A key premise of ‘Parameters for Understanding Uncertainty’ is to find forms for putting research in common as the project develops. The events, research presentations, media outputs, video documentation, images, journal articles, sound art works all aim to foster means by which we can collectively practice and sense out parameters for understanding uncertainty.
Click the tabs on the left to navigate links to each aspect of the project. These are updated as the process unfolds so do check back from time to time,
Research Presentations
2023 March – April 2023
9th March – 26th April 2023 >> Exhibition: Listening to Dark Matter // Escuchar la materia oscura, Sala de Exposiciones, Autonoma University of Madrid (competitively selected as part of UAM Artists on Campus). Over 300 people visited the exhibition.
Presentations (invited) were delivered to:
MA students in music at the UAM
MA students in History of Art at the UAM
MA students in Museology at the UAM
MA students in Critical Argumentation in Philosophy at the UAM
See: https://projects.ift.uam-csic.es/p4uu/exhibition-listen-to-dark-matter/
https://www.uam.es/uam/oficina-actividades-culturales-sala-exposiciones
2023 January
24th January 2023 >> ‘Detectives of the Invisible: Towards Cosmological Listening or How to Hear Evasive Particles’ for ‘Collective Mourning and Planetary Mourning’ a study group curated by Isabel de Navéran at the Reina Sofía Museum (invited). This session is linked to the research project The New Loss of Centre. Critical Practices of Live Arts and Architecture in the Anthropocene, directed by Fernando Quesada, from the University of Alcalá de Henares, funded by Spain’s Ministry of Science and Innovation.
Inscriptions open (until 15 December 2022)
2022 November
30th November 2022 >> ‘Art & Science: Strategies for Scientific Outreach‘ (in English) La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands Winter School (invited) 16:30-18:30
25th November 2022 >> ‘Listening to Dark Matter’ ‘Escuchando la materia oscura’ Public Talk (in Spanish) with David G. Cerdeño, Museum of Science and the Cosmos, 18:30-19:30
10th November 2022 19:30 >> ‘Art & Science: Artistic Research & Sound Art as Scientific Outreach‘, Science Week, Residencía de Estudiantes, Madrid (invited, in person, in Spanish).
2022 October
17th – 20th October >> ‘The Listening Academy’ with Brandon Labelle & international guests, Bergen, Norway (invited).
In what ways can listening be mobilised as a form of critical intervention, one that can impact onto scenes of personal and political struggle? How is listening utilised or figured within experiences of trauma, supporting acts of domination as well as healing and recuperation? What forms of knowledge emerge from sonic practices and projects, where listening is taken on as an experimental, relational position? And are there new opportunities for supporting listening as what can aid in reworking current attention economies? The Listening Academy aims to follow these lines of enquiry to contribute to understandings and acts of recognition and repair. This includes nurturing new imaginaries and knowledges around what it means to hear & to be heard, to voice & respond, within today’s planetary environment. (forthcoming book publication edited with Brandon Labelle, Errant Bodies Press)
https://kmd.uib.no/en/Calendar/concerts-sound/the-listening-academy
2022 September
13th September 2022 >> Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPra) annual conference ‘On Scientific Misuse’ for the Documenting Performance Working Group, Essex University (Colchester Campus) (selected).
9th September 2022 >> Workshop for the High Energy Physics School at Benasque, Spain (invited)
https://www.benasque.org/2022tae/
2022 July
Conference presentation (in person) ‘Mend, Blend, Attend’ Society for Artistic Research Annual Conference, Bauhaus, Weimar (Germany) (selected).
Artistic Research is in a unique position to confront uncertainty. The dire grievances brought on by Covid-19 and the climate crisis demand more than utopic gestures or hopeful technologies. Challenged by the tensions of our times, Artistic Researchers are tasked with applying diverse forms of embodied knowledge to craft new tools for post-crisis conviviality and radical kindness (forthcoming proceedings to be published in 2023).
https://sar2022.uni-weimar.de/programme
2022 April
Presentation for psychoacoustic students at the Poly-technical University of Valencia, Gandía (UPV) (invited).
