Intensive programmes for higher education learners: “On Doing and Sharing Transdisciplinary Research” (A8)

The 5 day workshop for the selected multidisciplinary students will focus on creating and integrating narratives describing objects and installations of art and design born in a transdisciplinary research. The workshop participants will be 2 MA/MSc/PhD students representing each of the strategic partners, i.e. robotics from Aalborg University, artificial biology from Trento University, arts from Aalto University, and sustainable design from the ADES Institute. The students are selected primarily based on their motivation and capacity to contribute and work with integration of new language for communicating objects and installations of art and design with strong sustainability value and born in transdisciplinary research. However, it will be considered an advantage if the selected students have already participated in one or every of the ABRA’s activities. The goal of this 5 day workshop is to create a co-lab environment for the selected multidisciplinary students to work on developing and integrating narratives describing objects and installations of art and design born in a transdisciplinary research. The narratives will be targeted for audiences accustomed to arts and sciences, including technology design, which is a challenge we recognise today with an increase of multimedial and transdisciplinary works. As mentioned in the here preceding Intensive Programmes for Teaching Staff activity, new transdisciplinary works require a new language, terminology which helps the prospective viewers to define and interpret the meanings, the narrative and the relevance of the scientific knowledge that has lead to the particular outcome and what might be learnt from it. Additionally, we still lack an appropriate language that helps to narrate values of ethics and sustainability through objects of art and design. There is an increasing miscommunication about the depth of sustainability value obtained for instance with objects of design, usually and now widely coined “greenwashing”. The workshop participants will have the task in analysing best practices and proposing innovative ways of how transdisciplinary works and works carrying sustainability and ethics values may be effectively communicated to a wider public, making the viewers experiences more educational as well as pleasant. As the result of the workshop, the students will have gained the first hand insights and potential to apply the skill of communicating transdisciplinary knowledge through works of art and design to their audiences, be it their peers or in their future work life. We recognise that the skill has the potential to be applicable not only for communicating to exhibition visitors, but also in popular science media, social media and whereever else such narratives might come to be necessary. We expect that after this workshop, the students will already be able to evaluate such or similar situations and will be ready to suggest and execute a course of action. The teaching staff and the project partners will have gained an overview of the efficacy of the developed narratives. The workshop will take place in the ADES Institute’s facilities at Art Quarter Budapest, Hungary.