I haven’t been to an interesting scholarly meeting for a long time — so it was pretty frustrating to realise that two meetings on some of my favourite research and curatorial interests are taking place at the same time.

The first meeting (which I’ve already signed up for as a contributor) is a small workshop on “collecting genomics”, 12-14 May. It’s organised by John Durant at the MIT Museum and Liba Taub at HPS Cambridge and there are only going to be 15-20 people around the table; a perfect setting for in-depth discussions about one of the crucial challenges to science, technology and medical museums in the future: how to document, collect and make sense of one of the most important developments in late 20th century ST&M.

The other meeting is no less interesting, at least for me as a combined biographer and science communication/museum person. On 12-13 May, the Royal Society organises a conference titled ‘Science Voices: Scientists speak about science and themselves’ to “explore the creation and use of a number of projects which bring science and scientists to historians and the public through scientists’ own vibrant personal voices and testimony”. The projects to be discussed include the current project on the history of the Royal Society in the 20th century, the oral history of Natural History Museum project (‘Museum Lives’), and the Oral History of British Science project. Oral history looms large in these three projects — and accordingly the organisers expect discussions about topics like oral history techniques, witness seminars, how to construct coherent intellectual frameworks for interview subject selection and project design, making use of oral history in history and epistemology of science, etc.

The Royal Society meeting (more details here) is important for museum purposes too — after all, I strongly believe that the individual scientific voice (autobiographical or biographical) is one of the best ways to communicate science, also in a museum context. In the best of worlds, somebody would had organised a meeting on ‘Collecting the voices and materials of genomics’, or something like that.

But that’s not the case, so I’ll opt for the genomic collection meeting. Not just because I’ve signed up already, but because it’s a smaller, more intimate and discussion-oriented meeting that aims to brake new ground for museum work. Frankly, oral history is a fairly well-chewed methodology. (But oh, my heart beats for scientists speaking about themselves and others).

The programme for this year’s Universeum meeting (in Padua, 26-29 May) is available here.

Universeum has rapidly become a vital organisation for the revival of European university museums. The annual meetings have an important role to play to raise the awareness among university administrations that their museums are not only worth preserving but, even better, worth expanding.

Last year’s programme in Uppsala was terribly packed, however: one damn 15-20 minutes presentation (including comments) after the other, short and inevitably rushed coffee breaks, etc. Unfortunately this year’s programme seems to suffer from the same illness. When will they ever learn?

But Padua is beautiful in late May and some of the presentation titles, like “To be or not to be a museum”, sound alluring. So, register not later than Friday 15 April.

Her er mit oplæg til seminaret om forskningsformidling, arrangeret af Københavns Universitets Praksisudvalg den 23. marts. Powerpointbillederne ligger her.

Jeg er blevet inviteret til seminaret i dag fordi jeg i slutningen af januar skrev en kritisk blogpost på Museionblog, hvor jeg kommenterede baggrundsmaterialet til seminaret.

Mit formål var at gøre opmærksom på den, i mine øjne, forkerte idé om at formidling nødvendigvis indebærer simplificering (og det er også et af de spørgsmål som Peter Sandøe har bedt os i panelet om at holde os til her i eftermiddag).

I baggrundsmaterialet til mødet så skrev man, at “den diskussion, der føres i medierne, nødvendigvis må være mere enkel end den videnskabelige diskussion, der føres i artikler og på konferencer”, fordi medierne har et krav om “enkle budskaber i one-liner-form”.

Og man skrev også at der ikke er mulighed for “mellemregninger … i det offentlige rum” og at forskningsformidling i medierne derfor indebærer en “nødvendig simplifikation”.

Det var disse påstande jeg reagerede imod. Fordi jeg mente – og mener stadigvæk – at de udtrykker en forståelse af det forskningskommunikative landskab som hurtigt er ved at blive inaktuel.

Der findes godt nok stadigvæk et simplifikationsproblem i forbindelse med forskningsformidling igennem traditionelle trykte og især elektroniske massemedier.

