10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17580
Although not a book that can be labelled as “art-science”, the novel Atlante Occidentale (1985), published in English as Lines of Light, was conceived by the Italian writer Daniele Del Giudice during a fieldwork visit at the CERN laboratory in Geneva in the early 1980s. The two protagonists, the writer Ira Epstein and the physicist Pietro Brahe, have a common obsession: the drive to experimentation. Both characters seek to create new tools (machines) out of existing material for understanding reality – Pietro a particle collider, Ira the written word. As I argue in the article, Atlante Occidentale, a work of fiction, makes a point which should be at the core of any attempt to better understand art-science collaboration: art and science are both ways of world-making.
The article provides readers with a brief overview of the mainstream narratives on and in art-science collaboration and suggests a series of strategies apt for challenging those narratives. First, I argue that experimentation rather than creativity is the glue making any collaboration between art and science possible. Second, I show the importance for both scholars and artists of carrying out laboratory fieldwork and archival research to access science in the making and, hence, to engage in potentially transformative art-science collaborative work. Finally, I call for a radical rethinking of the scale and syntax of art-science projects given that some of the most successful models of such collaborative endeavours are in deep crisis.
application/pdf
2038-3460
17580
2
en
Silvia Casini
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
art-science amateurs
That Obscure Object of Desire: Some Notes for a Slow Art-Science
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
13
Lectures
2023-02-19
2023-06-30
2023-02-19
2023-10-30
87-104
TS
Silvia Casini
2022
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17580
87
University of Aberdeen
2038-3460
2
art-science amateurs
en
104
That Obscure Object of Desire: Some Notes for a Slow Art-Science
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17580/16430
13
                                                                             Lecture
That Obscure Object of Desire: Some
Notes for a Slow Art-Science

Silvia Casini
University of Aberdeen


     Abstract: Although not a book that can be labelled as “art-science”, the
     novel Atlante Occidentale (1985), published in English as Lines of Light, was
     conceived by the Italian writer Daniele Del Giudice during a fieldwork visit
     at the CERN laboratory in Geneva in the early 1980s. The two protago-
     nists, the writer Ira Epstein and the physicist Pietro Brahe, have a common
     obsession: the drive to experimentation. Both characters seek to create
     new tools (machines) out of existing material for understanding reality –
     Pietro a particle collider, Ira the written word. As I argue in the article, At-
     lante Occidentale, a work of fiction, makes a point which should be at the
     core of any attempt to better understand art-science collaboration: art and
     science are both ways of world-making.
     The article provides readers with a brief overview of the mainstream narra-
     tives on and in art-science collaboration and suggests a series of strategies
     apt for challenging those narratives. First, I argue that experimentation ra-
     ther than creativity is the glue making any collaboration between art and
     science possible. Second, I show the importance for both scholars and art-
     ists of carrying out laboratory fieldwork and archival research to access
     science in the making and, hence, to engage in potentially transformative
     art-science collaborative work. Finally, I call for a radical rethinking of the
     scale and syntax of art-science projects given that some of the most suc-
     cessful models of such collaborative endeavours are in deep crisis.

     Keywords: art-science collaboration; experimentation; fiction; art-science
     amateurs.

     Submitted: October 30, 2022 – Accepted: November 25, 2022
     Corresponding author: Silvia Casini, University of Aberdeen, Dept. of
     Film and Visual Culture, King’s College, Aberdeen, United Kingdom.
     Email: silvia.casini@abdn.ac.uk




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TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
13 (2) pp. 87-104 - ISSN 2038-3460
www.tecnoscienza.net                              2022
88                                                                Tecnoscienza – 13 (2)


1. Where Art and Science Collide
     All my life, all my work has been nothing more than connecting people to
     objects, and objects to experience and feelings, to self-perception, to ide-
     as. Perhaps what I have invented so far is nothing more than a special
     lens, which allows you to see the background and the figure in their rela-
     tionship, with equal dignity. As a boy you will have been brought up for
     math, or science. I had an aptitude for people. (Daniele Del Giudice, At-
     lante Occidentale 1985, 62)

