An irregular four-part interdisciplinary seminar series to bring creative practice researchers, cultural workers, technologists, media & communications specialists, and theoretical particle physicists into dialogue. Each session is convened thematically by Rebecca Collins to investigate and open debate on overlaps, inconsistencies, and uncertainties encountered within sonically-inflected searches for dark matter, the intersection of the quantum world with everyday realities, artistic processes & practises, and interdisciplinary laboratory conditions.  Where might lending an ear to the Universe and its technical nuances lead us? Can we attune ourselves to quantum mechanics if we listen long and hard enough? If something is out of ear shot that does not mean that it does not exist – what are the limits of the world we can access with our senses and what are the emergent technologies that enable us to investigate the unknown? 

Each event is held in person, to date these have been well attended by an audience of over sixty people, an interdisciplinary public consisting of musicologists, physicists, mathematicians, engineers, fluxus scholars, videographers, audio documentary makers, radio presenters, media & communication specialists, art historians, philosophers, human geographers, curators, cultural workers, CEOs, and sociologists.

Video documentation is uploaded to the IFTs YouTube channel which typically hosts content related to scientific outreach and communication. The video from the first session has attracted over 28,000 views with over 690 likes, the second over 10,000 views with 360 likes. The third video will be uploaded in early November 2022.

Part One: Uncertainty & Indeterminacy (11 March 2022)

The first session considers the role of uncertainty and indeterminacy within theoretical particle physics and the work of experimental music composers. If matter, albeit through the use of technology, is audible and silence (after experimental composer John Cage) is sound what might be going on at the microscopic or subatomic level of the Universe? Are there clues to be uncovered in theories of the quantum world? What might the uncertainty principle offer arts and humanities? What can the debunking of fixed points and events do for the imagination? What role does intuition play in scientific processes? Can an understanding of the quantum world teach us something of the instability of how we perceive, classify and interpret our present reality? To what extent might the frameworks of modelling, a term used within theoretical physics to describe the potential position of particles, be fruitful for creative practice?

Arts & Humanities Scholar: Carmen Pardo Salgado works in the interface between philosophy and sound art. She is a tenured lecturer at the University of Girona and Professor of the Sound Art Master’s degree at the University of Barcelona.

Physicist: Esperanza López-Manzanares holds a PhD in Physics from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM). She is currently a Scientific Researcher at the CSIC, at the Institute of Theoretical Physics where she is a specialist in the holographic principle of superstring theories within the theories of quantum gravity.

Video Documentation (in Spanish):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovX3k6jn-f4&t=145s

Part Two: Membranes, Microphones, Hydrophones & Particles (27 May 2022)

The second session considers the use of acoustic technology within theoretical particle physics and creative/cultural uses of radio. European interdisciplinary experiments currently make use of technology in the deep sea to detect microscopic particles. Where we might once have (perhaps naively) thought of the depth of the ocean as a homogeneous, unified space, data from such experiments teaches us otherwise. Ongoing remote access to underwater areas provides useful (and crucial) insights into a plethora of sonic phenomena. Alongside insights into the behaviours of high-energy particles such experiments also provide accounts of underwater noise profiles and the acoustic activities of cetaceans. What are the adequate conditions within which to detect the microscopic and invisible elements of our universe? What might the ability to navigate the intensities and densities of the subaquatic, otherwise inaccessible in our everyday lives, offer to aesthetic thought/to the imagination? How might these forms of scientific experimentation inform current thinking within the arts and humanities?

Arts & Humanities Scholar: Miguel Álvarez-Fernández is a sound artist, musicologist, writer, radio producer and film maker. Since 2008 he is the presenter of ‘Ars Sonora’ a weekly programme that airs on Classical Spanish National Radio.

Physicist: Miquel Ardid is a researcher at the Gandía Campus of the Polytechnical University in Valencia where he leads the detection of acoustic astro particle physics group.

Video Documentation (in Spanish): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYD-SyAytaE&t=137s

Part Three: Methodologies for Discovering the Unknown (30 September 2022)

The third session in the series focuses on the role of process within artistic research and scientific experimentation. The pursuit of the unknown, both within the context of particle physics and artistic research, requires infrastructure, imagination, and experimentation. The verification and reproducibility of results is a crucial aspect of scientific experimentation, yet such methodologies often bring slower returns and less reward than other searches dedicated to uncovering the unknown. Equally, artistic residencies and their set up within the context of interdisciplinary institutions involve risk, determination and uncertainty. Such qualities are often overlooked in favour of outcomes, data, products, or timed goals. Whilst, in time these might be achieved, can we reconsider the value of methodologies dedicated to uncovering the unknown? 

Areas under discussion include: To what extent is artistic practice a way of knowing? What kind of intervention do artistic residencies offer when situated within institutions? Can such structures be reproduced? What is the role of art and culture in relation to science and technology? In the context of scientific experimentation to what extent should results be reproducible? What role might failure play in relation to figuring out the unknown? 

Arts & Humanities: Ariane Koek is an independent producer, curator, and writer recognised internationally for her transdisciplinary work in the arts, science, and technology, and in the creation of new residency programmes.

