Republic of Learning Redux
March 23, 2023 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Republic of Learning Redux
Rachel Jacobs and I have recently written up a paper that explores the activities and achievements of our Republic of Learning workshops (2019-22). This post archives the previous posts about the workshops on our Manifest Data Lab website:
Republic of Learning 9: Creating a Reciprocal System
Updated: Mar 4, 2022
Our next Republic of Learning event will be on Wednesday February 2nd at 6pm London time. We will be hosting it online – using zoom.us. Facilitators: Dr Rachel Jacobs (artist, researcher) and Giles Lane (artist, researcher).
A workshop combining craft making, scientific data, intimacy, observation and stories to bring people together to imagine a human-made reciprocal and sustainable system that connects us back to the Earth’s own dynamic system (hydrosphere, geosphere, atmosphere, biosphere).
All Welcome, please book a free place via Eventbrite
Theme : Creating A Reciprocal System
AI, robots, driverless cars – machines that enable us to have “frictionless” lives and “satisfy” our every needs and dreams… What would a system look like that relies on reciprocity, sharing and gifting rather than ease, desire and consumption?
What is a reciprocal system?
This workshop will combine artistic and craft-based making to explore what a system of resilience, co-operation, re-enchantment and intimacy might be. It will bring together learning from previous sessions and work with the Earth’s planetary system (Atmosphere, Geosphere, Hydrosphere and Biosphere) to create a model for this new reciprocal system.
Materials that will help you make your reciprocal system:
- paper and/or card, pens, pencils, scissors
- any other craft or art materials you might have to hand (fabrics, string, newspaper, plasticine, paints etc…)
The workshop is free and will take place online on Zoom.
Documentation
We have created a booklet documenting the workshop, which can be viewed online or downloaded, printed out and made up into a paper booklet.
Republic of Learning 8: Little Earths, Mythical Objects & Human Stories
Updated: Mar 4, 2022
Our next Republic of Learning event will be on Wednesday December 8th at 6pm London time. We will be hosting it online – using zoom.us. Facilitators: Dr Rachel Jacobs (artist, researcher) and Giles Lane (artist, researcher) in collaboration with Dr Aideen Foley (lecturer & researcher, Birkbeck University of London).
What do we love, care for and want to protect? How would we feel about the planet – the places and non-humans that we love – if we could hold them in our pocket?
In this workshop we will make our own Little Earths, stewardship objects that combine craft making, intimacy, scientific data and stories. A mythical object to keep in our pocket, have in our home or gift to others.
All Welcome, please book a free place via Eventbrite
Theme : Little Earths, Mythical Objects & Human Stories
The Little Earths we make are based on the Russian nesting Babushka/Matryosjka dolls, worry beads and measurement cups. The Babushka doll is a folk object, nesting different sized dolls within each other to represent different layers of our selves. Worry beads act as a focus of prayer, meditation and mantras. Measurement cups are the most basic way we can measure materials to cook. Nested objects, whether inside each other or alongside each other, help us to see ourselves in relation to the world at different scales.
We will ask 8 questions. The first 4 questions will aid us to create the frame or structure of the Little Earth. These will respond to scientific data and observations at a global, national, local and then individual scale. The next 4 questions will help us explore how we might love, care and protect our Little Earth, responding to myth and folk tales. Leading us to each create a talisman for a more reciprocal future. Drawing on indigenous, folk, historic and scientific knowledge of climate, social and environmental change.
Through the act of making these objects we explore what we can gain from qualitative data (experience) as well as quantitative data (numbers) and how this can then be translated into acts of love, care and protection. Not seeking easy explanations (or judgements) but finding ways to pay attention, be present and share what our own senses and understanding of place, responsibility and change can bring.
For more about the concepts of Little Earths see: https://www.manifest-data.org/post/little-earths-stewardship-intimacy-and-community
Materials that will help you make your Little Earth:
- paper and/or card, pens, pencils, scissors
- 4 nested jars, pots, matchboxes, cardboard boxes or measurement cups or 4 different sized envelopes
- any other craft or art materials you might have to hand (fabrics, string, newspaper, plasticine, paints etc…)
The workshop is free and will take place online on Zoom.
