The interdisciplinary research cooperation Computer Signals was established in 2012. Based on its precursors, Surplus: Videograms of Experimentation, SNSF 2007–09 and Computer Signals: Art and Biology in the Age of Digital Experimentation I, SNSF 2012–15, the project has since been investigating aspects of producing and processing data in the biosciences. Taken together, the three project phases constitute a long-term study on the transition from analog to digital research practices.
Computer Signals II is based on the examples of two working groups int the biosciences, one on Heligoland, the other in Austin, Texas. The project concretises their various research questions from the perspective of art, and thereby lends crucial impetus to the overall project: How can the materiality of digital data processing be captured and represented? How can the formative involvement of digital devices and their infrastructures in the gaining of knowledge be shifted onto human perception and how can their contribution be made tangible, i.e., capable of experience? How can artistic works negotiate the relationship between enabling and restricting the gain in knowledge through technical and material conditions?
In order to discuss these questions and their practical implementation, the project brings together artists with experience in information science. The artistic subproject set up its own experimental system to observe the research equipment and the surrounding infrastructure at the two partner laboratories by storing their physical emissions (electromagnetical fields, vibrations etc.) as audio data, which are now being assessed and worked on artistically in the follow-up project.
In addition to the biologists working at the investigated laboratories, this team includes experienced philosophers of science. The latter are studying data processing in the involved laboratories from the perspective of their respective disciplines. At joint workshops the researchers meet to consider opportunities for theory-building, whose key terms are “data/fact,” “working with data,” “materiality,” “infrastructure,” and “configuration.” Workshops also serve to discuss and reflect on the potential of artistic approaches for science studies and of interdisciplinary cooperation between the natural sciences, art, and science studies. The results of these workshops and collaborative ventures are published on an ongoing basis on a designated web platform and thus made accessible to the wider public.
The project is aimed at the interdisciplinary development of a polyperspectival concept of the research subject. Understood exemplarily, this is presented and raised for discussion at conferences, in publications, and in exhibitions and performances. The overarching purpose is to make working with data and its implications more accessible, both artistically and theoretically, as well as socially more negotiable.