Physicist: Marisa Sarsa Sarsa is Professor of atomic, molecular, and nuclear physics at the Department of Theoretical Physics at the University of Zaragoza. She is the Principal Investigator of the ANAIS experiment at the Canfranc Underground Laboratory.

Video Documentation (in English): forthcoming (Jan 2023)

Part Four: Traces of the Not-Yet-Known (13 January 2023)

The fourth (and final) session in the series considers what occurs at the limits of knowledge when the unknown traces of something emerge indicating the presence of that which is more than nothing.

Commonplace within art/science collaborations is the use of representation to communicate scientific findings. Such endeavours offer limited returns to artistic research and tend to occur at the tail end of a scientific enquiry. What happens in the predetermined stages of a research investigation, at the point prior to identification or classification, when what is to-be-known is still emerging? If findings cannot be aligned with current systems and structures, what tools do we have for jumping into the unknown?

This session will operate as a springboard for a dynamic conversation exploring the fundamental characteristics of experimental research.  Each speaker will offer access points, insights, and observations into areas of thought that uphold the complexities at stake when considering the nuances of research processes at the nexus of art and science.

Sign up (free): https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/parametres-for-understanding-uncertainty-tickets-503651684747

Arts & Humanities Scholar: Michael Schwab is an artist, and artist researcher who interrogates post-conceptual uses of technology in a variety of media including photography, drawing, printmaking and installation art. He holds a PhD in photography from the Royal College of Art. He is co-initiator and inaugural Editor-in-Chief of JAR, the Journal for Artistic Research.

Michael Schwab

Physicist: Alberto Casas holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics and is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Institute of Theoretical Physics (CSIC-UAM) in Madrid. His research areas are elementary particle physics and cosmology.

Dark Matter Detectives: Listening in on the first few minutes of the Universe is an opportunity for artists, experimental composers, and particle physicists to foster intellectual companionship, share performative tactics, and uncover the poetics and emotional forces found in the tiniest (and invisible) components of our Universe. Through research-based inquiries, field explorations, collaborative tasks, deep listening, and compositional prompts the selected group will engage in a series of creative acts to disrupt disciplined ways of knowing. The mystery of the origins of our universe forms the focus of this encounter and we will collectively probe the perceptive, philosophical, ontological, and epistemological challenges that this unresolved conundrum proposes. This experimental and interdisciplinary approach intentionally juxtaposes forms of thinking, describing, and making which rarely touch though that might, through collectively practising and embodying uncertainty, find new imaginative forms for understanding the dynamic interplay between the microscopic and macroscopic, the known unknowns and unknown knowns of the universe we inhabit. 

Three core questions framed and informed the curation of the event:

What kind of creative or qualitative accounts can we make for that which we can detect yet we cannot see, or otherwise sense?

If we cannot know in determinate ways, how can we make something known through what it makes happen?

What are the tips and tactics for the cultivation of an anti-everyday intuition?

The three-day workshop was led and organised by Rebecca Collins with assistance from the Uncertain Team a.k.a Idoia Zabaleta, Miguel Álvarez-Fernández and David G. Cerdeño. The workshop took place at AZALA a centre for advanced creative practice between 18 – 21 July 2022

Following an open call for participants over 40 applications from artists and scientists were received. The selection panel had to take some difficult decisions due to the limited amount of places available on this occasion. 

A forthcoming micro-documentary titled ‘Collective Practices for Uncertainty’ is due for release in early November 2022.

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Artistic Practice as Unconventional Outreach is an occasional study group for those interested in thinking about ways of reaching new audiences with their work within collaborations with creative arts researchers. In these sessions we look at carefully chosen examples of collaborations between physicists and artists and discuss in an informal setting. This may include documentaries, exhibitions, artworks, texts, sound pieces and other forms of multimedia. 

This group sprung up when a team of physics PhD students knocked on the door of B14, the office where Rebecca Collins resides from January 2022 – 2023 in the IFT. The group meets semi-spontaneously in the Sala Roja at the Instituto de Física Teórica. 

The group communicates via a Slack channel, contact Rebecca Collins via email to take part Rebecca.Collins[at]ed.ac.uk

An irregular study group convened by Rebecca Collins to consider how unknowability and the everyday act of living in an unfinished world offers possibilities for the creative imagination. It takes examples from particle theoretical physics related to uncertainty and indeterminacy to consider the philosophical, ontological, and epistemological implications of what we don’t know about the universe as opportunities for intellectual companionship.

Aimed at the curious, and anyone who might consider themselves a displaced thinker of sorts. We consider a texts, sound works, works of art, exhibitions, anecdotes, or theoretical texts where chance or indeterminacy is being used as part of the methodology of creation. Examples might include artists and authors such as Annie Ernaux, Georges Perec, Denise Ferreira de Silva, Katherine McKittrick, Karen Barad, Fred Moten, Christine Brooke-Rose, Elena Loizidou. Equally we might share an insight from everyday life, an uncanny encounter, subtle abundance or an inconsistency that somehow feels like an unexpected reveal. 

Key words: Creative-Critical, Sound art, the sonic, interdisciplinary practices & methods, exhibitions & artworks/approaches and forms of perception, everyday, autofiction, autoethnography.

To join, via email dispatches, coffee encounters online or otherwise contact: Rebecca.collins[at]ed.ac.uk