Documentation
We have created a booklet documenting the workshop, which can be viewed online or downloaded, printed out and made up into a paper booklet.
Republic of Learning 7: Atmospheric Commons
Updated: Mar 4, 2022
“In the space between the past and future, having and losing, knowing and not knowing, lies an opportunity for awakening” (Prideaux 2021)
Our next Republic of Learning event will be on Thursday June 24th at 3pm London time. We will be hosting it online – using zoom.us. It will explore our past and present impacts on the Earth’s atmosphere – personally, locally and globally. We then seek to imagine whatever comes next… making artistic/craft based responses that combine scientific data with our own questions and stories about the future.
All Welcome, please book a free place via Eventbrite
Theme : Atmospheric Commons
We consider the atmosphere as a nebulous commons, transformed by extractivist acts of enclosure that dissipates and reforms as a material record of our politics, behaviours and histories. This collision of the sensory and the political occurs across huge scales, connecting geo-chemical processes; fossil necro-deposits; carbon industries; petroleum-states; infrastructures; service companies; governance; and energy and futures markets.
Using speculative mappings; animations, physical models and public workshops we chart the processes of planetary energy exchange that compose the atmosphere alongside the socio-technical assemblages refiguring it.
We seek to examine our personal connections to energy, distribution and consumption and develop figures, expressions and situations that ask, “Who owns the air?”
From “Political Atmospherics” by T Corby et al, in Freeport: Anatomy of a Black Box (Matadero, forthcoming 2021)
You are invited to do a simple activity before the workshop that maps your energy interactions and relationships to the complex carbon system we live within. These maps will inform what happens in the workshop as a starting off point for our dialogues and discussions. Download a PDF of instructions here:
MDL_Energy_Map.pdfDownload PDF • 7.04MB
Materials to have at hand:
For the workshop itself, we also suggest that some of the following materials would be helpful to have in place for the workshop, if you can get hold of them:
- 2-3 metal coat hangers
- Scrap textile material (e.g. old clothes, pillow cases)
- Old magazines, newspapers, birthday cards
- Cardboard, products/cereal boxes
- Blue tack, plasticine, glue, tape
- String or wool
- Other found objects (stones, shells, flowers, leaves, strange plastic things, rubbish etc…)
- A pen or sharp pencil
- Scissors
Please get in contact as soon as possible if any of this is going to be an issue and we will try and help out, or if you have any other questions about the activities or accessibility.
Documentation
We have created a booklet documenting the workshop, which can be viewed online or downloaded, printed out and made up into a paper booklet.
Republic of Learning 2021
Updated: Nov 25, 2021
After a long hiatus due to the pandemic, we are happy to announce a new series of online Republic of Learning workshop events, with the first on Thursday 24th June 3-6pm.
“In the space between the past and future, having and losing, knowing and not knowing, lies an opportunity for awakening” (Prideaux 2021)
Republic of Learning brings people together to learn about resilience in these times of planetary health crisis, uncertainty and environmental change. It presents a unique approach to shared learning that combines artistic and craft making with co-operative thinking – slowing down debate to sideline confrontation and argument in favour of gentle, collaborative deliberation. Our methods have been developed over 25 years of artistic practice and research by facilitators Giles Lane (artist, researcher), Dr Erin Dickson (artist, maker and researcher) and Dr Rachel Jacobs (artist, researcher).
Three workshops will take place in 2021 with a focus on what was normal, whatever comes next and the possibility that somewhere in between these two states sit grief, hope, resilience and the opportunity for some kind of awakening. Our aim is to plant the seeds for building an informal community that could continue to explore these issues into the future.
Workshop 1: Atmospheric Commons (24/06/2021)
In this workshop we will envision our personal, local and global impacts on the Earth’s atmosphere. We will seek to imagine whatever comes next… exploring opportunities for reciprocal and imaginative decision making in response to what we discover about our past and present impacts – by combining scientific data with our own questions and narratives about our atmospheric futures.
