Thursday, May 19, 2016

Re: [Yasmin_discussions] Mercado Central Exchange

Dear Guillermo

This is a crucial issue indeed.

The policy makers try to "cover their ass" so to speak. They
are afraid of uncertainty, of evaluating something for which
they have no other criteria than "deliverables delivered"
and money spent on the correct budget line (they do not
evaluate the content per se but if it is delivered and if
you are OK with the money).

I am afraid to tell you that for the art and art-sci
contexts it is exactly the same.

Of course, each of us, in the sciences or in the arts, or
even at the intersection, we develop creative means to
by-pass this problem of indicating what the result will be
before having done the first research or work.

However, there is may be other strategies:
- lobby the funders and policy makers so that they give us
more space
- be creative in proposing them other evaluation criteria
- recently, I was in a workshop related to stem cells where
someone asked : "could the regulation embrace uncertainty".
How would you do that ?
- Join forces between sciences and art to do the lobbying.

For me the issue is not the collaborative process that is at
stake here, or not necessarily, or not only. And I believe
that heavy institutional structures are still needed because
if there are some art, science and art-science project that
you can do in your kitchen or in your garage or even in some
collective co-working space (sharing tools), scientists and
artists still need things like the LHC or ALMA telescope, or
Hubble, or Class III biolabs ... (you name it in your own
field) that will never be available otherwise but in big
institutions. And yes, you can get their data and use them
from your living room but you still need big money and big
consortia to build and run the instruments-facilities !

My 2 cents.

Best
Annick


Le 18/05/16 12:56, Guillermo Muñoz a écrit :
> Dear Mercado Central Exchange discussants,
>
>
> I would like to introduce a new topic in this discussion. Let me know what
> do you think about.
>
>
> Nowadays I feel that administrative processes are flooding the research
> work and practice. And this tendency is growing each year. We spend so much
> time writing for projects that have very little probability to be awarded,
> and the time consumption that is needed is very large (some time two or
> three months of our 100% work time, or even more). I´ve been watching many
> projects rejected in their first, second or third attempts, which are
> extremely competitive, and where have been wasted a large amount of
> creativity. Furthermore, in this kind of projects, like Marie Curie, ITN,
> ERC, … you must show that your objectives are going to be successfully
> reached. However, them must be extremely innovative and new, plenty of new
> ideas and applications.
>
>
> Sometimes this seems to me like if we asked to Faraday to develop a new
> electric engine, before he can think on it. To ask him to develop a written
> project to show that we is going to develop a new electric and magnetic
> laws, and to show that he is going to make connections between light and
> electromagnetic radiation.
>
>
> To be honest, I don´t think that this kind of frustrating enterprises, like
> ERC projects and so on, which waste huge quantity of creativity, and this
> kind of "strange" protocols where you must show that you are going to be
> successful in your research, and you must explain what are you going to
> discover is helping a lot to the scientific practice. At least, not in my
> opinion.
>
>
> However, in fact, I feel many times that sci/art intersection works in an
> opposite direction. This doesn´t means that art/sci practice is caotic, or
> is not well administrated. In fact, it is. But, at least at the moment,
> there are spaces to leave the creative process to be productive, to find
> inputs from everywhere you want, and not to explain which products are you
> going to develop, before you do it. So, this space opened to the innovation
> practice is great to be "walked" being a scientist, where all the official
> science work is plenty of bourocracy, wasting time, creativity and, for
> instance, much of the time blocking new ideas.
>
>
> In conclusion, art/sci scenario could help to the scientist guild to
> recover this innovative space, which in many places is completely lost.
>
> Best,
>
> Guillermo.
> _______________________________________________
> Yasmin_discussions mailing list
> Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
> http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
>
> Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
>
> SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
> HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
> TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
> If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/
>
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions

Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin

SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/