WRITING

INTERVIEW WITH PEN

PEN (Public Engagement with Nano-based Emerging Technologies) is a newsletter by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan. They published a translated (Japanese) version of this interview in their August 2011 Newsletter.

Please introduce yourself briefly (such as organizational affiliation and major) and your current activities (or projects).

My name is Cathrine Kramer and I work internationally as an artist, designer, researcher and curator. I'm inspired by human ecology, and enjoy creating playful scenarios that investigate our relationships to each other and the environments we live in. My experimental practice employs a range of collaborations, objects, performance, digital media, graphics, animation and food to uncover the good, the bad and the ugly of life on Spaceship Earth. Most recently, I've been working collaboratively on the development of the Center for Genomic Gastronomy and I'm a visiting lecturer in the Design & Environment MA at Goldsmiths College, London.

Please explain how you came to conceive the idea of Nano Ice Cream Van at first and relevant activities thus far.

The Cloud Project was conceived of as a spectacle for public engagement and debate and I think the issues and questions the project raises about nanotechnology and geo-engineering are still very relevant. I developed the project in collaboration with Zoe Papadopoulou and we have toured around the UK and Ireland in our ice cream van, visiting various cultural events. Along the way, we have hosted a series of interesting talks and interviews in the van - from Dr. Andrew Maynard (Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies) to the artist Julie Freeman.

The van is currently on its longest journey yet. It will be exhibited at the National Museum of China in Beijing in September as part of the What If exhibition at the Beijing International Design Triennial.

Your major is design. Please explain how you became interested in nanotechnology. Is there any relevant class or program in Royal College of Art you graduated from?

I graduated in 2009 from the Design Interactions department which has a unique focus on the implications (rather than applications) of emerging technologies. I was introduced to nanotechnology through presentations to the department by Dr. Richard Jones (author of Soft Machines) and Dr. Mark Miodownik (Materials Library, London). My class was asked how design can help make the invisible, tangible. This was the initial inspiration for the Cloud Project.

Design Interactions offered a great community of peers and mentors that encouraged experimentation and putting old skills to new uses, which has greatly influenced the kind of work I do and what kind of collaborations I seek out.

You probably have met many people while riding the Nano Ice Cream Van. How did they think about nanotechnology?

Most people from the 'public' have a vague notion that nanotechnology is dealing with very small things, but haven't given it much consideration. Through exhibiting the van we experienced firsthand the challenges of engaging a general audience in a critical dialogue around a highly complex subject. One thing I have learnt through this process is that for conversations to move beyond basic explanations I have to be more conscious of what the person-on-the-street brings with them ahead of time. However, I do think we achieved some success in assembling multiple stakeholders of various expertise in one geographic location to converse and debate.  That is one of the values of mobile media architecture. (And may be a reflection of my obsession with the architect group AntFarm).

What is your opinion about nanotechnology-related public engagement activities (their goals, objects, and content)? What do you expect from such activities?

I think when experts talk about nanotechnology they have to be specific and open to the idea that non-experts can have valuable insights. Nanotechnology is not a discipline, but an umbrella term for people working with materials on the nanoscale, and therefore encompasses a huge variety of scientific and engineering fields of inquiry. Each field has it's own set of concerns and constraints that need to be discussed and addressed with specificity.

For example, I went to a nanotechnology and food conference (for scientists and the food industry) where public engagement was only talked about as a way of mitigating risk. The main concern of the scientists attending was that negative public opinion would affect their ability to do research (still haunted by the public debates discussing the ban of GMOs in the UK a few years earlier). This is very different to the concerns of a materials scientist researching magnetism and spin electronics.

The Cloud Project is driven by an artistic curiosity, and is trying to explore the idea of how non-experts can engage with emerging technologies in a meaningful manner. It attempts to be non-partisan in this pursuit, encouraging a thoughtful and critical discussion of technologies and their place in society. It also allows for imagination and creativity to enter discussions about science. This is something the scientists we encountered found exciting, moving beyond their specific realm of expertise and beyond the engineering mindset to think holistically about the role of emerging technologies.