    The novel Atlante Occidentale was conceived by the Italian writer
Daniele Del Giudice during a fieldwork visit at the CERN laboratory in
Geneva in the early 1980s. First published in 1985 in Italian and then in
English as Lines of Light (1988), the book has been re-published by the
Italian editor Einaudi and enriched by fieldwork notes jotted down by the
author. The fieldwork visit took place in the context of the art and sci-
ence programme Arts at CERN that still hosts a series of artist-in-
residence projects in the world’s largest and most respected centre for
scientific research. The first CERN artist-in-residence was the performer
James Lee Byars who spent a few Summers at CERN during the 1970s, a
stay documented by a few black and white photographs.1 It is unknown
to many, though, that Daniele Del Giudice spent a period at the nuclear
research facility in the early 1980s with the purpose of writing a book.
The above passage hints at some of the themes and methods that pertain to
both art and science: discovery, originality, relational thinking, self-
reflexivity, a Gestalt principle of visual perception, the dualism between the
qualitative and the quantitative dimension, which is, according to Newfield
(2019), how the old dualism between art and science manifests itself.
    “Where Art and Science Collide” is the tagline of the Science Gallery
international network whose mission is “to ignite creativity and discovery
where science and art collide”.2 In the industrialised, economically
stronger part of the world, prestigious research institutions, foundations
and universities (such as the Wellcome Trust, CERN, the MIT Media
Lab, SymbioticA, Laboratoria Art&Science Space, the Science Gallery
Network) have been actively supporting art-science programs and initia-
tives aimed at engaging the lay public with scientific research and science
advocacy. The book by Daniele Del Giudice too is about a literal rather
than metaphorical collision. The narrative is organised around a chance
encounter between an old writer, Ira Epstein, and a young physicist,
Pietro Brahe, both amateur pilots. Two cultural matrices, the humanistic
and the scientific, avoid a collision (two small aircraft piloted by the two
main characters, Pietro Brahe and Ira Epstein, respectively, almost clash
in the opening pages of the book). The failed collision is, nevertheless, the
engine that kicks off the narrative. Del Giudice’s novel was not meant to
be about art-science, yet the violent impact avoided at the last second be-
tween the two aircraft, an impact that does not literally occur, opens up
Casini                                                                          89

the space for a different relationship between the two universes embodied
by the protagonists, the world of art (literature included) and that of sci-
ence. All interactions in the book are anticipated by this first collision, fol-
lowed by a series of other collisions, such as the one of the underground
ring functioning as particle accelerator, and by the imagination of Epstein
that creates collisions among words, objects, perception, and action.
    Atlante Occidentale is concerned, first and foremost, with language
and vision, the two infrastructures that lie beneath art and science. Pietro
Brahe monitors streams of protons as they speed around a huge thirty-km
ring. His desire is to be able to overcome the limits of his human sensorial
apparatus and “see” directly the essence of matter after each experiment,
that is the quid that the technologies, first, record and then, convey into
the form of electronic graphing on the computer screen. In contrast, Ira
Epstein has almost given up writing: he cannot write anymore because he
“sees” stories – they unfold as pictures in his imagination, unmediated by
preconditioning linguistic conventions. Del Giudice’s novel attempts to
experiment with – if not to combine – a poetic language and the technical
precision of a prose devoted to describing an experiment in its unfolding
or the breath-taking spectacle of fireworks. As the literature scholar Fran-
co Ricci puts it, through his writing Del Giudice seeks to find a synthesis
between the humanistic and the scientific thinking process by asking
questions such as:

    What direction will poetic language take when bombarded by scientific
    specificity? Can such a hybrid language meet the exigencies of the world?
    (Ricci 1990, 46)

    Although not a book that can be labelled as “art-science”, Atlante Oc-
cidentale is an example of a fiction book that should be read by anyone
interested in the culture of experimentation across the arts and the sci-
ences. This novel has become a north star during the research, curatorial
work and writing I undertook for my own book, Giving Bodies back to
Data, published in 2021 in the Leonardo art-science series of the MIT
Press. The dialogues and encounters between the two protagonists, the
young particle physicist Pietro Brahe and the old writer Ira Epstein,
showed me how the solid world of magnets, cables, and electronic circuits
can suddenly reveal an elusive world of impalpable and invisible phe-
nomena to which artists can give a form.
    My present reflections are grounded in extensive work I have con-
ducted both as researcher and as curator of art-science projects. For al-
most a decade I have been working on the epistemological, aesthetic and
historical role played by data-visualisation practices across contemporary
biomedicine, neuroscience and the arts (see Casini 2017; 2021a and
2021b). In this article I seek to provide readers, first, with a brief over-
view of the mainstream narratives on and in art-science collaboration and,
90                                                          Tecnoscienza – 13 (2)


