Inventing the Social Marres, Noortje, Guggenheim, Michael, Wilkie, Alex, Calvillo, Nerea , Kräftner, Bernd, Kröll, Judith Published by Mattering Press Marres, Noortje, et al. Inventing the Social. 1 ed. Mattering Press, 2018. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.81374. For additional information about this book [ Access provided at 3 May 2021 14:59 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a https://muse.jhu.edu/book/81374 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. M AT T E R I N G P R E S S Mattering Press is an academic-led Open Access publisher that operates on a not-for-profit basis as a UK registered charity. It is committed to developing new publishing models that can widen the constituency of academic knowledge and provide authors with significant levels of support and feedback. All books are available to download for free or to purchase as hard copies. More at matteringpress.org. The Press’ work has been supported by: Centre for Invention and Social Process (Goldsmiths, University of London), European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, Hybrid Publishing Lab, infostreams, Institute for Social Futures (Lancaster University), OpenAIRE, Open Humanities Press, and Tetragon Publishing. M a k i n g t h i s b o o k Mattering Press is keen to render more visible the unseen processes that go into the production of books. We would like to thank Natalie Gill and Joe Deville, who acted as the Press’ coordinating editors for this book, Chris Kelty who acted as the book’s overall reviewer alongside cross-reviews of each other’s chapters by the authors, Steven Lovatt, for the copy editing, Tetragon for the typesetting, and Will Roscoe, Ed Akerboom and infostreams for formatting the html versions of this book. INVENTING THE SOCIAL edited by noortje marres, michael guggenheim and alex wilkie First edition published by Mattering Press, Manchester. Copyright © Noortje Marres, Michael Guggenheim and Alex Wilkie, chapters by respective authors, 2018. Cover art © Mattering Press, 2018. Freely available online at matteringpress.org/books/inventing-the-social This is an open access book, with the text and cover art licensed under Creative Commons By Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. Under this license, authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy their work so long as the material is not used for commercial purposes and the authors and source are cited and resulting derivative works are licensed under the same or similar license. No permission is required from the authors or the publisher. Statutory fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Read more about the license at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ ISBN: 978-0-9955277-5-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-9955277-6-8 (ebk) Mattering Press has made every effort to contact copyright holders and will be glad to rectify, in future editions, any errors or omissions brought to our notice. CONTENTS List of Figures 7 Contributors 11 Acknowledgements 15 1 · Introduction: From Performance to Inventing the Social Noortje Marres, Michael Guggenheim, Alex Wilkie 17 Section One: Projects 2 · Inviting Atmospheres to the Architecture Table Nerea Calvillo 41 3 · Incubations: Inventing Preventive Assemblages Michael Guggenheim, Bernd Kräftner, Judith Kröll 65 4 · Turning Controversies into Questions of Design: Prototyping Alternative Metrics for Heathrow Airport Christian Nold 94 5 · Designing and Doing: Enacting Energy-and-Community Alex Wilkie, Mike Michael 125 6 · Outing Mies’ Basement: Designs to Recompose the Barcelona Pavilion’s Societies Andrés Jaque 149 Section Two: Essays 7 · Earth, Fire, Art: Pyrotechnology and the Crafting of the Social Nigel Clark 173 6 inventing the social 8 · How to Spot the Behavioural Shibboleth and What to Do About It Fabian Muniesa 195 9 · The Social and its Problems: On Problematic Sociology Martin Savransky 212 10 · The Sociality of Infectious Diseases Marsha Rosengarten 234 11 · Social Media as Experiments in Sociality Noortje Marres, Carolin Gerlitz 253 Commentaries 12 · Hacking the Social? Christopher M. Kelty 287 13 · How Can We...? Connecting Inventive Social Research with Social and Government Innovation Lucy Kimbell 298 Appendix 14 · Inventive Tensions: A Conversation Lucy Kimbell, Michael Guggenheim, Noortje Marres, Alex Wilkie 317 7 LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 2.1 Helium bottles used to inflate the balloons (photo: Nerea Calvillo) 46 Fig. 2.2 Celebration of the construction of the first arch of the structure (photo: Nerea Calvillo) 49 Fig. 2.3 Assembling the different domes (photo: Nerea Calvillo) 50 Fig. 2.4 Balloon assembling process (photo: Nerea Calvillo) 51 Fig. 2.5 Practices of embodied material care (photo: Nerea Calvillo) 52 Fig. 2.6 Firefighters who replaced the smoke detectors, and who, in the process, took on the role of supervising the exhibition as well as taking selfies (photo: Nerea Calvillo) 53 Fig. 2.7 Atmospheric attunements inside the Polivagina during a performance (photo: Nerea Calvillo) 55 Fig. 2.8 Visitors attuning to the balloons and art installations (photo: Nerea Calvillo) 57 Fig. 2.9 Music fan posing with balloons repurposed