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Second call for papers and presentations for The Experimental Society - closes 12 March.

The second call for papers and presentations for the closing Experimentality Conference, The Experimental Condition (7-9 July 2010), is now open and will close on 12 March 2010.  We encourage proposals for individual papers or for sessions of three papers, and proposals using various media from creative practitioners, researchers and postgraduates whose practice engages with the conference themes.

Workshop 3: Neal White, ‘Experimentality. The Experimental Site’

Neal White (Office of Experiments and Media School, Bournemouth University)  works across media, and in no particular medium at all – creating projects with the Office of Experiments that develop collaborative, social and critical spaces using art methods and art materials. His work operates along the fine line between how art thinks and the effect that art has as a social practice. Neal White has been associated with 0+1, formerly APG, Artists' Placement Group, for several years. Maintaining that art has always pushed the boundaries of the possible in terms of models of social collaboration and networking, Neal White's work looks at how these models can engage with other kinds of knowledge producing structure. The Office of Experiments is a structure for experimental cultural practices. Their work is based on the need for new forms of cultural practice, forms of contemporary artistic production that draw on critical lessons of former experimental movements, artists, thinkers and structures - and that seeks to disentangle these modes and systems of approach from the value systems that underline mass media, financial systems and contemporary art markets.

Workshop 3: Alan Collins, ‘Subjects in the early history of experimental psychology’

Alan Collins (Psychology, Lancaster University) introduced himself as a historian of psychology and opened his talk with apologies for the lack of originality of his paper, stating that familiarity is his main fear. Collins continued by describing the emergence of the experiments on human consciousness, both in the late 19th century Germany and in the USA. He explained that experiment is a badge of modernity and ‘constructing the subject’ (Danziger, 1990) is a common method in psychology.

Workshop 3: Rod Dickinson, ‘Experiments with an Audience’

Rod Dickinson (School of Creative Arts, University of the West of England) opened his presentation arguing that from the artistic perspective the idea of an experiment is interesting precisely because it requires participants rather than viewers. Dickinson explained how engagement was a key to the idea of Milgram experiment as well. He proceeded in explaining that he wants to introduce workshop participants to two examples (looking at some short video clips) of an attempt at reformulation of the idea of an audience.

Is there a quality / innovation link?

I cannot attend the innovation meeting as I am involved in Animated Exeter ( see later post) but it is an interesting topic. So far I have not made much of a case for looking at Plan-Do-Check/Study-Act as relevent for experimentality. In blog mode I am turning to blunt language, could go back to longer forms later.

Since "Making Quality Critical" by Wilkinson and Willmott I think people who study learning and leadership think of quality as rigid and restricting. Maybe this is because of experience in universities. But I still think it is an area worth studying.

dark side of mode two - draft story for ohmynews

I have done a blog post that may become a story for OhmyNews

http://learn9log.blogspot.com/2010/02/elearning-maturity-emerges-from-middle.html

There is a factual basis from the Learning Technologies show but towards the end is a comment on how application knowledge is regarded.

Conversations about Innovation, 16-18 February

A series of informal events around innovation, running from 16 to 18 February, have been organised around the visits to Lancaster University of Lucy Kimbell (Clark Fellow in Design Leadership at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford), Daria Loi (Research scientist, Intel USA) and Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (CEO and Co-Founder, Tinker.it!, London). For more information, click here.

Workshop 3: Bronislaw Szerszynski, ‘Experimental time and the event of politics’

Bronislaw Szerszynski (Sociology, Lancaster University) opened his presentation stating that he wants to use it as an opportunity to develop some ideas about experimental subjection, the being subjected to an experiment. He proceeded in arguing that the force of experimentality can be used as an analogy to the force of law (Agamben, 1998; 2005).

Workshop 3: Linsey McGoey, ‘Experimental dissidence: economies of credibility in drug regulation’

Linsey McGoey’s  (Science and Technology Studies, Oxford) presentation  can be read below in the original version:

Workshop 2: Richard Haley, ‘Experimenting with Extreme Cold’

Richard Haley (Physics, Lancaster University) started by thanking the organizers for a chance to talk to a totally different community, emphasizing the experimentality and importance of this interdisciplinary workshop. Furthermore, he invited the participants of the workshop to visit and explore his lab. Haley opened his presentation by explaining that the pursuit of extreme cold is a never-ending quest towards the “infinity” of the absolute zero of temperature at a very chilly -273.15 degrees Centigrade. He argued that the historical development of low temperature physics is a long story of cooling things down to see how they behave, with the hope that new physical discoveries will be made, and recognised. When the experimenters get lucky, Haley pointed out, these new discovered behaviours can be further exploited to create new technologies and tools to cool lower, and the cycle continues.

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