second, with a series of strategies apt for challenging those narratives, us-
ing a set of tools coming from the science and technology studies (STS)
toolbox and from historical epistemology. I argue that experimentation
rather than creativity is the glue making any collaboration between art
and science possible. Furthermore, I show the importance of carrying out
laboratory fieldwork and archival research to access science in the making
and, hence, to engage in potentially transformative art-science collabora-
tive work. Finally, I call for another scale and syntax for art-science pro-
jects, given that some of the most successful models of such collaborative
endeavours are in deep crisis.
    In relation to this last point, one should remember how just a few
months ago, the closure of Science Gallery Dublin was announced be-
cause the “operational model has run its course”.3 At the time of writing,
there is an online public petition for saving SymbioticA, the “artistic la-
boratory dedicated to the research, learning, critique and hands-on en-
gagement with the life sciences”.4 This space is also under threat of immi-
nent closure by the decision of the University of Western Australia to
withdraw its financial support. Although the crisis of such venues might
be motivated, on the one hand, by the uncertainties of the present world
(such as the global pandemic and the socio-economic consequences of
the Russian invasion of Ukraine started early 2022) and, on the other, by
the failure of run-as-corporation higher education institutions to provide
sustained support for such initiatives, the model of art-science collabora-
tion might need a profound rethinking. Another scale and syntax for art-
science projects can emerge from the less structured, tentative, slower-
paced approaches to setting up collaborative projects.5 This type of art-
science collaboration would benefit science research communities in a
way quite different from the well-established public engagement activities
and scientific literacy initiatives that are often wrongly labelled as art-
science. My contribution is an invitation to artists and scholars to experi-
ment with ways of better articulating the work of imagination, affectivity
and craftsmanship in science practice. By doing so, one would help culti-
vate a community of science “amateurs” and “connoisseurs” (Stengers
2018) which could be nurtured in the guise of what happens already in
the circuits of music and the arts.


2. Experimentation Rather than Creativity to Challenge
Dominant Art-Science Narratives
   In Del Giudice’s novel, Ira Epstein and Pietro Brahe could not differ
more. Yet, they have a common obsession: experimentation and the drive
to describe the world using different instruments. Pietro tries by explor-
ing subatomic particles inside an underground ring dug under the Jura
mountains; Ira is an analytic weaver of stories. Both characters are seeking
Casini                                                                        91

to create new tools (machines) out of existing material for understanding
reality – Pietro a particle collider, Ira the written word. Atlante Occi-
dentale implicitly makes a point which should be at the core of any at-
tempt to better understand art-science collaboration: art and science are
both ways of world-making.
    The value of experimentation rather than creativity is often under-
mined by art-science literature and projects that are still framed by certain
dominant narratives. The bourgeoning field of Art, Science, and Technol-
ogy Studies (ASTS) is preceded by seminal research on art and science car-
ried out by researchers in history of science and art, visual culture, image
science and STS (Bredekamp, Dünkel and Schneider 2015; Daston and
Galison 2010; Elkins 2008; Grau and Veigl 2011; Jones and Galison 1998;
Latour and Weibel 2002). As Rogers and Halpern argue in their “Introduc-
tion” to the Routledge Handbook of ASTS (2021), it is crucial to examine
the dominant narratives underpinning our understanding of art-science.
    The first narrative is the two-cultures metaphor which:

    became the standard way of talking about the relationship between art
    and science, even though what constituted these cultures did not remain
    static. (Rogers and Halpern 2021, 44)

    This narrative originates in the Rede lecture (entitled The Two Cultures)
given in Cambridge by the British scientist and novelist Charles Percy Snow
in 1959 and then turned into the well-known book The Two Cultures and
the Scientific Revolution (1964). Snow lamented the rift between literature
and science education and suggested possible means of developing a mutu-
al understanding. The two-culture divide narrative is characterised by the
tendency to consider art and science, respectively, as monolithic ahistorical
entities, without considering the variety of practices and traditions present
in each of them. This narrative is often followed by a call for the arts and
humanities to justify their existence by partnering with the sciences.
    The second narrative relies on the myth of the lone genius, an idea pre-
sent both in the context of science and literature but particularly encour-
aged in the arts. According to this myth, all power, recognition and agency
must be given to an individual, with great talent and intellect, without pay-
ing much attention to wider socio-technical infrastructures – as well as sur-
rounding economic, epistemic and political conditions – that enable (or
not) invention, discoveries and innovative experiments to take place.
    Finally, it is worth mentioning the instrumentalism and parasite meta-
phor which sees science playing the role of the muse for the arts: this nar-
rative becomes dominant also because too often artists’ engagement with
science is limited to remediating the final products of the scientific labor-
atory work such as the images and data-visualisation produced during an
experiment or by a certain technological apparatus. An example of such
use is artists incorporating brain scans in their work without questioning
92                                                                Tecnoscienza – 13 (2)


the status of these image-data. Only a few artists engage with science by
using its instruments, the tools, created or used by scientists to produce
their outputs. This is a more challenging pathway that requires scientific
knowledge, technical skills and infrastructural capacity such as that avail-
able in the SymbioticA Laboratory.
     To further deepen the understanding of the origin of the art-science
rift, one should go to the 1830s, when the term scientist was coined in
analogy with the term artist, and the two replaced the early modern “Re-
naissance Man”, whose knowledge was expected to be universal rather
than discipline specific (Jones and Galison 1998). The art historian Jean
Clair, who curated the exhibition L’âme au corps: Arts et sciences 1793-
1993 (Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, October 1993-January
1994), laments that the divorce of art and science, which he frames as
“spiritual catastrophe”, is caused by two circumstances. First, since Ro-
manticism art has given away the monopoly of objectivity to the sciences,
keeping for itself only the soft hypertrophy of the ego that characterizes
the self-styled genius of the artist. Science, conversely – lost in its graphs
and fragmented specialties – has cut itself off from the real world:

     But once the sciences have occupied the various fields of knowledge with
     their authority, the artist, kicked out from a kingdom he once shared on
     equal terms and sent back to the empiricism of the craftsman (“stupid as a
     painter”), the artist cannot help but give himself to soliloquy or prophecy,
     in search of a status but also of a lost profession. (Clair 2016, 16)6

    Clair uses the tools offered by art history to demonstrate that this di-
vorce has been only a momentary split. As an example, referring to the
drawings of the neurons made by Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934),
regarded as the father of the modern neurosciences, Clair demonstrates
how drawing, in particular, has always been in a dialogue with science.
With tremendous talent for drawing, Cajal was able to create detailed
drawings of the structure of the nervous system observed through the mi-
croscope, formulating a theory of the brain as an organ comprising indi-
vidual nerve cells, the neurons. Rather than simply beautiful visualisa-
tions, his drawings provided information (DeFelipe 2010).
    Although art-science cross-fertilization is nothing new (Kemp 2005),
recent decades have seen an increase in artists challenging the split be-
tween the two cultures of science and humanities, creating works that, in
some cases, are experiments conducted using the tools, methods, and aes-
thetics associated with scientific practice.7 The fact that collaborative pro-
jects are increasingly popular softens Clair’s pessimism in relation to the
possibility of a dialogue between art and science. Nevertheless, his atten-
tion to drawing and craftsmanship, that is the belief that art has to do
with skill and talent acquired through study and practice, is useful to
move away from the Romantic idea of the creative genius. Both the work
of Peter Galison (1997) on the traditions of theory, experimentation, and
Casini                                                                     93

instrument-building within physics and that carried out by Knorr-Cetina
(1999) on the epistemic cultures of molecular biology and high energy
physics have already highlighted the existence of different communities
within science, thus dismantling a monolithic understanding of science
practice. Scholarly work in STS and historical epistemology has explored
the connections between the cultures of experimentation in science and
art, examining the material practice and the experiential dimension of art-
ists and scientists working in the laboratory and the studio (Patterson
2015; Rheinberger 1997; Schatzi and Knorr-Cetina 2000).
    It is, therefore, not creativity that art and science have in common, but
the goal of experimenting, of making new worlds by reconfiguring bits
and pieces of existing ones. In the words of the philosopher Nelson
Goodman, who pointed out how there are no privileged or right ways of
describing the world:

    The many stuffs – matter, energy, waves, phenomena – that worlds are
    made of are made along with the worlds. But made from what? Not from
    nothing, after all, but from other worlds. (Goodman 1975, 61)

     Goodman conceptualises art and science as overlapping segments of a
continuum rather than rigidly distinguished on the basis of fictionality
(art) versus factuality (science). The laboratory culture of experimentation
is like the culture of experimentation present in an artist’s studio and in
art practice in general. Doing science and making art are both forms of
skilled craftsmanship which is part of the intellectual endeavour under-
taken in the laboratory and in the artist’s studio/workshop (Smith 2004;
Jones and Galison 1998). Considering experimentation as the common
ground between art and science can foster collaborative projects in which
the power relationship between the two is more equally balanced.
     The work of biologist and historian of science Hans-Jörg Rheinberger
offers a conceptual toolkit to tackle the dominant narratives mentioned.
His analysis of experimental systems within science can be extended to
art practices and to understanding the relationship between the two sys-
tems for producing experiments – albeit of different kinds (Schwab
2013). Rheinberger devotes pages to the analysis of experimentation argu-
ing that the foundational gesture of science is to make things visible in the
broader context of laboratory experimentation. An experimental system
is set up by two drives, one toward analysis, which is about the examina-
tion of the constitutive elements of the phenomenon under study (mole-
cules, chemical elements, physical forces, etc.). The other drive is toward
synthesis consists of the effort to create new things (Rheinberger 1997).
Although hardly admitted by scientists, what is at stake in experiments,
Rheinberger argues, is not hypothesis-testing but an emergent, open-
ended, and imaginative interplay between what he calls “epistemic
things” (the actual object of inquiry which is still unresolved at the labor-
94                                                           Tecnoscienza – 13 (2)