2022 March
Lecture on ‘Parameters for Understanding Uncertainty: Creative Practice and Sonic Detection as Strategies for Scientific Outreach’ for State of the Art: Contemporary Perspectives in Art, Science, and Technology (ARTF2054), School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds. Course organiser: Dr Liz Stainforth. Video (password protected, email for access) (invited) https://vimeo.com/698237576
2022 January
Presentation delivered at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (IFT, UAM-CSIC) (invited)
2021 November
Presentation delivered for research staff at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
2023 March
59.23 mins in Spanish
2022 December
A micro-documentary on ‘Collective Practices of Uncertainty’ which shares insights, via interviews and live footage, of the unlikely encounters which unfolded over three-days between artists and physicists. The workshop, co-ordinated and led by Rebecca Collins alongside an uncertain team, explores the ongoing mysterious origin of our universe. Competitively selected participants investigated, via somatic and sensorial means, the mathematical, philosophical, ontological, and epistemological implications of the unknown. The workshop took place at AZALA, a centre for advanced creative practice in the Basque Country, in the North of Spain in July 2022.
15.30 mins in Spanish with English subtitles
2022 November
‘Listening to Dark Matter’ public talk (with David G. Cerdeño) at the Museum of Science and the Cosmos in La Laguna, Tenerife (in Spanish).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvrzkJ8QAn4
‘When Artistic Research meets Scientific Research: Strategies for Unconventional Outreach’ invited as part of the Astrophysics Winter School Meeting, La Laguna, Tenerife (in English).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACAjlGm0hJc
‘Artistic Research, Science, and Sound Art’ public talk for science week at the Residency for Students, Madrid (in Spanish)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj2FCf3A3N0&t=113s
2022 May
‘Art, Science and Technology: From Creation to Exhibition’ at Teatros Canal, Madrid as part of their Canal Connect series. Rebecca Collins was invited to present her project ‘Parametres for Understanding Uncertainty’ alongside Maria Blasco, director of CNIO and Blanca Pérez of Etiopia, centre for science and technology research. The session was moderated by Miguel Álvarez-Fernández, musicologist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvPcph5GALo (in Spanish)
2022 March
‘Música y Cuántica’ Video documentation of first interdisciplinary seminar ‘Uncertainty and Indeterminacy’ with Esperanza López-Manzanares and Carmen Pardo-Salgado.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovX3k6jn-f4&t=143s (in Spanish)
2021 October
Press release on IFT CSIC website:
2024 April
- Article published (open access), Collins Rebecca. 2024. ‘On Listening In to the Scientific Mundane: Parameters for Understanding Uncertainty & Political Indeterminacy’ in Performance Research special issue ‘On the Mundane’ Vol.28 No. 3
Accepted for publication Collins, Rebecca. ‘Parameters for Understanding Uncertainty: Methodologies for Intellectual Loitering within Scientific Infrastructure & Communication’ in The Routledge Companion to Performance and Science, eds. Paul Johnson and Adele Senior (forthcoming, 2024)
Conference proceedings ‘Parameters for Understanding Uncertainty (P4UU): On Scientific Misuse, or what’s the Use of a Sonic Detective in an International Interdisciplinary Scientific Experiment?’ to be published following the Society of Artistic Research annual conference ‘Mend, Blend, Attend’ held at the Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany.
A series of sound art works were commissioned by principal investigator, Rebecca Collins, as part of the research methods of ‘Parametres for Understanding Uncertainty: Creative Practice and Sonic Detection as Strategies’ for Scientific Outreach. Three pieces were developed under the heading ‘Improbable Encounters’. In each instance a composer / sound artist was invited to collaborate with a physicist on topics related to research processes within theoretical particle physics over a three-month period.
Rebecca Collins accompanied each process to facilitate communication, share crucial documents, and provide a generous infrastructure under which the works could unfold. The works were shared during the ‘Collective Practices of Uncertainty’ workshop organised and led by Rebecca Collins (and the Uncertain Team) in July 2022 at AZALA, a space for advanced creative practice in the Basque Country, near Vitoria. Plans for the works to be released on vinyl are currently in motion.
Energies not Forms not Figures (2023)
Composer: Ode Aseguinolaza
Physicist: David G. Cerdeño (IFT UAM-CSIC)
Physicist: David Pereñiguez Rodríguez (IFT UAM-CSIC)