TRANS-DISCIPLINARITY: WHY NOW ?

Inputs from Roger Malina to the report: Perspectives on Trans-Disciplinarity: Interim Report of INTR (International Network for Trans-disciplinary (post doctoral) Research (http://trans-techresearch.net/research/intr) Contributions from Roger Malina following the July 14/15 2011 Vienna Workshop During the HERA Technology, Exchange and Flow: Artistic Media Practices and Commercial Application meeting in Vienna (http://trans-techresearch.net/tef/ ) July 16 2011 During the Workshop we decided to establish a Why Now section of the interim report, where each participant articulates why transdisciplinary research approaches are particularly urgent or germane now (as opposed to 50 years ago when inter-disciplinarity and multidisciplinarity were established as necessary approaches in the arts, sciences and humanities. Here follows three arguments I feel need further discussion for possible incorporation in the report: 1) Big Data, Lost Data, Found Data 2) Networked Hypermedia and Networked Knowledge 3) Coping with the Anthropocene

First let me provide my working definition of Trans-Disciplinarity: Definition (adapted from Nowotny et al 2003 (1)) Trans-disciplinarity is the mobilization of a range of theoretical perspectives and practical methodologies to solve problems. The creative act of TD lies in 1) the capacity to mobilize and manage these various perspectives and methodologies and their external orchestration, and 2) in the development of new theories or conceptualization, the refinement of research methods, and 3) the re-vitalization of the internal dynamics of scientific, artistic and social creativity. Unlike inter- or multi disciplinarity, trans-disciplinarity is not necessarily derived from pre- existing disciplines, nor does it always contribute to the formation of new disciplines. 1) Big Data, Found Data, Lost Data Big Data: A new situation is arising in one discipline after the other with the arrival of big data (2) , or the availability of massive databases and data flows. From astronomy to archeology, from the fine arts to economics, new approaches and techniques are developing of trans-disciplinary importance. Daniel Boorstin called this an epistemological inversion, decrying that we are often data rich but meaning poor (3) Lost Data: Archiving has become a of trans-disciplinary crisis. The dramatic change of scale of the task of archiving requites approaches that are up to now fragmented, bound by disciplinary histories and institutions. The appearance of massive quantities of data generated by social network practices is unprecedented.(4)

Found Data: Big Data is transforming cultural practice. Where the readymade transformed fine arts practice beginning with Duchamp, todays re-mix, mash up culture repurposes data taken for one objective to another context. (5) (6) Concepts of authorship and of originality are transformed in a culture of innovation rather than of invention. Citizen Science not only generates data but repurpose data to social purposes. Our educational programs are mis-matched to the needs of the emerging culture. We argue that inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary approaches are proving inadequate to the challenges. New trans-disciplinary approaches are required and beginning to be developed. 2: Networked Hyper-Media, Networked Knowledge. On line data in essence consist of one gigantic hyper-media collective work. Millions of authors contribute to a rapidly developing collective work that includes the most scholarly work to the most popular and ephemeral. Yet the educational, scholarly, publication industries remain organized around nineteenth century concepts of authorship and intellectual property. Again in this area the triad of creator, producer and consumer are conflated, generating issues that are transposable to other contexts. We argue that inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary approaches are proving inadequate to the new situation. Search engines evolve towards discipline-independent, problem based querying and driving development of trans-disciplinary thinking. Emerging transdisciplinary tools, such as Culturomics (7) or the Science of Complex Networks (8) for example, point the way to the required transdisciplinary thinking. At a more general level, humanities scholars have talked about this global hyper-text driving the development of networked knowledge as a departure from traditional ways of constructing discipline based knowledge construction. (9)

We are argue that inter-disciplinary, multi- disciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches must be used in concert. 3. Coping with the Anthropocene: The Translational Turn A number of analysis have highlighted that within the last century the scale of the impact of homo sapiens has led to environmental impacts that are now being deposited in the geological record, whether through climate change, depletion of fossil energy sources or other global impacts due to human activity. The changes in our behaviours needed to drive possible futures towards a sustainable society must occur on time scales short compared to typical scales for societal adaptation (except at times of disasters). In recent years medicine has recognized that traditional methods for converting the results of medical research into medical practice have failed; this has led to the development of methods and strategies to accelerate this conversion from knowledge into practice through targeted approaches of translational medicine (10). Here we argue that similar approaches must be generalized, through transdisciplinary approaches, to other fields where conversion of knowledge into practice is urgent. Coping with the anthropocene era presents many such challenges; translational research approaches are part of the tool kit. On source of methodologies that can be drawn on are translation studies. Originally developed with the context of language translation, such theories have been expanded to inter-cultural translation, and more recently to inter-disciplinary translation. The urgency of many problems posed by coping with the anthropocene suggests that trans-disciplinary techniques, such as translations studies may be relevant. (11) Examples of such trans-disciplinary approaches are beginning to emerge (12). Footnotes

1.

This definitionof Trans-Disciplinarity is adapted from Nowotny, H., Scott, P. and Gibbson M. Introduction, Mode 2 Revisited: The New Production of Knowledge, Minerva 41: 179194, 2003.