Men fremvæksten af  sociale webmedier er ved at ændre medielandskabet radikalt. Som en af ansøgerne til en webkommunikationsstilling, som vi lige har besat på Medicinsk Museion, sagde: ”der er jo ingen mellem 20 og 35 som læser aviser mere, alle er på webben og især på den sociale web”.

Det var lidt bombastisk udtrykt. Men det er ikke helt forkert. Og én af konsekvenserne af denne forskydning er, mener jeg, at forudsætningerne for hele problemstillingen om den påståede simplificering i forskningsformidling falder væk.

Fordi det er ikke bare unge oprørere i Arabverden som skaber historie ved hjælp af sociale webmedier. Forskere bruger også sociale webmedier i deres daglige forskningskommunikation. Og de gør det altså i hurtigt stigende omfang.

Det er måske ikke en så stor procentdel af forskerverden som bidrager til artikler på Wikipedia. Men det er alligevel så mange der gør det, at der findes artikler inden for stort set alle slags forskningsområder, ikke mindst inden for den naturvidenskabelige, medicinske og tekniske fag. Og vel at mærke, Wikipedia-artiklerne bliver hele tiden løbende opdateret.

Der findes også mange tusinder af forskerblogs, fra helt nørdede fysik- og kemiblogs til brede og populære blogs som blander videnskabelige og politiske diskussioner. Her (PP #7) er en af mine favoriter – kemikeren Derek Lowe, som blogger om drug-discovery og som tit får flere hundrede kommentarer på hver post.

For ikke at tale om alle de yngre forskere som er på Facebook. Vel at mærke ikke bare for at skrive om deres privatliv, men også for at føre intellektuelle diskussioner, give hinanden tips om litteratur, konferenser og seminarer. Nogle af os ældre er også med – som her (#8), hvor kunsteoretikern James Elkins i midten af februar postede sin seneste analyse af begrebet ’færdiggørelse’ på Huffington Post (istedet for at publicere den i en peer-reviewed tidskrift), og som i løbet af få dage gav ophav till 44 mere eller mindre begave kommentarer – både fra kolleger og ’almindelige læsere’.

Detsamme gælder Twitter, som i stigende omfang bruges som en kommentarbaggrund til videnskabelige konferenser og workshops og som, ligesom alle andre sociale webmedier, kan læses af alle og enhver.

Konsekvensen af den her eksplosion i brugen af sociale webmedier er altså, at flere og flere forskere er ved at indse, at man ganske udmærket kan tale om sin forskning med ikke-forskere uden at skulle inddrage massemedier, journalister eller talkshow-værter. Og det medfører også at grænsen mellem peer-to-peer-kommunikation og offentlig formidling er ved at opløses.

Min pointe idag er, at dette får konsekvenser for tesen om at forskningsformidling indebærer en nødvendig simplificering. Den tese gælder altså kun den begrænsede del af det samlede medieunivers som udgøres af traditionelle massemedier.

Med mulig undtagelse af Twitter (i hvert fald hvis man kun ser til den enkelte 140 karakterer lange tweet), så danner de sociale webmedier et mangdimensionelt offentligt rum, som ikke bare tillader, men endda opmunter til diskussion af (som Praksisudvalget udtrykte det i baggrundsmaterialet til mødet i dag) “delikate spørgsmål, der kræver mange mellemregninger”.

Lad mig tage et afsluttende eksempel på det med mellemregninger. Sidste torsdag (#9) publicerede evolutionbiologen Jonathan Eisen (UC Davis) en meget interessant artikel om livets tidlige stadier på jorden sammen med Craig Venter.

For vores diskussionen her i dag er det lige meget hvad den handlede om. Det interessante er, at dagen efter, i fredags, skrev Eisen (#10) en post på sin blog ’The Tree of Life’, hvor han forklarede (i et uteknisk sprog som også jeg kan forstå) hvad artikeln går ud på – med alle mellemregningerne.

Og lørdag morgen kunne jeg (#11) læse en blogpost om sagen skrevet af den flittigt bloggende evolutionsbiolog P. Z. Meyers (Pharyngula), som har hundredetusindevis af læsere – en post som hurtigt gav ophav til 45 aktive kommentarer, 74 tweets og 26 ’likes’ på Facebook.