Workshop 2: Little Earths, Mythical Objects & Human Stories (8/12/21)
What do we love, care for and want to protect? What sadness, grief and despair are we ready to leave behind? How would we feel about the planet, the places and non-humans that we love and that enchant us if we could hold them in our pocket? In this workshop we will make our own Little Earths, stewardship objects that combine craft making, intimacy, scientific data and stories. Sign up on eventbrite here
Workshop 3: Reciprocal Systems (Jan 2022)
AI, robots, driverless cars, machines that enable us to have frictionless lives and satisfy our every needs and dreams… What would a reciprocal system look like in contrast? One that relies on reciprocity rather than desire and consumption, seamfullness rather than seamlessness, embodied knowledge rather than data? Bringing together what was learnt in the first two workshops we will build a new type of reciprocal machine to help us consider opportunities for resilience, co-operation, re-enchantment and intimacy.
All the workshops are free and take place online on Zoom.
Republic of Learning 6
Updated: Mar 4, 2022
Our next Republic of Learning session will be on Friday March 20th at 14.30 GMT. We will be hosting it online – using zoom.us – as an experiment in how to remain connected with each other, and continue to be creative and resilient in challenging times.
We will be starting at 14.30 GMT but will give people until 15.00 to download zoom and to log in. We will continue until 17.00 with tea breaks. Feel free to drop in and out.
All Welcome.
Zoom Meeting Link: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/279147110
Theme : Imagining Climate FuturesWe will bring our current theme “Imagining Climate Futures” to a close with a workshop that reflects on the relationship between Coronavirus/COVID-19 and climate futures, and whether we are now living in some kind of ‘Futuristic Present ‘. The online workshop will explore how we deal with the urgency of climate change and the ‘tipping points’ that scientists tell us will speed up climate change and make permanent changes to our world. We will also be including tipping point data (PDF slides) about the virus and what we can carry forward so that we don’t just return to business as usual after this current crisis.
Using origami paper folding we will combine the data and our personal reflections to make paper worlds that represent our actions and responses, and link across to the Earth’s climate systems: Land (Lithosphere); Air (Atmosphere); Oceans (Hydrosphere) and Ice (Cryosphere).
Participating :
You will need squares of paper and pen(s) to join in the activities. Any paper will do including newspaper, old bills etc.. Squares of paper can be made easily from rectangular sheets – we will demonstrate how. Download a simple guide to making the origami paper worlds (the “water bomb” method) or watch the video:
We have created a simple PDF worksheet that you can fill in with your ideas and responses as the workshop unfolds – or send to us later, we hope to collate these into a documentation booklet (as for previous events).
Read about previous events : https://www.manifest-data.org/blog/categories/republic-of-learning
Documentation
We have created a booklet documenting the workshop, which can be viewed online or downloaded, printed out and made up into a paper booklet.
Republic of Learning is facilitated by Erin Dickson, Rachel Jacobs & Giles Lane and is part of the AHRC-funded, “Materialising Data, Embodying Climate Change” project based at Central Saint Martins UAL.
We will be taking a break in April and continue in May with a new theme: ”Sharing a more-than human world”.
Republic of Learning 5: Imagining Climate Futures
Updated: Mar 4, 2022
Last Friday we held the fifth Republic of Learning workshop and second in our current theme of “Imagining Climate Futures”at MAKE at Story Garden. We are continuing to use art, crafts and model making as a way to share ideas about how we can respond to climate impacts – to frame and host conversations about futures that many are finding bleak and frightening as the news remains full of stories about extreme weather events, disturbing natural phenomena and sudden changes to the usual patterns in our climates and environments.
The aim of the workshops is to establish a creative and convivial space in which people can come together to discuss these issuesand to explore together what sort of responses to climate impacts we can have, whether they have expert knowledge in any related field or are just curious or concerned. Using craft and makings skills as a vehicle for conversation changes the dynamic (from more traditional discursive spaces) by slowing things down and providing a focus on attending to the material world instead of the purely abstract world of ideas and opinions.
