). To view an individual item, follow the links in the programme below.
We encourage you to register with the site, log in, and post your reactions to the different ideas explored in the workshop. The easiest way to do that is to add a 'comment' at the bottom of a post.
I look forward to the unfolding discussion over the year, both at events and online!
Bronislaw Szerszynski, Experimentality programme director
Thursday 15 October 2009
13.30 – 14.00 Introduction
Michael Krätke (Director, IAS, Lancaster University) – Welcome
Bronislaw Szerszynski (Sociology, Lancaster University) – Introducing the Experimentality programme
14.00 – 15.00 Homo experimentalis
Robin Skeates (Archaeology, University of Durham) ‘Archaeology as/and experiment’
Christina Toren (Anthropology, University of St. Andrews) ‘'Ethnography as ontological experiment’
15.30 – 16.30 Historical perspectives on Western experimentalism
Stephen Pumfrey (History, Lancaster University) ‘On the emergence of modern experimentalism: the Renaissance and after’
Stephanie Koerner (University of Manchester) 'Rethinking Art and Science’s Histories – Implications for Cautious Promethean ‘Ways of Knowing’
16.30 – 17.00 Response to the afternoon’s papers, and discussion
Geoffrey Lloyd (Needham Research Institute, Cambridge)
Friday 16 October
Bronislaw Szerszynski - Introduction to second day
09.30 – 11.00 Experiment in Art and Science
David Lomas (AHRC Surrealism Centre, University of Manchester) ‘Simulation and Experiment in Surrealism’
Cornelius Borck (Institute for History of Medicine and Science Studies, University of Lübeck) ‘Dancing With the Brain: Voodoo Science, False Colours, and Attentive Failures’
11.15 – 12.45 The University as an Experimental System
Marion McClintock (Honorary Archivist, Lancaster University) ‘The Post-War UK University’
Bogdan Costea (Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster University) ‘Managerialism, Creativity and the Academy’
13.45 – 15.15 The Age of the Generalised Experiment
Michael Dillon (Politics and International Relations, Lancaster University) ‘Warfare as Experiment’
Nigel Thrift (Vice-Chancellor, University of Warwick) ‘The Transformation of Contemporary Capitalism’
15.30 – 17.00 Innovation as Collective Experimentation
Melissa Leach (STEPS, University of Sussex) ‘Experimenting with development’
Brian Wynne (CESAGen, Lancaster University) ‘Experiment, memory and social learning’
