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SHOULD WE? EXPLORING CHANGE AGENTS’ CONCEPTIONS OF EPISTEMIC HUMILITY
Get PDFThis work explores how those engaged in innovation and advancing change consider their own ethical frameworks when they operate under uncertainty. Open-mindedness and critical self-reflection about the limits of one’s knowledge, contained in the concept of Epistemic Humility, serve as a foundation to answer the central research question: To what extent does Epistemic Humility help changemakers assess if their change should be pursued? A review of existing literature informs both a grounding of epistemic ethics, virtues, and vices as well as the nature of knowledge and uncertainty, and indicates that epistemic humility may indeed create conditions for critical reflection on change initiatives. The depth of understanding gained through a review of relevant literature is compared to first-person accounts from those engaged with advancing change in the real world.
One-on-one interviews with practicing innovators and change agents shows how humility and de-centering of the self creates the conditions for a more holistic understanding of change initiatives, which, it is hoped, creates more desirable outcomes with fewer undesired side effects. Glimpses of an idealized future are offered by participants through the foresight workshop; a future where epistemic humility, open-mindedness, and critical reflection on our relationship with our own knowledge and beliefs is more widespread.
In an uncertain world, we need more critical reflection on whether change should be pursued, which requires weighing the pros and cons of action and inaction. This work suggests epistemic humility may be a key element in the making of better decisions. Much more work is required to understand how such mindsets can be fostered in decision-makers and change agents, but this work can serve as an entry-point to a deeper understanding of ethical action when pursuing change under uncertainty
Strategic Foresight in High-Hazard Organizations - An Analysis of Case Studies in three U.S. Nuclear Power Plants
Get PDFContemporary societies rely on numerous organizations in hazardous environments to provide and maintain necessary infrastructures like energy and transportation. These organizations operate under constant hazards to themselves and to the people in their environment. Like all areas of society, high-hazard organizations are facing growing levels of complexity and an environment of constant and rapid technological and societal change. The increasing complexity and perpetual change simultaneously contribute to uncertainty and ambiguity. Especially in hazardous environments, the likelihood of failure increases with rising uncertainty and ambiguity. This accentuates the need to develop methods that can contribute to high-hazard organizations' continued safety. One such method may be strategic foresight. By challenging mental frames and contrasting and testing them against alternative futures, strategic foresight can help high-hazard organizations cope with rising levels of complexity.
This research investigates the distinct characteristics of high hazard organizations and how these affect their ability to employ strategic foresight. For this purpose, the researcher performed a qualitative content analysis of three case studies in U.S. nuclear power plants, as classic examples of high-hazard organizations. The investigation revealed significant challenges for the development of foresight capabilities, especially in regard to the ability to combine new with existing knowledge. This deficiency is due to strong departmentalization, which leads to silo behavior and split mental models, obstructing the effective diffusion of information.
The findings from this research may help researchers and practitioners to understand the peculiarities of high-hazard organizations better and may aid in developing methods to integrate strategic foresight in high-hazard organizations
Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples
Get PDFQueers living in the urban centre of Toronto have a strong history of resistance and deviant practices that skirt social norms in presenting and disseminating queer knowledge and art. These practices include the self-publication of zines, newspapers, posters, wearables, and art objects made as multiples. These materials, unlike popular mass media, are presented by and for queer audiences allowing for more nuanced, complicated, and affective understandings of the city's queer communities. Using an object-based approach grounded in Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology, I present queer multiples as guideposts for understanding the inherited queer history of Toronto and its influence upon contemporary artists. For Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples, I curated an exhibit comprised of a multi-generational slate of queer artists, multiples and Toronto’s queer history by showing works from my collection. In tandem with the multiples, I have juxtaposed queer archival materials such as scans of the covers of publications like The Body Politic and gendertrash, as well as the map of the Toronto Purchase. The combination of multiples and archives chart moments of tension and jubilation for queers living within the heteronormative colonial and institutional frameworks of Toronto. By using an artist-curator methodology, this exhibition creates the opportunity to consider the past, present and future of queer art-making in Toronto
Borderlessness: teamLab, Immersive Experience, and New Media Installation Art
Get PDFThis major research paper explores the characteristic of borderlessness that applies to interactive installation art. "Borderlessness" is a concept that teamLab (a Japan-based interdisciplinary art group) pursues in their interactive installation artworks, which indicates the immersive spatial sense that spectators experience. With the complex computer programming design in teamLab's artworks, borderlessness challenges the conventional ocularcentric experience in exhibitions and innovates a new trend in immersive exhibitions. My paper analyzes two case studies from teamLab’s
oeuvre: Forest of Flowers and People: Lost, Immersed and Reborn (2017)
and Crows Are Chased and the Chasing Crows Are Destined to be Chased as Well (2017). Both projects apply the strategy of borderlessness to themes concerning the natural world, yielding works that have achieved popular success worldwide. This MRP argues that the success of teamLab’s exhibitions gained support through the general trend of the “experience economy.” Artworks involving new media, installation, immersion and interactivity – embodied by teamLab’s concept of “borderlessness” – both exemplify the experience economy and expand beyond the term to develop a more embodied and participatory understanding of aesthetic experience
Our Home and Haunted Land An Exploration of Space, Memory and Virtual Reality
Get PDFOur Home and Haunted Land: An Exploration of Space, Memory and Virtual Reality
is a linear virtual reality experience that examines the colonial histories embedded in the names of a number of Toronto spaces. It incorporates research-creation and decolonial methodologies to expose the violent legacy of the land with live on. The project uses virtual reality as a means to challenge what Sara Ahmed calls the “whiteness” of our societal and physical space by reinserting a simultaneously historical and futuristic Blackness in profound allyship with Indigeneity.