There are a number of definitions of inter-disciplinary and multi disciplinary. Here I will distinguish a) inter-disciplinary as one discipline setting up collaborating with others in order to import knowledge techniques necessary for that discipline to improve its ability to address problems in that discipline ( thus astronomy imported physics for astrophysics, neuroscience + biology let to neurobiology, graphics imported computer science leading to computer graphics), b) multi-disciplinary as the collaboration between disciplines needed to draw on expertise outside those disciplines for a common endeavour ( thus film production requires multi-disciplinary teams, migration studies requires multi-disciplinary approaches). We argue here that trans-disciplinary approaches are unavoidable for issues for example developing gender quality in a society, or developing new approaches for imaging data across all disciplines (12). 2. A particularly useful reference is the late Jim Grays compendium of essays The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery http://research.microsoft.com/enus/collaboration/fourthparadigm/ See also Jim Grays Fourth Paradigm and the Construction of the Scientific Record by Clifford Lynch http://research.microsoft.com/enus/collaboration/fourthparadigm/4th_paradigm_book_part4_lync h.pdf 3. Daniel J Boorstin, Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected, Vintage Books, 1995. I dont have the page number handy, but

the talk that was the basis for the essay was given at the World Space Congress.
4.

This topic has a huge literature. A recent comment of interest from the US Librarian of Congress David Ferreiro in http://michael-hoyle.com/blog/us-national-archivist-onelectronic-records/ states:

The Archivist likened his own situation to that of first archivist, Robert Connor, who in 1934 discovered: a horrendous situation, where records had been stored in attics and garages, and flooded and fires and stolen and destroyed, The analogy just became very clear to me that were in the same kind of situation around electronic recordsMy situation is very similar to what Connor faced.
5.

At the Vienna Workshop Jan Baetans talked about how the literary arts are only just beginning to see the changes brought by the equivalent of Duchamps readymade in the visual arts. In the case of procedural and conceptual poetry for instance remix, mash up are used to generate innovative forms. At the workshop Mark-Paul Meyer of the Film Museum in Amsterdam described the emergence of found footage as source material for exhibitions. See for instance the Found Footage Festival : http://lightfactory.org/found-footage-festival J B Michel and colleagues have developed cultural observatory: The Cultural Observatory at Harvard is working to enable the quantitative study of human culture across societies and across centuries. We do this in three ways: Creating massive datasets relevant to human culture Using these datasets to power wholly new types of analysis

6.

7.

Developing tools that enable researchers and the general public to query the data

Through what they call culturomics: http://www.culturomics.org/ they have developed specific tools , for instance n-grams, which allows one to track the frequency of usages of phrases since 1980 of all books digitized by google allowing the tracking of the flow of concepts across languages or evicdence of censorship.
8.

Laszlo Barabasi, http://www.barabasi.com/,one of the most influential researchers in the science of complex networks has emphasized the relevance of these tools for use in the arts and humanities. Since 2009 Max Schich and Isabelle Meirelles have been organizing the Leonardo Day at the NETSCI conferences (http://artshumanities.netsci2011.net/ ) where Arts, Humanities and Complex Networks are discussed.

The HASTAC (Arts, Humanities, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), has prominently promoted the networked knowledge argument. See the report The Future of Learning Institutions in the Digital Age http://www.hastac.org/story/future-learning-institutionsdigital-age
9.

One defition : Translational research transforms scientific discoveries arising from laboratory, clinical, or population studies into clinical applications to reduce cancer incidence, morbidity, and mortality." http://www.cancer.gov/researchandfunding/trwg/TRWGdefinition-and-TR-continuum For the specific application in medicine of translational approach see the US National institute of health for instance : http://commonfund.nih.gov/clinicalresearch/overviewtranslational.aspx Translational research is a paradigm for
10.

research alternative to the dichotomy of basic research and applied research. It is often applied in the domain of medicine but has more general applicability as a distinct research approach. It is also allied in practice with the approaches of participative science and participatory action research. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translational_research )
11. Bachmann-Medick,

Doris ed. (2009). The Translational Turn. (=Special Issue of 'Translation Studies' vol. 2, issue 1). For a discussion of the relevance of translation studies in the context of this worskshop see the texts by Michael Punt, Martin Zierold and Roger Malina in the March issue of Leonardo Quaterly Reviews: http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/LRQ/LRQ %201.03.pdf
12. The

US National Academy of Science recently released : NAKFI Seeing the Future with Imaging Science: Interdisciplinary Research Team Summaries; the report articulates a transdisciplinary approach : Imaging science has the power to illuminate regions as remote as distant galaxies, and as close to home as our own bodies. Many of the disciplines that can benefit from imaging share common technical problems, yet researchers often develop ad hoc methods for solving individual tasks without building broader frameworks that could address many scientific problems. At the 2010 National Academies Keck Futures Initiative Conference on Imaging Science, researchers from academia, industry, and government formed 14 interdisciplinary teams created to find a common language and structure for developing new technologies, processing and recovering images, mining imaging data, and visualizing it effectively. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13110