as a dress (photo: Nerea Calvillo) 58 Fig. 3.1 The prevention laboratory at the Department of General Practice, Charité, Humboldt University (photo: Bernd Kräftner) 76 Fig. 3.2 Consumption offers at the Department of European Anthropology, Humboldt University (photo: Bernd Kräftner) 78 Fig. 3.3 Kit for blood taking (photo: Bernd Kräftner) 79 Fig. 3.4 SEIQoL with soft toys (photo: Bernd Kräftner) 83 8 inventing the social Fig. 3.5 Introductory Poster (image: the authors) 86 Fig. 3.6 Example poster based on flying animals (image: Bernd Kräftner) 87 Fig. 3.7 Example poster based on blood (image: Bernd Kräftner) 88 Fig. 4.1 Photograph of the ‘I speak your feelings’ prototype (photo: Christian Nold) 106 Fig. 4.2 Image mock-up of the ‘I display noise publicly’ prototype (photo: Christian Nold) 109 Fig. 4.3 Photograph of the ‘I make someone responsible’ prototype (photo: Christian Nold) 111 Fig. 4.4 Photograph of the ‘I turn noise into numbers’ prototype (photo: Christian Nold) 113 Fig. 4.5 Photo of the ‘I quantify AND broadcast’ prototype (photo: Christian Nold) 115 Fig. 4.6 Windsor prototype data being used to make a noise complaint about an off-track aircraft 116 Fig. 4.7 Visualisation of thirteen months of data from the Windsor prototype. Each day is represented by a vertical line with yellow indicating many loud episodes above 50dB LAeq2s. The red line indicates the noise trend 118 Fig. 4.8 Detail of the ‘Prototyping a new Heathrow Airport’ sound installation 119 Fig. 5.1 The Energy Babble (photo: Alex Wilkie) 134 Fig. 5.2 The Energy Babble, held by project member Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, as featured in the November 2013 issue of Reepham Life (Reepham Community Press) 140 Fig. 6.1 Barcelona Pavilion, above and below ground (photos and composition: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 148 Fig. 6.2 Broken piece of tinted glass in the basement of the Barcelona Pavilion (photo: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 149 Fig. 6.3 Broken travertine slabs and remaining pieces of Alpine marble stored in the basement of the Barcelona Pavilion (photo: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 153 9 list of figures Fig. 6.4 Fading velvet curtain stored in the basement of the Barcelona Pavilion (photo: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 154 Fig. 6.5 Hoses, Kärcher machine, vacuum cleaner and mop in the basement of the Barcelona Pavilion (photo: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 154 Fig. 6.6 Fanny Nole (photo: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 155 Fig. 6.7 Niebla’s cat space in the basement of the Barcelona Pavilion (photo: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 155 Fig. 6.8 Niebla, the cat of the Barcelona Pavilion (photos and composition: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 156 Fig. 6.9 Filtering system in the basement of the Barcelona Pavilion (photo: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 157 Fig. 6.10 Removed plexiglass cladding in the basement of the Barcelona Pavilion (photo: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 157 Fig. 6.11 Broken door in the basement of the Barcelona Pavilion (photo: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 158 Fig. 6.12 Events equipment in the basement of the Barcelona Pavilion (photo: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 159 Fig. 6.13 Phantom. Mies as Rendered Society (photo: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 162 Fig. 6.14 Phantom. Mies as Rendered Society (photo: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 162 Fig. 6.15 Phantom. Mies as Rendered Society (photo: Andrés Jaque, 2012) 163 Fig. 6.16 Phantom. Mies as Rendered Society (research and drawings: Office for Political Innovation; graphic design: David Lorente and Tomoko Sakamoto) 163 Fig. 6.17 Comments in Dezeen reacting to Phantom. Mies as Rendered Society 165 Fig. 8.1 A usual rendering of society (adapted by the author from a quick online search) 198 Fig. 8.2 The little dotted agent 199 Fig. 8.3 Scientific estrangement 200 10 inventing the social Fig. 8.4 Von Foerster’s Conjecture 200 Fig. 8.5 Chimeric scientism 201 Fig. 8.6 The behavioural configuration 203 Fig. 8.7 Performative entanglement 203 Fig. 8.8 The juristic damper 204 Fig. 11.1 Top twenty most active users based on tweets and mentions (created by Stefania Guerra) 266 Fig. 11.2 Interactive users (fragment of a visualisation created by Gabriele Colombo) 268 Fig. 11.3 Devices used to send tweets (created by Allessandro Brunetti) 271 Fig. 11.4 Automated activity pattern (created by Carlo De Gaetano (unfinished)) 272 Fig. 11.5 Neologisms associated with #privacy (fragment of a visualisation created by Carlo De Gaetano) 275 Fig. 11.6 Associational profile of #security (created by Carlo De Gaetano) 277 Fig. 11.7 Associational profile of #tech (created by Carlo De Gaetano) 277 11 CONTRIBUTORS nerea calvillo is an architect, researcher and curator, Assistant Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (University of Warwick) and unit master at the Architectural Association. The work produced at her office, C+ arquitectos, and her environmental visualization projects like In the Air have been presented, exhibited