atory bench) and “technical objects” which are the instruments and tech-
niques used (Rheinberger 1997, 28-29 and 65).
    It is this dynamic between epistemic things and technical objects that
defines experimentation and makes possible the creation of new worlds.
A systematic and multidisciplinary study of this dynamic is the first re-
quirement for framing the relationship between science and art beyond
the cliché of creativity as some scholars have convincingly demonstrated
in the last few years (Rogers et al. 2021; Borgdorff et al. 2020; Sormani et
al. 2019). After all, “experimenting”, a term originally closer to the sci-
ences than to the arts, is key for artistic research practice too. Artistic and
scientific experiments are different in terms of reproducibility, possibility
to generalise results, and controllability (Borgdorff 2013, 115-116). An
experiment, regardless of whether it is labelled artistic, scientific or some-
what in-between, always opens up possibilities or, using Rheinberger’s own
expression, “machines for making the future” (1997, 28), that is, a venue
that produces or enables variations, alterations, mismatches, repetitions.
The nonalignment between the original intention of the experimenter and
the product of artistic or scientific research can be generative of knowledge.
An experimental system therefore thrives on uncertainty and surprise.
    Among other actions, encouraging experimentation supports and
make visible the vast, albeit often unknown, underground world of slow-
paced, grassroot and low-budget projects designed and curated by net-
works of researchers and artists across the globe.8 These projects draw
inspiration from the Bauhaus Design School that shaped modernism and
levelled any distinction between “artists” and “craftsmen”; they also put
to work the possibilities offered by the digital culture and the do-it-with-
others spirit, embracing citizen science outside institutional settings. A
sustainable, self-reflexive art-science practice is possible by nurturing
small-scale bottom-up collaborative projects that give space to actual ex-
perimentation rather than just the celebration of creativity and societal
impact – typically, the third mission of universities in the Western corpo-
rate higher education model.


3. Laboratory Fieldwork and Archival Research as Doors to
Fiction, Imagination and Affect within Experimental Culture
    In art-science collaboration forms of critique emerge where the out-
comes are not obvious from the outset. The collaboration itself is often
organised around different and sometimes overlapping logics of interdis-
ciplinarity to use the terminology adopted by Born and Barry (2010): ac-
cording to the logic of accountability, art-science collaboration can assist
scientific research with social accountability by bringing in ethical, politi-
cal, societal questions. Following the logic of innovation, these collabora-
tions contribute to scientific research thus enabling economic growth. Fi-
Casini                                                                            95

nally, according to the logic of ontology, art-science collaboration opens
new realms of possibility not seen in everyday laboratory practice, some-
times even producing new objects and knowledge through interdiscipli-
nary research. The last one is the most difficult type of interdisciplinary
logic to implement and achieve.
    The main roles that the artist or the humanities/social sciences scholar
can undertake in the context of laboratory art-science collaboration are
that of the attached observer, of the embedded humanist/social scien-
tist/artist, or of the active participant. Sometime these roles can overlap.
The role of the “attached observer” (Leach 2006) envisages the schol-
ar/artist embedded in the laboratory as an anthropologist doing ethno-
graphic work, taking down notes of how facts are produced in the every-
day laboratory life (Latour and Woolgar 1979). It almost never happens
to see a scientist being an “attached observer” in an artist’s studio. An-
other role is that of the “embedded-humanist/social scientist/artist” in
the laboratory. The embedded scholar/artist observes and (sporadically)
intervenes in scientific practice to shape the course of action of a pro-
ject/experiment and then they study the product of the intervention
(Fisher et al. 2015). The last role can be that of an active participant in a
research project in which the humanist/social scientist/artist co-design
the project methodology together with the scientist. Active participation
can help explore hidden agendas and assumptions at work in the labora-
tory (Calvert and Schyfter 2016). The output of the collaboration is a co-
authored hybrid, which does not necessarily mean that the art and science
contribution is equally distributed. Art and design practice, namely, have
a “speculative, experimental and open-ended character” (Ingold 2013, 8)
that can inform not only scientists, but also researchers in STS conduct-
ing collaborative work with scientists (Calvert and Schyfter 2016).
    Regardless of the role scholars and/or artists undertake within art-
science collaboration illustrated in the previous section, scientific practice
should be studied by looking at the “situation” which is defined as:

    the dynamic entanglement of conceptual, material, social, and institutional
    factors involved in developing knowledge and clearly positions research
    efforts in relation to the publics for whom such knowledge is expected to
    be of value. (Leonelli 2016, 8)