I recently attended an Art/Science Nanotechnology conference in France. Rather than asking interesting questions and considering wider implications of the tools they were using I felt that most of the artistic engagements with the science were limited to a banal visualization of 'artworks' on the nanoscale, largely devoid of any critical discourse.

What I've observed (especially during NanoWeek in Ireland) is that nanotechnology is often presented to the public through terms of economic value and benefits, and the conversation lacks a critical intellectual engagement. I think this is a reflection of a wider trend within academia, where research is driven by commercial applications and economic outcomes. Universities are becoming degree mills, perpetuating the ideology that ideas are valuable only by what they are worth in monetary terms. I think this is a problematic development, as it undervalues cultural, environmental and political concerns that we as a society should engage with.

We consider that public engagement activities related with scientific technologies are actively going on in Britain. How are such public engagement activities or science communications taking place?

Dissemination of acquired knowledge is strongly emphasized from the main funding bodies in the UK. As a component of this, public engagement has been promoted within universities through projects such as the National Coordinating Center for Public Engagement and funding bodies such as the Wellcome Trust.

DEMOS is a think tank "focused on power and politics. Our unique approach challenges the traditional, 'ivory tower' model of policymaking by giving a voice to people and communities, and involving them closely in our research." They conducted a formative 2-year study called NanoDialogues, completed in 2008 (which you can download for free here: www.demos.co.uk/files/Nanodialogues%20-%20%20web.pdf). The study represents a milestone in the discourse surrounding what public engagement should and could be. With an aim to re-imagine the relationship between science and democracy, it maps out difficulties and benefits of public engagement and its potential to "help us to shape innovation trajectories, strengthen the public value of technologies and open up new spaces for political leadership." (p.19).

What many of the funding bodies are concerned with is dissemination, but as demos suggests, public engagement shouldn't just be about the communication of science. It should question and challenge why, how and for whom research is done. By doing this, public engagement and participatory research models could become a method for knowledge creation and not simple transference of knowledge.

Please introduce activities or projects that draw special attention or you are paying attention to (they will be alright even though they are not related with nanotechnology).

Public Lab - publiclaboratory.org
An exciting group who use a participatory research model to change how people see the world in environmental, social, and political terms.

Open Source Ecology - opensourceecology.org/ Are creating high performance, low cost, open source industrial machines for farming.

SymbioticA - symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/
"SymbioticA is an artistic laboratory dedicated to the research, learning, critique and hands-on engagement with the life sciences."

Sangama - sangama.srishti.ac.in/
An Art-Science lab in Bangalore, India

The Science Gallery - sciencegallery.com
An institution at Trinity college that is successfully engaging the public in scientific discourse.

The Center for Genomic Gastronomy - genomicgastronomy.com
Engaged in exploring, examining and understanding the genomes and biotechnologies that make up the human food systems of planet earth.

The Oil Drum - theoildrum.com/
A blog where scientists, engineers (especially in the petroleum industry) and citizens candidly discuss the future of energy.

I think one clear trend seen in the projects I've mentioned is a desire amongst people to create clearer distinctions between science and business. If a technology is developed within a corporate framework, keeping the research closed and unverifiable by independent sources, should we still call it science? Above are some experiments that are testing new models (both financial and ideological) for research and development within science and technology. My interest in science is as a non-expert, but I think ideally public engagement can encourage more non-experts to start to take part actively, through participatory research models, in discussing how emerging technologies are introduced and adopted by society.

We know that you are scheduled to take part in the Beijing International Design Triennial held in China in September. Which exhibition activities do you participate in? The Triennial homepage has the section named Design for Debate and do you participate in the debate? If so, what messages do you intend to deliver?

Seeing as this is a design space, I think the main debate will be a meta conversation about the role of art and design. I'm afraid I won't be accompanying the van personally, but my collaborator Zoe Papadopoulou will be there to talk to visitors, and hopefully host some interviews with local scientists.

All the media coverage about cloud seeding during the Beijing Olympics was one of the major inspirations for the Cloud Project, and so there's something poetic about the van ending up there for what might turn out to be its final show.