and published at international venues. Her research investigates the material, technological, political and social dimensions of environmental pollution. This has led her to analyse notions of toxicity, digital infrastructures of environmental monitoring, DIY and collaborative forms of production, smart cities and feminist approaches to sensing the environment. nigel clark is Professor of social sustainability and human geography at the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, UK. He is the author of Inhuman Nature: Sociable Life on a Dynamic Planet (2011) and co-editor (with Kathryn Yusoff) of a recent Theory, Culture & Society special issue on Geosocial Formations and the Anthropocene (2017). Current work includes the paleo- politics of the Mid Holocene, speculative volcanology, and the intersection of social and geological rifting. carolin gerlitz is Professor of Digital Media and Methods at the University of Siegen and co-director of the Locating Media graduate school. She is member of the Digital Methods Initiative, University of Amsterdam, where she formerly worked as Assistant Professor of New Media and Digital Culture. She completed her PhD in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Among her research interests are digital media, methods, platform and app studies, quantification, calculation and sensor media. 12 inventing the social Michael guggenheiM is Reader at the Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London, and a Co-Director of the Centre for Invention and Social Process (CISP). His research focuses on expertise and lay people in the fields of disaster management, buildings and cooking. He teaches inventive and visual methods and dreams of a different sociology. andrés Jaque is the founder of Office for Political Innovation (New York/ Madrid), and Director of the Advanced Architectural Design Program at Columbia University GSAPP. The work of the office includes awarded pro- jects including ‘IKEA Disobedients’ (MoMA NY, 2011), ‘Superpowers of Ten’ (Lisbon, 2013) and COSMO PS1 (New York, 2015). His research work has been published in Log , Threshold , Perspecta or Volume ; and his books include Transmaterial Politics , PHANTOM. Mies as Rendered Society , Calculability and Different Kinds of Water Pouring Into a Swimming Pool christopher kelty is Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Duke University Press, 2008), and The Participant (forthcoming, 2018). lucy kiMbell is Director of the Innovation Insights Hub and Professor of Contemporary Design Practices at University of the Arts London and Associate Fellow at Said Business School, University of Oxford. She writes on and prac- tices versions of design thinking and service design and works occasionally as an artist. She spent a year as AHRC design research fellow in Policy Lab, a team in the Cabinet Office, a department of the UK government. With Guy Julier, Lucy has undertaken two projects investigating social design commissioned by the AHRC. bernd kräftner is an artist and researcher. He has realized numerous trans- disciplinary research projects on and at the interfaces of science, society and the arts. He is a founder of the research group ‘Shared Inc.’ (Research Centre for Shared Incompetence) and teaches at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna at the Departments of Art & Science and Digital Art. 13 contributors Judith kröll is a sociologist. She is part of the transdisciplinary research group ‘Shared Inc.’ and Lecturer at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Vienna. She also works as a trainer with the Tomatis method. noortJe Marres is Associate Professor in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM) at the University of Warwick (UK). She studied sci- ence, technology and society (STS) at the University of Amsterdam and the Ecole des Mines (Paris). She was formerly the Director of the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process, Goldsmiths, University of London. Her book Material Participation (Palgrave) came out in paperback in 2015, and she published Digital Sociology (Polity) in 2017. Mike Michael is a sociologist of science and technology, and a Professor in the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Exeter. His research interests have touched on the relation of everyday life to technoscience, the role of culture in biomedicine, and the interplay of design and social scientific perspectives. Recent major publications include Actor-Network Theory: Trials, Trails and Translations (Sage, 2017). He is currently writing books on Science and Technology Studies and Design (with Alex Wilkie) and on Speculative Research Methodology. fabian Muniesa , a researcher at Mines ParisTech (the Ecole des Mines de Paris) and a member of the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, studies busi- ness life from a cultural perspective. He is the author of The Provoked Economy: Economic Reality and the Performative Turn (2014, Routledge), and the co-author of Capitalization: A Cultural Guide (2017, Presses des Mines). This latter book (not about fonts) is a study on the meaning of considering things in terms of assets, and society in terms of a society of investors. christian nold is an artist, designer