From working with felt to create ‘climate emblems’ in our last workshop, we shifted to working with clay to manifest ideas. The very different material qualities of clay, and the need to work directly with the hands – to knead and work it, keeping the clay moist and pliable – makes this activity a more contemplative one. It took place during the school half term, and so we had been advised that there may be families attending as part of the “Busy Hands” week across the StoryGarden. We adjusted our plans so that the workshop could accommodate people of different ages dropping in and just making things without needing to get engrossed in the more complex aspects of the theme.
We identified three key climate impacts – fires, storms and changes to the seasons – which people could respond to, each of which have either been in the news (e.g. the extraordinary Australian bush fires) or which we have had direct experience of, such as the recent series of storms to batter the UK (Ciara & Dennis) or the early onset of Spring as visible in blossoms and flowers appearing from late January through February, many of which are a month or six weeks earlier than usual.
What we think these Republic of Learning workshops enables is a space in which we can begin to explore these questions not just from a personal perspective, but from a more collective dimension. What will it mean for us to become ‘resilient’ in the face of the kinds of impacts and changes that may be wrought upon us as climate change becomes the ‘new normal’? How can we feel a sense of empowerment to cope with changes – social, cultural, political, economic, environmental – by facing these together, as communities and not just as isolated individuals for small family units?
The conversations flowed from highlighting personal responsibilities in our contribution to climate change (the ‘carbon footprint selfie camera’) to ideas for making better use of existing social infrastructure for homeless people who may need temporary shelters during the increasingly frequent storms, to ways to better share the excess materials (‘waste’) from local industrial or artisanal production for making new things, to placement programmes for urban dwellers to spend time in nature working on projects to restore or re-wild natural environments – thus connecting with and gaining a direct experience of nature and natural forces, to having rural dwellers take part in urban projects to ‘green’ our towns and cities, on similar placement-style schemes.
In addition to the Thinksheet above – for which one of the facilitators acts as scribe and tries to capture ideas and themes emerging during the workshop – we also devised a simple worksheet for participants to self-document their own creative activity and ideas:
And below are some photos of the objects made:
Documentation
We have created a booklet documenting the workshop, which can be viewed online or downloaded, printed out and made up into a paper booklet.
Our next Republic of Learning is on Friday 20th March 2.30-5pm at MAKE@StoryGarden. Sign up for as place at : https://republicoflearning.eventbrite.co.uk/Everyone is welcome.
Erin Dickson, Rachel Jacobs & Giles Lane
Republic of Learning 4: Imagining Climate Futures
Updated: Mar 4, 2022
The first of our Winter 2020 series of Republic of Learning sessions took place on Friday 24th January at MAKE@StoryGarden in Somers Town. The focus of this series is ‘Imagining Climate Futures’ : using art, crafts and model making as a way to share ideas about how we can respond to climate impacts.
It is clear that, whilst almost all humans are contributing in some way to the emissions caused by mass consumption and the increasing industrial extraction of natural resources, the effects are felt asymmetrically across the globe. The cumulative effect of increased carbon in the atmosphere (amongst other factors) is itself distributed globally, but the effects and impacts which this causes are local and particular to specific environments and ecologies. We are seeing very different impacts – from the unprecedented bush fires in Australia, to flooding in Indonesia, severe storms across Southern USA and, of course, Storm Ciara which has only just hit the UK with tremendous force.
In our workshop, Erin, Rachel & Giles facilitated a creative and convivial space – primarily working with felt – in which the participants were asked to collectively create a series of ‘climate emblems’. The emblems are built up collectively over five stages. Each participant starts with a blank circle of felt and adds elements in response to a series of questions. At the end of each making stage, they describe what they have done, and pass their emblem to the next person. Then, receiving one from the person next to them, they continue with the next stage, before describing what they have added or changed and passing it on again.
The workshop has a specific workflow of intense making activities punctuated by animated discussions – everyone takes turns to speak, and there is space for conversations to flow between participants. Not only that, but there is a high degree of collaboration and sharing of skills as people assist each other with practical tasks of cutting and making. We also see people being stimulated by other participants’ creativity to challenge themselves and expand their own repertoires of making and expressing themselves through materials. At each stage the participants add to, or adapt something the person to their left has made, and this builds up into a complex, shared visual and tactile expression of ideas. The resulting emblems are assemblages of highly personal responses, yet collective too.