Nå, men for at sammenfatte, min pointe i dag er altså, at den sociale web – ikke mindst takket være hyperlinkfunktionen – åbner op muligheder for en forskningskommunikation, som slet ikke er underlagt det imperativ om simplificering som traditionelle massemedier er.

Forskningskommunikation på den sociale web fungerer altså ikke som en forsimplingstragt som i massmedier eller på traditionelle webportaler – men som et kommunikationsgenerator, hvor man godt nok kan forenkle tingene, men hvor man – fordi der er så mange aktive aktører involverede – i næste øjeblik kan komplicere diskussionen yderligere og indføre flere og flere mellemregninger.

Så tesen om forskningsformidling som forsimpling holder efter min bedste overbevisning simpelt hen ikke. Det er en forsimplet tese. Og jeg vil påstå, at hvis den tese var blevet lagt ud på Facebook eller Twitter, så ville den være blevet haglet igennem og undergået et kvalificering og komplexificering i den kæmpe generator af mellemregninger som den sociale web er.

Criticisms of bullshit excesses in some parts of the STS community aside, museums of science, tech nology and medicine can learn lots from the ongoing discussion in the STS community.

So why not follow the live feed from the conference STS 20+20 — Science and Technology Studies: The Next Twenty, to be held at Harvard, 7-9 April?

The aim of the meeting is simple: “to provoke thinking and discussion on both the last twenty years of STS development and how we are preparing ourselves for the next twenty”. The organisers are asking questions like:

After two decades of increased public funding for STS, what can we say about our achievements as a “thought collective”?

What have we learned from speaking the truths of our field to the power of established disciplines?

Which areas of work do we recognize as displaying the greatest theoretical depth and creativity?

What do we impart to STS scholars-in-the-making, and what can we do to ensure that their ideas are heard more widely and that they find appropriate academic homes?

Why do STS? What makes it interesting, distinctive, coherent, relevant, and deserving of stronger institutionalization?

I’m not sure I like that exclusive “we”-speak in the way the organisers phrase the questions (it smacks too much of religious congregation announcements) — but that said, it will be interesting to follow the discussions.

If you cannot be there in person, you can always join via the live feed on the meeting’s website, where you can also find the program, participant bios, etc.

The upcoming one-day conference ‘Curating Science’ at Kingston University in London on 6 May — bringing together curators and communicators from museums, galleries and new sites of engagement to explore the role of science in the exhibition — looks sort of interesting

• Intersections in Art, Science and Society: Nicola Triscott, Director, The Arts Catalyst
• Turning the Museum Inside Out: exploring the challenges of interfacing scientific research with public engagement at the Darwin Centre: Louise Fitton, Senior Interpretation Developer, Natural History Museum
• Good Conversations: exhibits to encourage dialogue and reflection: Kat Nilsson, Contemporary Science Manager, Science Museum
• Curating ‘Lab Craft’ : digital adventures in contemporary craft: Max Fraser, Design Writer and Curator
• Art-object/science-object: a narrative of curating: Caterina Albano, Curator at Artakt and Fellow at CSM Innovation Centre
• Curating Earth: art of a changing world: Edith Devaney, Head of Summer Exhibition and Curator, Royal Academy

See more here: www.curatingscience.com; 10GBP tickets here: curatingscience.eventbrite.com

Actual and potential readers of this blog — that is, everyone with an interest in contemporary medical science and technology in museums — might be interested in this year’s meeting in the Artefacts series on the theme ‘Conceptualizing, Collecting and Presenting Recent Science and Technology’, to take place 25-27 September, 2011, in the Museum Boerhaave, Leiden.

The central questions for the meeting are:

• What intellectual and practical approaches should be developed to document and preserve the history of recent science and technology?:
• How can museums and academic communities develop an overview of the breadth and diversity of material culture associated with recent science and technology created at a variety of sites (universities, industry, government, and other venues) and scales of activity (local, national, and international)?
• How do we develop criteria of selection to capture salient themes and transformations?’
• What connections do we wish draw between artefacts as evidence and research questions of historians and other scholars?
• What are the practical challenges in collecting and storing the types of artefacts, images, electronic expressions, and other products distinctive of recent history?
• What forms of collaboration among museum and academic communities might help in addressing these challenges?
• And, not least, how does such an effort relate to exhibitions and public outreach?

