[-empyre-] Living Experiments

[nik gaffney]

On 18/09/13 06:01, Adam Nocek wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
> Thanks, Phillip, for this excellent post! I really like the way you want
> to extend, for example, Oron's insights and take them outside of the
> laboratory setting. To do this, you seem to imply, or in any case, play
> with the idea that "experiment" should be thought in much broader terms
> than the "scientific experiment." I wonder if you could comment on how
> you see the experiment functioning outside of this setting, or how,
> alternatively, a broader sense of experiment might transform the laboratory?

...perhaps a broader notion could be 'structured curiosity' with the
degree of structure or direction shifting between undirected tinkering
(threshold noise) at one extreme and highly structured, specifically
directed protocol at the other. curiosity lies beneath every experiment,
but not every curious act is structured as an experiment. is the
curiosity focused on a specific outcome or question ("is there a Higgs
Boson?"), exploratory ("what would happen if...?"), transformative (with
the aim of changing the experimenter) or something else?

with regard to how this can work in a setting that is situated "outside"
of an explicitly/exclusively scientific context, we have found it
illuminating to adopt particular techniques where useful (pragmatic
epistemology?) and reject them if they get in the way.. .

"The Scientific Method" (c.f.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method)

 - begin the experiment with a clear statement of intent
 - create a structure to facilitate the intent
 - do things and document them as they happen in an appropriate form
 - review what has been documented in a form accessible to others
 - change "statement of intent" if required and repeat

"Against Method"
 - is the process, product or production sufficiently interesting to
reward further experimentation? is there a good story?
 - anything goes

and on...
nik

-- 
                                    [ f o a m ]  ->  http://fo.am
                                       grow your own worlds [借景]