What has been intensely interesting are the transitions that happen during the workshop as people arrive with ideas and feelings that, through the process, can shift or change. We have seen people arrive with feelings of despair and despondency caused by the climate crisis or emergency (sometimes referred to as “eco-” or “climate-anxiety”), engaging in the creative expression and sharing of ideas to find themselves feeling positive and inspired at the end. Others have come and experienced a growing awareness of connections and interdependencies that they had been unaware of before. Almost everyone who has taken part (either in last week’s session or the previous one Rachel & Giles ran at Camden Think & Do in November) spoke of how the process enabled them to gain wider perspectives on the range of issues and possibilities that climate change represents – not just interns of its effects, but how and what we might choose to become involved in to make our own contributions to change.
A key to this discussion is our use of Mike Hulme’s “climate myths” from Why We Disagree About Climate Change, counterposed with the framework suggested by George Marshall in Carbon Detox. As a framework they offer participants recognisable tropes and types to work with, as well as indicating where gaps and places or spaces in between might exist:
As the workshop progresses and conversations unfold, we are using a worksheet – in the shape of clouds – to document key questions, feelings and ideas that emerge:
These are clustered across four regions – represented on the worksheet as individual clouds. As a guiding framework we have been using the quartet of “Known knowns; Known unknowns; Unknown knowns; and Unknown unknowns”. These also relate to the four quadrants of the Johari window, a psychology tool used in helping explore and define relationships between the individual and others. Our rationale for using this framework is similarly to map and explore the relationships between the things we are certain of (known knowns); things we are uncertain of, but where we can perceive gaps to be (known unknowns); the tacit knowledges, skills and experiences which we have but do not always acknowledge as such (unknown knowns); and finally, those things about which we have no knowledge or experience at all and which are beyond our horizon of perception (unknown unknowns).
In addition to the visual and tactile elegance, playfulness and sheer creativity of the climate emblems, the “Clouds of Knowing and Unknowing” worksheet helps situate and share some of the key conversational elements that flowed throughout the workshop. As an unfolding map of feelings and ideas it helps participants and facilitators to visualise the emerging gaps to be bridged and to identify emerging themes and commonalities.
Over the next two sessions we will continue to explore what kinds of responses we can make that could close the distance between our situation here in London – in Kings Cross and Somers Town – and those of others elsewhere in the world. We will build on the climate emblems by devising models for imaginary climate futures in which humans can not only survive, but thrive and cope with the complex spectrum of changes that lie ahead of us. We plan to show the material outcomes in a pop-up exhibition during the summer.
Documentation
We have created a booklet documenting the workshop, which can be viewed online or downloaded, printed out and made up into a paper booklet.
Book a place on our next sessions.
Everyone is welcome. Come to any or all of the sessions.
Erin Dickson, Rachel Jacobs & Giles Lane
Climate Change Cross Stitch
Our third Republic of Learning event took place on Friday 15th November at Make@StoryGarden, and was intended to explore a different mode of exchange through a focus on making.
The first two RoL sessions had featured objects being shared and discussed as a vehicle for exploring the intersections between art, culture, science and climate change. Following feedback from previous sessions, we decided to place a greater emphasis on making as an activity to promote more relaxed discussions around the core themes. The third session developed from the basis of craft as reminiscent of digital process, in this case with cross-stitch employing a 0/1 approach across a predefined grid which could be utilised to communicate graph-like imagery through pixellation. Although the intention was to provide a new way of looking at local data, interpreted through making, we also aimed to combine some of the ubiquitous styles used in traditional cross-stitch. This included pre-defined floral decoration, as well as an invitation for participants to create an equivalent of the idiom ‘Home Sweet Home’, which we termed ‘Personal Climate Mantras’.