    Scholars and practitioners involved in art-science collaborative work
are in the position of making visible the choices that scientists make in the
laboratory. The choices made by scientists with respect to data (their col-
lection, interpretation, and display) emerge from intellectual, technical,
political and/or economic struggles, all of which entail power imbalances.
These choices remain hidden in the final published output.
    This invisibility happens because in scientific practice, “facts”, includ-
ed data-visualisation strategies, are constructed, then stabilised and black-
96                                                          Tecnoscienza – 13 (2)


boxed. In science studies, Bruno Latour defines black boxing as the way
scientific, technical and social work is made invisible by its own success.
When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one
needs focus only on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal com-
plexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed,
the opaquer and more obscure they become (Latour 1999, 304). Latour
uses the metaphor of the black box to describe scientific practice: to
make science is to construct and close a black box. Laboratory findings
and events, for example, are often black-boxed and presented as matter
of facts. The black box can be re-opened on several occasions. First,
when a controversy arises, the solution provided falls apart and there is
the need to re-examine the assumptions made. Second, a black box can
be opened by looking at the early stages of the development of a technol-
ogy, for example before the data visualisation protocol becomes standard-
ised. Third, a black box can be opened by artists who enter experimental
systems as if they were spaces of imagination.
    To focus on the materiality of science, on the epistemological role
played by aesthetics, and on the impact that science and technology have
on societal and ethical issues, humanities/social sciences scholars and art-
ists engaged in collaborative work with scientists need to pay attention to
science in the making. This is visible in the laboratory (science in the
making now) and in the archive (science in the making then). Laboratory
ethnography and archival research can provide access to science in the
making. The archive and the laboratory bench are places where historical
records of science are kept and where scientists make visible their leaps in
imagination, their tinkering with materials. Archives are the places where
to find what the biologist Francois Jacob calls “night science, the work-
shop of the possible where what will become the building material of sci-
ence is worked out” (Jacob 1998, 158). The material coming from archiv-
al research and laboratory fieldwork hint at the struggles of scientists with
forms of thinking and making that are kept at the margins of the disci-
pline regardless of the central role they play in science. Often hosting un-
published tentative writing and sketches, the archive becomes the reposi-
tory of “sociotechnical imaginaries” (Jasanoff 2015, 19) rather than of
dead documents and objects waiting to be brought back to life. Together
with laboratory fieldwork, archival research can help both scholars and art-
ists to bring to the foreground the importance of craftsmanship, imagina-
tion and affectivity that always accompany scientific practice and discovery.
    Scientific practice is entangled with affect. Science studies using a
feminist and new materialist lens, in particular, have long insisted upon
the embodied, visceral character of our cognition (Barad 2007; Haraway
1988; Harding 1991). The affective turn has emerged across different dis-
ciplines as a mood of inquiry focusing on emotion and affect to generate
and re-configure knowledge (Clough and Halley 2007; Massumi 2002;
Wilson 2010). Scholars combining STS with anthropology, cognitive
Casini                                                                      97

studies and undertaking laboratory fieldwork in different disciplines
(from neuroscience to molecular biology and space exploration) have
demonstrated how often scientists articulate their science through their
bodies. Gestures and imagination contribute to shaping scientific
knowledge. Scholars Morana Ala!, Natasha Myers and Janet Vertesi all
address multimodal embodied practice in the laboratory, basing their
works upon extensive laboratory fieldwork in neuroscience, molecular
biology and space exploration, respectively. Myers (2015), for example,
describes how molecular biologists feel their way through data to inter-
pret molecular forms. Vertesi (2014) explores the intimacy that space sci-
entists develop with their instruments through their sensorial apparatus,
not only for vision, but also for haptic and remote sensing.
    Reflecting on how to access and conceptually frame the role played by
affectivity, imagination and fiction within scientific research is important
to bring to the foreground experimentation and, thus, challenge all the
dominant art-science narratives illustrated in the previous section. The
affective register of laboratory labour can emerge both through undertak-
ing laboratory fieldwork and archive-based work. Affectivity is connected
to materiality, with reference not just to bodily processes, but also to the
material world as a site of affective exchanges between human and non-
human agents, including machines and their components. Digging up de-
sign sketches, old photographs, lab notes and newspaper clippings that
might seem to be marginal at first look (the “cursed” part of scientific re-
search) turns out to be the driving force and narratives behind the devel-
opment of a certain technology or scientific theory. These “things” are
repositories of memory and affective labour. For example, the manual la-
bour involved in the creation of each component of a new technology
(from the design and assemblage of hardware to writing the code, to the
methods for turning data into images) is not simply a way of taking care
of the technological object but much more a way of taking care of the end
users of this technology (researchers, prospective patients and further
on). Regardless of how collective the labour is, it is always framed around
the final publication in which the manual labour mentioned above ends
up being significantly neglected. Artists can contribute to digging up the
histories of archival objects, of embodied and emotional laboratory work and
less institutional narratives related to scientific practice. Foregrounding how
affectivity is part of laboratory culture might lead to a scientific practice
where matters of concern and care are on equal footing to matters of fact.
    Sketches and non-academic writing give access to the dimensions of
affectivity, imagination and fiction, often neglected when engaging with
the culture of scientific experimentation. Scientists’ academic writing that
ends up in peer-reviewed papers in prominent journals is polished, au-
thoritative and detached from any context not directly relevant to the da-
ta discussed. Modern science is about the production of knowledge: un-
biased, factual, objective. A specific writing style corresponds to this new
98                                                           Tecnoscienza – 13 (2)


