Extracts from original Proposal [speakers will probably change in the process of making this conference happen]
Images and Visualiation: Visual technology, truth and trust
Background:
Science, technology, engineering, computing, mathematics and medicine increasingly employ advanced imaging technologies and systematic visualisations of data to help formulate hypotheses, interpret and report findings, propose new ways forward for research and treatment and communicate results to the wider public. Advances in visual engineering provide researchers with ways to interpret, manipulate and present data within sciences, between sciences and between science, policy and public. They allow scientists and non-scientists to visually conceptualise and make visible the unseeable, to integrate complex information, to simulate the future and much more. Their use in the natural sciences has become ubiquitous; their use in the humanities and social sciences is steadily increasing. Furthermore, visual methods have become intrinsic to addressing many of the challenges facing modern societies, from healthcare to environmental politics.
Scientific images and illustrations were, for a long time, regarded as decorative devices at worst and as heuristic aids for scientific reasoning at best. However, they have now come to be seen, not only as ‘pretty’ accessories, but as integral to scientific discovery, innovation and communication. They are no longer regarded as mere supplements to but as epistemically constitutive of science fact and indispensable to science communication in the age of Web 2.0. They create meaning and understanding.
This designing (and possibly manipulation) of understanding is based on an ever closer collaboration between the arts and the sciences, including the information sciences and visual engineering. There are two interesting twists emerging from this collaboration. Firstly, visual technology is becoming ever more sophisticated, while at the same time becoming ever more commonplace, widely available and easy to use. Secondly, visual technology helps users cope with an increasing plethora of data, while at the same time encouraging the production of a veritable avalanche of images and visualisations of varied quality and trustworthiness.
This has scientific, political, societal, ethical and aesthetic consequences, especially relating to truth and trust, as indicated in the title of this conference proposal.
The aim of this workshop is to bring together scholars from the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences to examine the challenges to science and society posed by the proliferation and growing sophistication of visual images in science.
Aims:
· Bring together leading researchers and talented graduate students from across Europe in order to develop and exchange theoretical concepts and empirical findings that will enhance our understanding of the societal challenges posed by the proliferation and increasing complexity of images and visualisation in science.
· Create a framework for collaborative activities for researchers from different European countries and research traditions in order to harmonise scientific activities and promote synergy between different research disciplines and methodologies across Europe.
· Strengthen existing scientific activities across Europe in order to enhance the role of European research in the social study of images, imaging and visualisation within the international scientific community.
· Evaluate the current status of thinking on images and visualisations and discuss future directions and needs for research.
Objectives:
We want to find answers to (at least) some of the following questions, dealing with issues of theory, methodology, ethics and aesthetics, science and society, and the interaction between them:
· What is the relation between conveying accurate information and imparting aesthetic pleasure? How is it handled in various sciences and in converging sciences?
· When does ‘visual enhancement’ become ‘visual fraud’? Are there different problems that different scientific traditions have to address in this respect?
· How do visualisations change in meaning when moving between social and cultural spaces, e.g. from the laboratory to the morning newspaper? What consequences does this have for public understanding?
· How can one ensure public visual trust when using images or visualisations to disseminate knowledge of scientific advances or engage lay publics with science?
· What is the role of the scientist and science illustrator in a Photoshop world when image making has become democratised and taken out of the hands of experts?
· What is the role of images and visualisations in scientific and popular science publishing?
· What is the relation between art, design/engineering and science in the field of scientific visualisation? And how do artists, scientists and designers interact?
· In what ways do the issues of visualisation change as the scale of the objects visualised changes? Are the ethical and aesthetical challenges posed by visualising the nano similar to those of visualising the galactic? How might imaging the contours of a mountain be similar to/dissimilar to imaging the functions of the brain? And what can the scientists engaged in these different imaging enterprises learn from each other?
To give only one small example of the complexity involved in designing understanding (misunderstanding) when visualising science. Take the famous and iconic image created by Don Eigler (and M. F. Cromie and C.P. Lutz) in 1994 at IBM called the ‘Quantum Corral’ or ‘Atomic Corral’ or ‘Corral Reef’ (http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/corral.html). The 44 Fe atoms in this image, for example, have artificial (or false) color, shading, shape, and solidity etc. Nanoscientists know this and take it into account when appreciating the scientific value of the visual knowledge embedded in that image, but to philosophers it is a valuable example of the epistemological problems associated with nano images, and to some in the lay public it might look like a four-fold deception. Three different communities could have three different reactions to ‘Atomic Corral’.
2) Scientific Relevance Describe the scientific relevance in terms of novelty, originality and timeliness
European policy-makers and economists have been extolling the virtues of the ‘knowledge economy’ for many years. This ‘knowledge’ is becoming increasingly mediated through visualisations as we are living in a visual culture where the visible (and its manipulation) have become all pervasive. This has implications not only for participation in the knowledge economy, where visual literacy is becoming a necessity, but also in terms of politics and economics, as making political and economic decisions (which are supposed to be based on scientific evidence) is becoming more and more dependent on images and visualisations of scientific advances, trends, futures, and so on, which should, however, not just be taken ‘on trust’. Understanding the processes underlying the construction of images and visualisations, and most of all, the designing of understanding (in science, in politics and in public), is therefore of utmost importance in a Europe characterised by what many have called a ‘visual turn’. This understanding also has to be put on a sound (social) scientific basis.
Our proposal is particularly novel in that it is highly ambitious as regards interdisciplinary communication and cooperation. In seeking to explore the astonishing power of modern scientific and informational visualisations, contemporary research is going to have to bring together academics from across the traditional natural/social divide, but also from non-academic professions. This is a challenging task but one that is entirely pertinent when discussing the visual. Moreover, understanding the visual in science will require detailed study and critical insights at the various scales of scientific visualisations, from the micro and the molecular, to the global and galactic. Understanding the continuities and discontinuities in the problems of making visible and making intelligible across these scales will significantly enhance our ability to talk about trust in science and technology. In this respect the proposal is also timely, as public trust in science and technology has had a number of set-backs in recent years, not least the global warming emails scandal. Understanding how trust relates to images of contentious science and cutting-edge work should be of primary importance when considering the relationship between the expert and the lay audiences of European science.