Cross-stitch is often considered a feminine activity and referred to as one of the ‘domestic’ arts. Typically cross-stitch patterns, once completed, are used as décor and framed, or made into throw pillows for sofas or beds. This translation of data takes a complex subject like climate and grounds it back into the space of the vernacular and domestic.
Erin had come across the TEDx video by Sarah Corbett on how “Activism needs introverts”. In this video she discusses her experiences of working in activism and how activism, of any sort, tends to prioritise extrovert activities, such as campaigning and marches. She makes a case for finding ways in which people who are not comfortable with extrovert activities can be incorporated into activism using quieter, more contemplative approaches. Cross-stitching/embroidery can create a relaxed space for open discussion – makers can discuss harder topics without eye-contact, creating a more inclusive environment. The results can form powerful objects that can communicate with policy makers and others in inclusive and non-confrontational ways.
Rachel brought data from the Met Office she has worked with before, namely the “Mean Central England Temperature Anomalies” from 1659 to 2019. This graph indicates the range of anomalies in temperature measurements over a 360 year span, as well as indicating the mean anomaly. This (the mean anomaly) she converted into a simple cross-stitch pattern and placed at the top of the planner (above) which we created for participants to follow.
The bottom design shows Euston Road, Chalton St and Eversholt St with different colours showing the differences between the pollution levels around Kings Cross and Chalton Street. The different shades of colours shows the levels of air pollution. Euston Road has the worse pollution, a lot higher than recommended limits, whereas Chalton Street is at the limit. The data was taken from Kings College’s LondonAir site, which collates data and visualises it from street-level pollution monitoring stations across London.
Our intention for this session had been to use a making activity as an alternative and convivial ‘prop’ that could allow conversations to flow in a more relaxed and reflective style. Previous sessions had used objects (from both Rachel’s & Giles’ prior artworks) as the props for the discussions, but we had found that a familiar style of debate was still arising that a number of participants expressed discomfort and dissatisfaction with. We knew already from other workshop and meeting experiences that when participants are engaged in practical making activities, their attention is punctuated by the craft process itself, slowing down and attenuating the exchange of words from a debate into a conversation.
Only one of the previous participants attended this event (it was the least well-attended of all the sessions so far), and by making a physical correlation between local pollution data (the air quality measurements from the nearby Euston Road monitoring station) and the climate data drawn from the Met Office’s temperature anomaly data for central England, we could entice more local people in to join us. We didn’t manage to do so quickly enough for this event (building trust with local communities is a slow business), but our intention is to retain the cross stitch activity as a thread running through future Republic of Learning events that people can drop in and take part in, a gentle yet expressive way for people, especially locals, to be part of these evolving conversations and to contribute to them in ways which are tangible.
Erin’s cross stitch (above) adds flowers to the air quality data, beneath the words, “When is Enough?”– a question provoked by Giles’ when quoting the American poet and environmentalist Wendell Berry, “To make a living is not to make a killing but to have enough”.
We will be running more Republic of Learning sessions at Make@StoryGarden in 2020, starting from Friday January 24th at 2.30pm. Followed by Friday 21st February and Friday 20th March – all at 2.30pm until 5pm.
A Republic of Learning
These are uncomfortable times, full of disconcerting facts, chilling implications and uncertain outcomes. – How do we respond to problems that are on a planetary scale? – How do we affect systems and processes that scale way beyond the reach of our own hands? – How do we step aside from feelings of despair that is commonly engendered by incipient knowledge of the enormity of the changes already afoot?
We do so by coming together, talking and making things – sometimes objects, sometimes decisions. We do so by sharing what we have and know, as well as what we do not know. We do so by engaging our imaginations and making real – bit by bit – another world. We do so by defining resilience within ourselves, our communities, our actions and intentions – by attending to the local as well as the global. In this way we achieve a common wealth of ideas, stories, tools and techniques – of fellow feeling and support against impending tragedies. Each time we wrest other small piece of sovereignty away from those who would subject us to further to unfeeling systems of control and we make our own republics of learning, knowledge and community – in which we are all citizens.