and researcher who builds participatory technologies for collective representation. He is a Research Associate in the Department of Geography at UCL. In the last decade he created large-scale public art projects such as the widely acclaimed ‘Bio Mapping’, ‘Emotion 14 inventing the social Mapping’ and ‘Bijlmer Euro’ projects, which were staged with thousands of participants across the world. He wrote and edited Emotional Cartography: Technologies of the Self, (2009) The Internet of People for a Post-Oil World (2011) and Autopsy of an Island Currency (2014). His PhD was on the ontological politics of participatory sensing and the potential of design interventions. Marsha rosengarten is Professor in Sociology and a Director of the Centre for Invention and Social Process, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London. She is co-author with Alex Wilkie and Martin Savransky of an edited collection Speculative Research: The Lure of Possible Futures (Routledge, 2017), co-author Mike Michael Innovation and Biomedicine: Ethics, Evidence and Expectation in HIV (Palgrave, 2013) and author of HIV Interventions: Biomedicine and the Traffic in Information and Flesh (University of Washington Press, 2009). Martin savransky is Lecturer and Director of the Unit of Play at the Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London. His works devel- ops a philosophy of practices, weaving together a speculative pragmatism with an ecologically pluralistic politics. He is the author of The Adventure of Relevance (Palgrave, 2016), co-editor of Speculative Research: The Lure of Possible Futures (Routledge 2017), and guest-editor of a special issue titled ‘Isabelle Stengers and The Dramatization of Philosophy’ (forthcoming in SubStance). He is cur- rently working on a second monograph under the title of Around the Day in Eighty Worlds: Politics of the Pluriverse alex Wilkie is a sociologist of science, technology and design and a designer. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Design, at Goldsmiths, University of London where he is also a Director of the Centre for Invention and Social Process (CISP, Department of Sociology). Alex has recently been working on questions of aesthetics and speculation in relation to knowledge and inven- tive practices and has co-edited the volume Studio Studies (Routledge, 2015) with Ignacio Farías and Speculative Research (Routledge, 2017) with Martin Savransky and Marsha Rosengarten. He is currently writing a book on Science and Technology Studies and Design (with Mike Michael). 15 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book grew out of conversations that began at the Symposium Inventing the Social , which took place at Goldsmiths, University of London, on May 29–30, 2014. The symposium celebrated the ten-year anniversary of the interdisciplinary Centre for Invention and Social Process (CISP), based in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths. We would like to thank all the speakers and partici- pants, who included not only most of the contributors to this volume, but also Andrew Barry, Lisa Blackman, Rebecca Coleman, William Davies, Maarten Derksen, Ignacio Farías, Michael Halewood, Javier Lezaun, Daniel Lopez, Anders Koed Madsen, Linsey McGoey, Liz Moor, Dan Neyland, David Oswell and Manuel Tironi. Thank you to Lucy Kimbell for her enthusiasm in joining the project, for proposing to have a conversation, and hosting it at Central Saint Martins. A final thanks to Natalie Gill, Joe Deville, Endre Dányi, Michaela Spencer, Uli Beisel and Julien McHardy of Mattering Press for giving time and making space to publish this project as a book, and for their excellent advice along the way. 17 1 I NTRODUCTION: F RO M PERFORMANCE TO I NVENTING THE SO C I A L Noortje Marres, Michael Guggenheim, Alex Wilkie across Many different doMains, efforts are underWay to reinvent ways of researching social life. Both in established fields of social inquiry, such as sociology and anthropology, and in disciplines such as art, design and archi- tecture, there is an appetite for adventure, for moving beyond the customary distinctions between knowledge and art, and for combining the ‘doing’ ‘research- ing’ and ‘making’ of social life in potentially new ways. Designers, architects and artists are now re-framing their practices as novel forms of social research (Rosner, forthcoming; Mazé 2013), while social and cultural researchers are taking up artistic instruments and techniques to research society by other than textual means, such as drawing and installation art (Wakeford and Lury 2012; Wilkie 2017). However, while the projects of conjoining sociology and design, and more generally of rethinking epistemic and aesthetic engagement with social life, are increasingly widespread, they have raised many unanswered questions, such as: What are the specific qualities of such endeavours and the entities they produce? Can the aims of artistic intervention and social inquiry really be aligned in research practices? Is it possible to contribute to both knowledge and art at once, and should we even wish to? To address such questions, we would do well to consider more carefully specific examples of the above forms of social research. Thus, the overall aim