China is very enthusiastic and vocal about its national cloud seeding activities, so I'm interested to see what the reactions will be to the Cloud Project and what the attitude of our visitors are with regards to weather modification technologies. In some ways this will be our most challenging exhibit, but by being explicit and using humor to describe this technology, I hope the van creates a platform for cognitive disruption by presenting an appealing narrative that doesn't quite compute.

What do you think of design’s roles in terms of scientific technologies’ social implications?

I aspire to Buckminster Fuller's definition of a designer:

"A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist."

For me, it's not sufficient to work as a commercial designer, preoccupied with fleeting tastes and helping a company excel in a consumer landscape by profit-maximising through design. In my work I want to take into account a broader range of concerns and consider a wider range of stakeholders. We are slowly seeing a trend where more and more designers are interrogating and challenging their traditional role in society.

I'm very interested in science and technology, especially how it has captivated the public's imagination for the past millennia. As an amateur enthusiast, I'm interested in how science is performed, perceived and communicated - embodying hopes and fears - and I think it's important for people to have a general scientific literacy to participate in the discourse of the role of science and technology in society.

The production of scientific knowledge is always embedded within existing social, economic and political agendas and patterns. For example, despite claims from pundits, no new technology can single-handedly end food insecurity. This is a much more complex problem and must also rely on public policies, economics and social justice.

“Once a new technology is out in the world anyone can use it. At that point it becomes a weapon in human conflicts and an embodiment of human dreams.”
(Grey, John, Heresies, Against Progress and Other Illusions, London: Granta Publications, 2004, p. 21)

Please let us know the recipe of your Nano Ice Cream.

Ingredients:
- your favorite ice-cream mixture or yoghurt
- Liquid Nitrogen in a small, easy to handle dewar.

Method:
- Place the ice-cream mixture into a large plastic bowl.
- Make sure to be wearing gloves, safety goggles and a labcoat.
- Pour some liquid nitrogen into the bowl and continuously stir the mixture with a wooden spoon until LN has evaporated.
- Repeat previous step making sure to stir vigorously until the contents of the bowl have an ice-cream texture.

Agitating the mixture while adding liquid nitrogen prevents the ice crystals that form from growing beyond the nano scale, resulting in a super fine–grained (nano) ice cream with a velvety soft texture. Yummy!

Japanese also love ice cream. Do you have any plan to introduce your Nano Ice Cream (your activities) to Japan?

We have no specific plans of going to Japan with the Cloud Project, although we'd love to some day.

05|08|2011

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PLANETARY SCULPTURE
By the Contestational Climate Institute

Climate Change. Try for a moment to remove all of the political and emotional
baggage that comes with this term and see it for what it is. The climate is
changing. From the planet's perspective, this is neither good nor bad, it is
just one of the interconnected processes that drive its ongoing evolution from
one state to another. Now if we infuse that realization with some human sentiment
andcuriosity, many questions arise, but most fundamental is the question of our
ongoing survival as a species and if/how we can sustain life on Earth.

What has become increasingly evident is that we rely on complex systems that
regulate the planet and that anthropogenic activities have had some effect on
those processes. We have a long and checkered history of trying to control the climate,
and although none of the dedicated interventions have been marked successes,
we have always been GeoHackers. Our existence alone, as entities of production
and consumption, infer that we alter our surrounding environment. As such, trying
to curb our consumption is counter-intuitive, and we need to shift the discourse
from one of doing less to one of doing more.

Assuming that we want to continue the human project, what strategies can we
implement to encourage a temperate biosphere? The latest GeoEngineering proposals
offer invasive strategies as solutions to control biospheric flows, and yet seem
to perpetuate an arrogance and the dichotomic narrative of the battle between humans
and nature. Moving beyond that positioning, the Center for Contestational Climate
proposes Planetary Sculpture as a new mental model for evolutionary/survivalist
strategies. The term accepts the fact that we perpetually carve our presence into
our terrestrial home, but suggests we do so creativity, thoughtfully and with
reflection, taking into account a wider range of actors and systems that we rely on.
It implies a process based activity with a holistic approach, taking into account
not just immediate and individual needs and desires, but also the ecosystem services
and larger systems that we are part of.