This is a report of the research done during the Summer School 2022 at the Digital Methods Initiative (UvA). The work and the report were developed in collaboration with the participants in the datasprint: Gabrielle Aguilar // Federica Bardelli // Laura Bruschi // Miranda García // Giulia Giorgi // Matthew Hanchard // Bakar Abdul-Rashid Jeduah // Natalie Kerby // Goran Kusić // Bruno Mattos // Samir van Oeijen Rodríguez // Alessandro Quets // Eivind Røssaak // Miazia Schueler // Zijing Xu // Xin Zhou // Chloe Sussan-Molson // Maud Borie // Alireza Hashemzadegan // Misha Velthuis. Abstract:Sea-level rise has long been one of the most locally tangible impacts of climate change, both now and in the future. Due to accelerating climate change, the annual rate of sea-level rise has almost tripled over the last century, and the mean sea level rise is expected to rise 0.3m-1.0m by 2100 (Duijndam et al., 2021). The IPCC states that risks include increased flooding, erosion, loss of ecosystems and permanent submergence (Oppenheimer et al., 2019). In the UK, there are fierce debates over whether to protect or surrender coastal homes threatened by sea-level rise (Fisher, 2022), while in the Netherlands the trust in its strong water management and engineering tradition has led to the so-called myth of the dry feet—the idea that sea-level rise in the Netherlands, a country that in part lies below sea-level, can be countered by merely building higher dams (Schuttenhelm, 2020). Scenarios for the future of the Netherlands include new adaptation strategies of living with the water, in which parts of the land are given back to nature to preserve larger cities (Deltares, 2019). Globally, some of the world’s most populous cities, such as New York, Bangkok and Shanghai are amongst the most vulnerable (C40 Cities, 2018), while the existential threats to small islands such as Kiribati, Seychelles and the Maldives could result in entire states disappearing from the world (Martyr-Koller et al., 2021). Emblematic images of people wading through the flooded streets of Venice holding up their shopping bags or stopping for a coffee travelled the news and social media outlets as an illustration of the climate crisis, and the collision of rising sea levels, a sinking city, surging seasonal winds and failing governance as the city experienced its worst floods in 50 years (National Geographic, 2019).There have been some notable efforts to visualise scientific projections of sea-level rise (e.g. Climate Central, 2015), as well as more creative attempts to communicate the threat such as the iconic Der Spiegel depicting a submerged Koln Cathedral (Mahony, 2016). Yet it is argued that sea-level rise remains a relatively low public concern given the huge potential risks to ecosystems and human habitats (Akerlof et al., 2017), while a recent advanced review of digital media research on climate communication found no research focused on the issue (Pearce et al., 2019). In this project, we will try to fill this gap, looking to see how both present and future sea-level rise is being imagined and interpreted on social media platforms, in terms of textual and visual content, information sources, locations, and point in time (i.e., future or present).
MULTIFILE
The concept of biodiversity, which usually serves as a shorthand to refer to the diversity of life on Earth at different levels (ecosystems, species, genes), was coined in the 1980s by conservation biologists worried over the degradation of ecosystems and the loss of species, and willing to make a case for the protection of nature – while avoiding this “politically loaded” term (Takacs, 1996). Since then, the concept has been embedded in the work of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, established in 1992) and of the Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, aka ‘the IPCC for biodiversity’, established in 2012). While the concept has gained policy traction, it is still unclear to which extent it has captured the public imagination. Biodiversity loss has not triggered the same amount of attention or controversy as climate change globally (with some exceptions). This project, titled Prompting for biodiversity, investigates how this issue is mediated by generative visual AI, directing attention to both how ‘biodiversity’ is known and imagined by AI and to how this may shape public ideas around biodiversity loss and living with other species.
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In this paper, we explore the ways in which we can employ arts-based research methods to unpack and represent the diversity and complexity of journalistic experiences and (self) conceptualisations. We address the need to reconsider the ways in which we theorise and research the field of journalism. We thereby aim to complement the current methodologies, theories, and prisms through which we consider our object of study to depict more comprehensively the diversity of practices in the field. To gather stories about journalism creatively (and ultimately more inclusively and richly), we propose and present the use of arts-based research methods in journalism studies. By employing visual and narrative artistic forms as a research tool, we make room for the senses, emotion and imagination on the part of the respondents, researchers and audiences of the output. We draw on a specific collaboration with artists and journalists that resulted in a research event in which 32 journalists were invited to collaboratively recreate the “richness and complexity” of journalistic practices.
Society continues to place an exaggerated emphasis on women's skins, judging the value of lives lived within, by the colour and condition of these surfaces. This artistic research will explore how the skin of a painting might unpack this site of judgement, highlight its objectification, and offer women alternative visualizations of their own sense of embodiment. This speculative renovation of traditional concepts of portrayal will explore how painting, as an aesthetic body whose material skin is both its surface and its inner content (its representations) can help us imagine our portrayal in a different way, focusing, not on what we look like to others, but on how we sense, touch, and experience. How might we visualise skin from its ghostly inner side? This feminist enquiry will unfold alongside archival research on The Ten Largest (1906-07), a painting series by Swedish Modernist Hilma af Klint. Initial findings suggest the artist was mapping traditional clothing designs into a spectral, painterly idea of a body in time. Fundamental methods research, and access to newly available Af Klint archives, will expand upon these roots in maps and women’s craft practices and explore them as political acts, linked to Swedish Life Reform, and knowingly sidestepping a non-inclusive art history. Blending archival study with a contemporary practice informed by eco-feminism is an approach to artistic research that re-vivifies an historical paradigm that seems remote today, but which may offer a new understanding of the past that allows us to also re-think our present. This mutuality, and Af Klint’s rhizomatic approach to image-making, will therefore also inform the pedagogical development of a Methods Research programme, as part of this post-doc. This will extend across MA and PhD study, and be further enriched by pedagogy research at Cal-Arts, Los Angeles, and Konstfack, Stockholm.
The city of Amsterdam is well-known for its creative citizens, innovative use of public spaces, and bottom up and informal (citizen) initiatives. Many of these initiatives are endorsed and - after some time - formalised by local government. However, some need to be relocated or disappear due to densification-strategies. This is particularly the case in contexts of urban growth and not unique for Amsterdam. Depending on the specific circumstances, densification strategies compensate densification with nature conservation and/or public space programs. Densification is a contested approach – chiefly because it often entails quantitative approaches that are abstracting specific places into numerical value and generalized policy ambitions that do not resonate with the creative language and practical wisdom and imagination at play in the specific places. Often, these strategies also involve uncertainty regarding their relationship with informal citizen initiatives. Particularly in the urban fringe, we see a variety of initiatives that have developed over the years and which have obtained temporary approval for their activities. In this pop-up research we explore if, and how techniques of research by design contribute to making productive these confrontations – between formal and informal resources, between practical wisdom and generalised knowledge, between local creative-artistic and more general quantitative approaches - with the broader aim to create more sustainable and liveable cities.