way of being a scientist: the impersonal style of writing, which is enforced
in all academic published outputs, has become the conduit of scientific
authority. The published papers in which scientists report the results of
their investigations are hardly ever literal accounts of the historical pro-
cesses through which their authors have reached the conclusions they
present. Once an investigation or research project has been completed,
the path it followed becomes largely irrelevant to the investigator, who is
expected to marshal the best arguments and evidence available to support
the claims she wishes to make. Sometimes the case to be presented suffi-
ciently resembles the process of discovery, so that the order of presentation
recapitulates the order of investigation; but temporal rearrangements, omis-
sions of failed or aborted trails, and other retrospectively inessential steps,
are made routinely, with no intention to falsify a record of discovery. Con-
sequently, scholars aiming to reconstruct the historical and socio-cultural
routes to landmark discoveries have long sought other forms of documenta-
tion to fill the gaps left by the published reports of the completed work.
    Scribblings, notes and sketches belong to the experimental system de-
scribed by Rheinberger and represent a special genre of scientific writing
(Holmes et al. 2003). They are literary activities in their own right. They
are the ways in which science is carried out in the multi-dimensional
space that exists only on paper – a space where any potential experiment
and idea can be given shape, where research threads are laid out even if
they might not be easily transposed to the laboratory bench. These writ-
ings are precious recordings that can illustrate the specific style (aesthet-
ics) of a scientist’s own research and way of thinking. Hardly published in
academic papers, these scribblings are confined to personal notebooks,
footnotes or appendixes. It is even more important, then, so I argue, to
give them a presence back, for example through an art-science collabora-
tive project or through an exhibition.9
    Experiments undertaken on paper are an explorative fictional tool
used to create other worlds. Fiction is at the core of scientific practice
(Frigg 2010, 248). According to a common-sense understanding of the
term “fiction”, something is fictional when it does not exist. Often scien-
tists need to momentarily postulate nonexistent entities because they need
them to achieve certain goals or predictions. One well-known example is
Bohr’s postulation of classical electron orbits, later dismissed by Schrö-
dinger’s quantum mechanics. Fiction in the sense of “non-existence” can,
therefore, be useful to advance an argument. In a second sense, fiction
can be understood as a counterfeit activity with the goal of deceiving or
misleading. However, it can also be understood as imagination and make-
believe. Scientists use models (as fictional entities) to study features of the
object or event that the model is expected to represent. Modeling a phe-
nomenon requires several elements working together so that the audience
can engage with and explore the phenomenon in a plausible manner. Phi-
losopher of science Roman Frigg uses the example of fictional characters
Casini                                                                     99

in literature (i.e., Madame Bovary and Sherlock Holmes) to argue that
scientific models function in a similar way – we believe in them and dis-
cuss them although they only live in our imagination (Frigg 2010, 257).
    Make-belief (as if), and “what if” constructions are present at the la-
boratory bench, but they are disciplined in the final academic publica-
tions. In public engagement, the play of make-believe – e.g., “what if”
scenario-building – is often reduced to an activity only ancillary to sci-
ence, performed in view of gaining the interest and support of the public
for scientific research. Make-believe and imagination are connected to
experimentation rather than to creativity. To give an example, the hand-
drawn sketches and scribblings by Thomas Edison (“the Wizard of
Menlo Park”) were visual manipulations of ideas, short-end descriptions
and suggestions for the material arrangement of an experiment.10 Artists
are always allowed to play, fictionalize, tinker with materials as part of
their experimental process, which is often visible in the final artwork. The
same does not apply to scientists. What if constructions are present at the
laboratory bench, but they are disciplined and silenced in the final aca-
demic publications. Laboratory fieldwork and archival research can re-
veal how the space of what if and make-believe (as if) is one of imagina-
tion and experimentation, at the same time. The tentative writing and
sketches from the laboratory or personal notebooks of scientists show
how sometimes scientists draw imaginary objects – that is, they give phys-
ical form to their mental images – and in the process of doing so, they
learn to see them better. Scientists’ laboratory notebook entries and dia-
grammatic sketches, often accessible either via laboratory fieldwork or
archival research, offer an insight into the scientific method and creative
process: the passage from intuitive, at times imaginative, understanding to
rigorous formal proof and experimentation.
    If the contribution of laboratory fieldwork and archival research to
access science in the making can be articulated, far more challenging is
making explicit what art can bring to science and STS. One could high-
light the enhanced self-reflexivity within the laboratory: thanks to collab-
orative work, scientists become more aware of the cultural, historical, so-
cio-political context in which their practices and instruments are embed-
ded; new forms of interaction with the public, through exhibitions, per-
formances and workshops can be envisaged thanks to collaboration with
artists. Humanities scholars and social scientists might be exposed to ma-
teriality, process, to the work of art (Jones 2022), to methodologies that
do not encompass exclusively the written word. Art can not only make
visible but also reconfigure and challenge existing modes of experience
and sense perception. Time is ripe, then, for adding art to STS. Scholars
should be encouraged to embrace multi-sensorial ways of knowing that
are at work in the artist’s studio but also in scientific practice, moving be-
yond what Galison identified with visual STS (2014). Tactile learning has
a role in scientific modelling, for example, in Linus Pauling’s molecular
100                                                               Tecnoscienza – 13 (2)