A Republic of Learning is a new monthly meeting space for exploring and discussing the role of art-making, data science and climate change and making things in response. It aims to address the local to global, to challenge experts and non-experts to learn together and share questions about how to make sense of the transformational changes ahead of humans, ecosystems and other lifeforms on the planet. To make responses together, outside of the habitual spaces in which we act.
Our first meeting, last Friday 20th September, coincided with the Global Climate Strike in which millions of young people and others around the world took part – demonstrating for action on climate change. We gathered to make our own contribution to action – starting something we hope will grow over time and become a space for people to come together to share and learn together.
To get things started, Rachel Jacobs brought in some objects from various art works and projects and talked about her practice and how it has engaged with places, environments, communities and ecologies over the past decade and more. The objects provided us with tangible things to discuss among ourselves and think about what our own contributions to positive and purposeful transformation could be, especially as some of us had children participating directly in the marches and actions happening at the same time.
The monthly meetings – held on the 3rd Friday of the month (10.30am to 1pm) – will take place in The Story Garden, a new community space in Somers Town behind the British Library and next to the Francis Crick Institute, made by and for the local people and managed by Global Generation. We are generously hosted by Make @ Story Garden, a public engagement project of Central Saint Martins UAL.
The concept of a republic of learning is borrowed from Fred Garnett, who conceives of The Republic of Learning as a “post-Enlightenment” rethinking of self-determined learning spaces and communities outside of the academies and learned societies that have dominated learning and teaching for centuries. His concept harks back to Erasmus who, in the 1500s, declared himself a “citizen of the Republic of Letters”.
Our Republic of Learning is convened by artists, Rachel Jacobs, Erin Dickson and myself as part of the engagement activities of the Manifest Data Lab – a new transdisciplinary group based at Central Saint Martins who are exploring art, data manifestation and climate change. The format for the meetings will be open and fluid – no formal presentations or workshop structures, but instead a place where conversations can emerge and evolve. We hope to grow a community of people who want to address these issues through the lenses of creativity, in partnership with the insights offered by science and the possibilities of technologies, new and old.
Manifest Data Lab
February 14, 2020 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Manifest Data Lab
In mid-February 2019, Professor Tom Corby (CSM) and Giles Lane (Proboscis/CSM) co-founded the Manifest Data Lab, a transdisciplinary research group based at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. The group also comprises Professor George Roussos (Birkbeck University of London), a long-time collaborator of Proboscis, and Dr Louise Sime (British Antarctic Survey) and formed to develop the 3 year AHRC-funded research project, “Materialising Data, Embodying Climate Change“.
Over the past year we have recruited a team of two Postgraduate Research Fellows: Dr Erin Dickson and Dr Jonathan Mackenzie; and two Visiting Research Fellows: Gavin Baily and Dr Rachel Jacobs. The team’s research has delved deeply into how data is collected, analysed and modelled for creating the Earth Systems Models for climate change, gaining understandings of the sheer complexity of data types and methods used to interpret the science of climate change. We are now beginning to identify what data sets to focus on for our materialisation experiments, and exploring techniques for identifying and extracting salient features from extremely large datasets using machine learning methods. This is intended to inform the processes by which we use climate data to drive the generation of 3D forms.
A corresponding materialisation research strand has focused on exploring techniques, materials and technologies that are effective and appropriate for working with data in multiple ways. From experimenting with polygon reduction in 3D printing in a range of materials, to slip casting clay vessels and dissolving them in solutions, to creating blown glass bell jars in a hot shop for mini-environments that scorch their contents as a metaphor for global warming.
In addition, MDL has developed a public engagement programme, Republic of Learning, alongside our research activities, which aims to engage a wide range of publics in creative and convivial processes beyond the confines of academia. We have partnered with CSM’s public MAKE programme to host our events in the Story Garden community space in Somers Town, London.
In 2020 we are developing an exciting body of work that we hope to launch around the time of the COP26 climate meeting in Glasgow – one which we hope will draw together the many strands that we have been working on and which will fulfill our goal of exploring how artistic practices and the materialisation of climate data can provide empathic encounters and stimulate new ways for people to engage with the impacts and consequences of climate change.
