All events

This is a listing of all events connected with the experimentality programme. You can also view the events grouped as workshop or arts events.

Seminar with Melinda Cooper

15 April, 2010, Bowland North Seminar Room 23, Lancaster University

Experiments and Accidents

Melinda Cooper

16.00-18.00

All welcome

Submitted by Experimentality on 8 April, 2010 - 17:18
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The City Experiment at FutureEverything

13 May, 2010 - 14 May, 2010, Manchester - Contact Theatre and other venues
  • How should we understand the contemporary city and its role in shaping the future?
  • How do the scale, density, heterogeneity and connectedness of cities accelerate social and technical experimentation and the production of new hybrid forms?
  • How are cities used as experimental spaces by public and private institutions?
  • How are cities likely to evolve under the demographic, economic, technological and environmental pressures of the 21st century?
  • How can experimental interventions in the arts and social sciences help to make visible the hidden patterns of city life, and possible future trajectories?
  • How might a greater appreciation of the intrinsic experimentality of urban culture enable new and more open-ended possibilities for social life?

The City Experiment explored the contemporary city as a distinctive social and material form which accelerates cultural and technical experimentation and hybridisation. In conference sessions, public debates, workshops and art events during the 2010 FutureEverything festival, we explored the ways which the city itself can be made more experimental, how art can be used to intervene in urban spaces, altering the implicit rules governing social interactions and provoking reflection and new creative possibilities for social life. Manchester was used as an example, but we also drew upon other city experiences globally.

Submitted by Experimentality on 10 October, 2009 - 10:46
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Scarlett Thomas at Litfest

25 May, 2010, The Auditorium, The Storey, Lancaster

In a special event organised by Litfest in collaboration with Lancaster University's Experimentality programme, Scarlett Thomas read from and discussed her latest novel, Our Tragic Universe.

'I was reading about the end of the universe when I got a text message from my friend Libby . . .' If Kelsey Newman's theory about the end of time is true, we are all going to live forever. But for Meg – locked in a dead-end relationship and with a deadline long-gone for a book that she can't write – this thought fills her with dread. Meg is lost in a labyrinth of her own devising. But could there be an important connection between a wild beast living on Dartmoor, a ship in a bottle, the science of time, a knitting pattern for the shape of the universe and the Cottingley Fairies? Or is her life just one long chain of coincidences? Smart, entrancing and buzzing with big ideas, Our Tragic Universe is a book about how relationships are created and destroyed, and how a story might just save your life.

Submitted by Experimentality on 5 May, 2010 - 08:38
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Royal Society Debate: 'The Experimental Society: What Happens when Evidence, Uncertainty and Politics Collide?'

28 June, 2010, Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX

SPC debate imageSPC debate imageThe experimental society: What happens when evidence, uncertainty and politics collide?

Scientists were once imagined ‘speaking truth to power'. Today they are more likely to be accused of playing politics.

Submitted by Experimentality on 28 May, 2010 - 12:09

International Conference - The Experimental Society

7 July, 2010 - 9 July, 2010, Lancaster University

Keywords:

science / politics / economy / publics / religion / music / art
education / design / media / advertising / technology
laboratory / simulating / making / performing / testing / trial
democracy / reflexivity / creativity / event / revolution

The idea of experimentation was at the heart of modernity’s promise of human freedom and self-determination. But is the experiment now too complicit with power to act as a carrier of hope? To close the year-long Experimentality programme, which involved collaborations with the University of Manchester, the Royal Society, FutureEverything and a range of academic and art organisations, participants at this international conference debated different visions of an experimental society in which the emancipatory potential of the experiment could be renewed.

Plenary speakers:

  • David Byrne (University of Durham)
  • Dieter Daniels (Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig)
  • Bülent Diken (Lancaster University)
  • Josephine Green (Social Innovation, Philips Design)
  • Stephanie Koerner (University of Manchester)
  • Michael Krätke (Lancaster University)
  • Scott Lash (Goldsmiths, University of London)
  • John Milbank (University of Nottingham)
  • Helga Nowotny (European Research Council)
  • James Wilsdon (Royal Society)
  • Brian Wynne (Lancaster University)

Submitted by Experimentality on 29 September, 2009 - 07:56
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Experimentality: The Exhibition

7 July, 2010 - 15 July, 2010, Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster University

In this exhibition, artists responded in strikingly different ways to the themes that were explored in the Experimentality programme. Some artworks explored how experimentation blurs the boundary between truth and deception, and between enlightenment and cruelty, in disturbing ways.

Submitted by Experimentality on 10 July, 2010 - 09:52
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Experiments End - an evening of live art, music and video

8 July, 2010, Barkers House Farm, Lancaster University

Submitted by Experimentality on 27 June, 2010 - 10:45
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