The project explores the following questions: how can immersive digital storytelling be used to decolonize space and embody history and memory? How can virtual space be used to visualize the cultural and historical relationship between physical spaces? The following tensions are at the core of this project: an “invisibilized” history that permeates the construction of our society; names that allude to a past that remains largely unknown; counter-archives that seek to tell stories that challenge the dominant history
The Affect of Images
Get PDFThe Affect of Images is an experimental exhibition in publication form. It addresses the subjective nature of the interpretation of images and their affective responses by looking at the works of six contemporary photographers whose practices investigate maternal exposures, self-portraiture and re-enactment. It discusses the therapeutic aspects of photography by introducing techniques in phototherapy and how they are used in each photographer’s artistic practice. The selected works explore how the body and the lens work in collaboration to successfully explore concepts of memory, identity, representation, parent/child relationships, vulnerability, grief, and time. Weaving personal narrative, visual analysis and photo theory, this text contributes to an emerging dialogue on reframing the de/constructed and re/constructed image as a mechanism for healing and identity awareness. This work also explores the labour of curatorial practice as a therapeutic tool for self-awareness and healing. Photographers under examination include Clarisse d’Arcimoles, Jess T. Dugan, Catherine Opie, Chino Otsuka, Jo Spence & Rosy Martin and Andrea Jenkins Wallace
Designing for Pandemic Antifragility in Multimodal Transport Hubs
Get PDFThe outbreak of COVID-19 demonstrated the fragility of the transportation system and its Multimodal Transport Hubs (MTHs). Global travel reduced dramatically, leading to an existential crisis in MTHs. To cope with the pandemic, MTHs implemented multiple resilient measurements including social distancing, rapid testing regimes, and infrared cameras. Although these measurements are valuable tools, this research advocates to transcend resilient measures and move towards antifragility by applying a systems thinking approach. As Nassim Taleb (2013) defines: “Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.” Our goal is to contribute to a long-term future of the transportation system by transforming MTHs into a tool to effectuate antifragility during the management of health disruptions
When a Tree is also a Multispecies Collective, a Photosynthesis Process, and a Carbon Cycle
Get PDFA systemic typology of natural nonhuman stakeholders when designing for sustainability
Design is increasingly aware of the sustainability crisis. Various initiatives have started to argue for a need to acknowledge and accommodate the needs of natural entities and systems in relation to sustainability. Such more-than-human considerations have also entered collaborative and participatory design. However, there yet seems to be a lack of broad and systemic perspectives on which natural entities to consider when designing for sustainability. Therefore, we developed a systemic typology of natural nonhuman stakeholders based on empirical study in a garden and analysis rooted in the distinctions, relationships, systems, perspectives – DRSP – theoretical structure for systems thinking. Our typology suggests seven distinct types: individual organisms, single species collectives, multispecies collectives, life processes, living systems, biogeochemical cycles and processes of the atmosphere. However, our findings indicate that one living entity represents several stakeholder types simultaneously. This illuminates a tension between the simplistic and systemic view of stakeholders in collaborative design and calls for a shift towards systemic mental models and new theories, approaches, methods and tools. In this article, we present our methodology and the developed typology; then we discuss the potential implications of the typology on collaborative and participatory design and avenues for further research