models. Multi-sensory actions are undertaken by the Critical Art Ensem-
ble (CAE), a tactical media collective that combines artistic interventions
with performative writing revitalising many STS concepts.


4. Conclusions
    To conclude, attention to science (and art) in the making is how social
sciences and humanities scholars, artists and scientists can all engage in a
fruitful, slow-paced, and mutually challenging dialogues and collabora-
tions. As the historian of science Hans-Jörg Rheinberger has demonstrat-
ed, the spaces and practices of experimentation are characterised by un-
certainty – where the liveliness of data and experimentation has not yet
been stilled by epistemological resolution (Rheinberger 2011, 315). Each
experimental system contains narratives in excess, both old stories and
fragments that might contribute to future stories (Rheinberger 1994, 78).
Exploring the affective dimension of science practice and its narratives
through laboratory fieldwork and archival research brings out the socio-
cultural and political aspects of science in the making. Art-science collab-
orative work would then become encouraging scientists not only to be-
come aware of the broader history of their practices and tools, but also to
reconnect to the imaginative, affective, and craftsmanship dimension of
science in the making. When successful, this method can foster the con-
ceptual shift from “matters of fact” to “matters of concern” (Latour 2004)
and even to “matters of care” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017). Matters of fact
do not engage with network complexity and power dynamics. Phenomena
are observed in a “clinical” way, positioned by the norms created by certain
theories and validated throughout certain experimental protocols. Matters
of concern reveal the interest and agencies among human and non-human
actors. Matters of care, too, engage with the broader, relational contexts
that phenomena inhabit as integral parts of the world, but they also actively
contribute to make those concerns visible and heard. Thinking with care,
namely, is “an active process of intervening in the count of whom and what
is ratified as concerned” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017, 52). This is how worlds
can not only be inhabited but also contested and imagined anew.


Notes

      https://cds.cern.ch/record/2012228?ln=en (accessed September 2022).
      1

      https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/science-gallery-london-where-art-and-science-collide
      2

(accessed October 20, 2022)
    3
      Trinity College Provost Linda Doyle on 28th January 2022. See: https://dublin.
sciencegallery.com/ (accessed October 21, 2022).
    4
      See: https://www.change.org/p/save-symbiotica (accessed October 21, 2022).
    5
      An example of such grassroot approaches is discussed in Buiani (2019).
Casini                                                                                 101

    6
      My translation is from the original text in Italian: “Ma una volta che le scienze
avranno occupato con autorità i diversi campi del sapere, l’artista, scacciato da un re-
gno che condivideva da pari a pari, rimandato all’empirismo dell’artigiano (‘stupido
come un pittore’), non potrà far altro che darsi al soliloquio o al vaticinio, alla ricerca
di uno status ma anche di un mestiere perduto”.
    7
      On art-science experiments, see, for example, Webster (2005); Kac (2007); Gins-
berg et al. (2014); Sormani et al. (2019).
    8
      The journal Leonardo is a source of information on both established and more
tentative and small-scale projects.
    9
      My most recent collaborative project with biomedical physicists and an artist entailed
both laboratory fieldwork and archival research. The output consisted of two exhibitions
Immobile Choreography and From Where Do We See? See: http://www.ghat-art.org.uk
/immobile-choreography-publication-launch-and-talk/ (accessed November 25, 2019).
    10
       See The Thomas A. Edison Papers Project, a research centre at Rutgers School of
Arts and Sciences, http://edison.rutgers.edu/NamesSearch/SingleDoc.php?DocId=
NM003015 (accessed September 15, 2022). On Edison and his visual thinking meth-
od, see Wills (2019).


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