The organisers invite papers discussing the above questions and other themes dealing with the material history of recent science and technology. Paper presentations are limited to 20 minutes. The conference language is English.

Send abstract proposals of <200 words to Museum Boerhaave’s Head of Collections, Hans Hooijmaijers, hanshooijmaijers@museumboerhaave.nl before 1 July 2011. Also include a short biography highlighting main research interests (no more than 50 words).

The meeting will start in the afternoon of Sunday 25 September with a pre-conference tour around Museum Boerhaave, followed by a plenary lecture and drinks. Monday 26 and Tuesday 27 September will be devoted to paper presentations.

And for those who don’t know it yet, Artefacts is an association of historians of science and technology, mostly based in museums and academic institutions, who share the goal of promoting the use of objects in serious historical studies. This is done at annual meetings, in a book series and through encouraging the efforts of historically-oriented museums of science and technology.

Martha Fleming, who was head curator on our award-winning exhibition Split & Splice: Fragments from the Age of Biomedicine (2009-2010) will speak at the Danish Royal Academy of Art on Friday 1 April. The title of her talk is “Museum as Material, Exhibition as Scholarly Publication”.

What does it mean to consider an institution to be a kind of ‘material’? What sort of research is it possible for an artist to effect inside a science museum? What does research itself mean in different scholarly contexts, and how does the artist facilitate interdisciplinarity beyond the studio and the gallery? This seminar will be of interest to those who want to know about intellectual and logistical issues of working with non-art museums, those whose conceptual work engages with science practice and history and philosophy of science, and those interested in the work that has come out of the radical aesthetics of 1980s site specific projects. Martha Fleming has made large-scale site specific installations, museum collection interpretation projects, and now works at the Natural History Museum in London. She will be speaking about her work as an artist, as a museum professional and as an historian of science.

The lecture takes place in the Italian Auditorium, 1 Kongens Nytorv, Copenhagen,  at 1 pm.

Some background reading:

• www.marthafleming.net
• Studiolo: The Collaborative Projects of Martha Fleming and Lyne Lapointe (Artextes 1997)
• “Feminisms is Still Our Name: Seven Essays on Historiography and Curatorial Practices”. Editor: Malin Hedlin Hayden and Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe (Cambridge Scholars 2010)

I’m a sucker for old analytical-philosophical virtues. That is, I like to analyse words and phrases in the light of common experience and ordinary language. I love to ask simple questions, like “What do you actually mean by X”?

My desire for analytical philosophy was triggered again the other day when I recieved the call for a conference titled ‘Bio-objects for Europe?’ organised by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) programme.

The basic idea behind the conference (and the network it is supposed to launch) is “the understanding that whilst the bio-sciences do different things in different places and mean different things to different actors, much can be learnt if we try to assemble these different things—as well as the researchers that conduct research on them”. It’s these assemblages of things and researchers (did someone say ANT?) they call ‘bio-objects’.

And here comes the juicy part that triggered my desire:

In a nutshell, ‘bio-objects’ refer to new living materials that disrupt formerly established boundaries and modes of ordering, as well as to ‘old matters of life’ that are ‘revitalized’ when brought into new spaces. However, rather than a ready-made concept—or even Theory with a capital T—‘bio-objects’ are a new heuristic device – or, in one sense, a boundary object – that is waiting to be filled with meaning. Filling bio-objects with meaning by drawing on empirical research on bio-objects, following their making and stabilization, their movements and circulations, their trajectories and life lines, and their governance and regulation, in different spaces and at different scales, is the ambition of this Action. In doing so, we want to provide both new analytical and policy-relevant contributions towards the understanding and oversight of these troublesome ‘creatures’.

which makes me want to ask some old-school analytical questions, like:

