We welcome paper abstracts to the track STS and Artistic Research at the 4S/EASST Conference in Barcelona August 31 – September 3, 2016.

In this track, we propose a dialogue of STS research on the arts and Artistic Research. It covers studies of artistic practices, reflexive practitioners at the boundaries between the arts and science, technology, and medicine, as well as arts-based research methods and enhanced modes of publication.

Convenors:

Trevor Pinch, Henk Borgdorff and Peter Peters

 

If you would want to discuss your abstract with us, please send us an email. We would be happy if you could forward this call for papers to anyone you think might be interested.

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STS scholars have studied the arts in relation to questions about science and its history, e.g. exploring the role of artists in creating the visual apparatus used by scientists. Recent work in STS has focused on the backstage, practical and preparatory activities constituting works of art or people’s engagement with these works. The interest in artistic practices can be linked to research agenda’s in STS such as subjectivity and the senses, technology and materiality, boundary work, and embodied, situated, and enacted forms of cognition.

STS emphasizes the constitutive role of practices and things in the production of knowledge and technologies. This ‘practice turn’ is manifest in the field of Artistic Research, positioned at the interface of art worlds and academic research. In artistic research, material practices and things – e.g. performances or artefacts – are in a methodological sense the vehicles through which knowledge and understanding can be gained. Epistemologically they embody the knowledge and understanding we gain. This type of research does not easily fit the conventional frameworks and values of actors and institutions in science and technology.

This track proposes a dialogue of STS research on the arts and Artistic Research. It could include topics such as studies of artistic practices; reflexive practitioners at the boundaries between the arts and science, technology, and medicine; non-propositional forms of reasoning; unconventional (arts-based) research methods and enhanced modes of presentation and publication. Contributors are invited to use alternative (rich-media) formats for their presentations.

The deadline for submissions is 21st February 2016

Abstracts should be submitted at 

More information about this track can be found at