• what’s “new living materials” as opposed to “old living materials”?
• what does it actually mean that “new living materials … disrupt formerly established boundaries”?
• how can “‘old matters of life'” (note the inverted commas) be “‘revitalized'” (note again the inverted commas)
• what’s the difference between “Theory with a capital T” and just ‘theory’?
• what’s the difference between “a new heuristic device” and “a ready-made object”?
• “or, in one sense, a boundary object” — which are the other sense(s)?
• one the one hand, ‘bio-objects’ “refer” to “new living materials” (whatever that is). On the other hand ‘bio-objects’ is “a heuristic device … waiting to be filled with meaning” — is there (maybe) a slight contradiction here?
• I’d love to understand what a heuristic device not yet filled with meaning looks like 🙂 

And then, of course, there are all the usual buzz-words — objects are ‘made’ and ‘stabilized’, they ‘move’ and ‘circulate’, they have ‘trajectories’ and ‘life lines’. ‘Boundaries’ are, of course, always ‘disrupted’ and everything takes place in ‘spaces’ (never in places). And don’t forget that objects are always ‘ordered’, ‘governed’ and ‘regulated’.

“In a nutshell”, sometimes I wonder (inspired by my good friend and former colleague Hanne) if some of these conference announcements are generated by a web-based bullshit generator?

Martha Fleming, som var hovedkurator på vores udstilling Del & Hel: Brudstykker fra Biomedicinens Tid (2009-2010) taler om “Museum as Material, Exhibition as Scholarly Publication” på Kunstakademiets Billedkunstskoler, fredag den 1. april, kl. 13-15.

What does it mean to consider an institution to be a kind of ‘material’? What sort of research is it possible for an artist to effect inside a science museum? What does research itself mean in different scholarly contexts, and how does the artist facilitate interdisciplinarity beyond the studio and the gallery? This seminar will be of interest to those who want to know about intellectual and logistical issues of working with non-art museums, those whose conceptual work engages with science practice and history and philosophy of science, and those interested in the work that has come out of the radical aesthetics of 1980s site specific projects. Martha Fleming has made large-scale site specific installations, museum collection interpretation projects, and now works at the Natural History Museum in London. She will be speaking about her work as an artist, as a museum professional and as an historian of science.

Det foregår i det italienske auditorium, Kongens Nytorv 1, København.

Og så lidt background reading:

• www.marthafleming.net
• Studiolo: The Collaborative Projects of Martha Fleming and Lyne Lapointe (Artextes 1997)
• “Feminisms is Still Our Name: Seven Essays on Historiography and Curatorial Practices”. Editor: Malin Hedlin Hayden and Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe (Cambridge Scholars 2010)

Historians and curators of medicine might be interested in the conference ‘The Life of New Materials’ organised by the Hagley Museum and Library, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and the Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science ,17 – 18 November 2011.

The conference will explore “the lives of the new materials that have made possible many of the technological advances of our age. Whether based on plant, metal, chemical, or nano technologies, the development, use, re-use, and disposal of new materials is an embedded feature of our industrial society”. The organisers wish to understand “the relationships from which new materials emerge, and which they in turn often refashion”, and they are especially interested in proposals that focus on

The life history of a new material: its biography, use cycle, place in supply chains, or features as material culture. We encourage papers to address the reasons and methods for development of a new material: its design, manufacture, testing, and subsequent incorporation into final products or already existing technologies; its reuse or disposal after completion of its primary purpose; and its impact –anticipated or not–on subsequent innovations. Exploration of the creation of new materials should situate those scientific and technological processes within the commercial, institutional, or social contexts that lead to their development.

It’s a great topic for historical and museological investigations. My only caveat is the peculiar use of the terms ‘life’, ‘life history’ and ‘biography’ in this context. What do they actually mean when they suggest that, say, plastic has a ‘life’ and that it can be written as a ‘biography’? What is meant by a ‘biography’ of polystyrene? What does this metaphorical use of the notion of ‘life’ and ‘biography’ add to our understanding?

In my view absolutely nothing. Such unnecessary metaphors only confound the issues at stake. I know it has become fashionable to speak about the ‘life’ and ‘biography’ of inanimate things, but when the metaphors are extended from things to materials in general, fashion becomes folly.

Anyway, deadline for proposals is 1 April.  Travel support will be available for those presenting at the conference. More details here.