Survival vs Resilience

On July 23 and 24, the results of “Survival vs Resilience” were presented, an art and science project started on July 11 and led by the Fundación Épica La Fura dels Baus in collaboration with ICN2, ICFO, BIST, UOC, HLRS and UB.
The initiative’s main objective is horizontal collaboration between science, art and technology, involving researchers, creatives and technologists in equal parts. The result, a great collective experiment based on the performing arts that contributes to research, fosters critical thinking in society and puts reflection on plausible futures on the table.

“Survival vs Resilience” is the result of previous work: part of dialogues between the entity and multidisciplinary experts from around the world to detect and determine needs, challenges and a priori goals that are not achievable in a traditional laboratory environment. How to communicate and to disseminate scientific content?, or what are the ethical and moral implications of scientific advances?, are some of the questions that arose from the conversations with the BIST, ICFO and ICN2. On the other hand, computational philosophers from the HLRS, researchers from the TURBA-UOC and the UB-Neurociencia take advantage of the initiative by proposing social experiments that involve both creative people and the audience.
Once this first conceptual phase is finished, the intensive co-creation workshop is launched, in which, on the one hand, the aforementioned research groups have participated, and on the other, a total of 30 creatives. The latter, directed by Pep Gatell, president of the entity and artistic director of La Fura dels Baus, have been responsible for creating the ideal environment to carry out the challenges and experiments posed by the research groups, which have seen the light of day on July 23 and 24 at the Antigua Fábrica CACI in Badalona.
The project has ended with a newly created piece made up of four actions that address the concepts raised by the participating experts: graphene, fake news, neuroscience and the ethics of technology.

The entity has received about 100 applications. At this time, the selection process of the participants has been completed.

Workshop dates: from May 30 to June 11, 2023, both included. 
Schedule: Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. The schedule can be more intense during the last days. 
Location: Physical, facilities of the Fundación Épica La Fura dels Baus, Badalona.
30 scholarship places available (includes training expenses; not including allowances, transportation and accommodation expenses). 
Profile: The call is intended for artists, scientists and technologists, especially those multidisciplinary and hybrid profiles who want to be part of a disruptive and innovative experience.  
Full availability is required. 

Registration form: DEADLINE EXPIRED

Documentation required for registration: 

Participation in the workshop is restricted to individuals, and it is not necessary to prove previous knowledge. Applications had to be submitted using the active registration form during the registration period. The documentation that has been required has been the following:  

– Personal data: Full name, date of birth, ID, email. 
– Curriculum Vitae with photo (maximum 2 pages, .pdf format) 
– Motivation Letter (maximum 2 pages, .pdf format)
– Optionally, it will be valued positively by awarding one more point in the evaluation of the candidate: Presentation video of a maximum of 3 minutes in which you must answer the following questions: 
Who are you?      
What do you do normally?    
What can you contribute? (from your experience, your knowledge, studies)
What do you want to contribute? (your dreams, curiosities, what you do NOT normally do but would like to do)
What do you imagine you can get out of your participation in the experience?

The first scene takes place in an exhibition based on graphene that provides the audience with knowledge about the material and its thermal and electronic properties, turning attendees into electrons.
The second action puts on the table the problem of fake news and how it is capable of transforming, manipulating and guiding society. In this scene, Kalliópê plays a fundamental role, a mass communication tool developed by the Foundation and made available to creatives to generate second narratives and collect data by sending content to the audience’s phones. Through the tool, the audience receives information about two characters who are presented as criminals, offering the possibility of judging them through game dynamics. Showing that, regardless of their own will, fake news is capable of manipulating opinions: the characters will be judged guilty in any case.
The third scene reflects on the ethics and morality associated with new technologies: what implications can they have in society? How far are we willing to go with new technologies? To address these issues, the creatives present a new technology capable of changing the perceptions of those who suffer. As a demonstration, one person is invited to test the technology. Despite the fact that at first the experience is positive and allows unimaginable things to be done, it turns into a nightmare: from addiction to death.
Finally, the fourth action is inspired by neuroscience, personality and how it is built into the brain. Thus, the creatives propose a narrative based on memories, identities and roles.
The exhibition concluded with a meeting between the creatives, the researchers and the audience, a debate in which both the creative process itself and the much-needed link between art, science and technology were discussed to contribute to the challenges of the future of the society.

HLRS

Information, old or new, scientific or not, is considered trustworthy/credible when there is an expert (or group) cited as a source. However, with social media and other information-sharing platforms, distinguishing between experts and pseudo-experts is very difficult. Relying on the history or checking the academic qualifications of experts is a tedious task for non-experts, both in online and offline environments. For this reason, the HLRS computational philosophers ask the following questions: who is an expert? What makes an expert trustworthy? How to distinguish a true expert from a fake/pseudo-expert?
To answer these questions, the HLRS experts proposed an experiment in which the same creative participants were studied during the first days of the workshop, when they came into contact with the researchers and the challenges posed.
Thus, together the HLRS, the Foundation team and the ICN2 generated two scenarios in which the experts presented themselves to the participants. On the one hand, a real expert on the subject, graphene, was presented. On the other, a fake expert, who was also dealing with the subject of graphene, trained and with the knowledge to present himself as a real expert despite transmitting false facts on the subject. The experts participating in the experiment followed the instructions of the HLRS research team, modifying their behavior, clothing, and type of presentation before the creative subjects of the experiment.
To evaluate and measure the level of trust that the latter placed in the experts, the level of interaction of the participants during the presentations was taken into account, as well as the responses to a subsequent interview and questionnaires carried out by the same HLRS research group the day after the interventions.

UOC-TURBA

Researchers from the Urban Transformation and Global Change research group (Open University of Catalonia, UOC) are carrying out, in collaboration with the Foundation team, the design and implementation of a study on the evaluation of the impact of art and science initiatives such as “Survival vs Resilience”.
The aim of this evaluation is to monitor and assess the effectiveness of these types of events, with particular emphasis on the innovative capacity-based approach to science communication in raising awareness of the general public about the importance of science and its communication.

– Dr. Andreas Kaminski, Head of the Department of Philosophy of Computational Sciences at HLRS. 
– Ammu Joshy, Researcher in Trust in Information at HLRS. 
– Matthias Hauser, Manager Media Solution Center-HLRS High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart
– Dr. Lluís Fuentemilla, Full professor at Universitat de Barcelona – Neuroscience, PI at Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group.
– Josué Garcia Arch, PhD student at Universitat de Barcelona – Neuroscience, Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group.
– Lorenzo Orsini, PhD student at the ICFO Quantum Nano-Optoelectronics Research Group. 
– Dr. Jose de la Cruz, researcher at INBRAIN Neurotechnologies
– Dr. Victoria Puig, Senior Researcher at the ICN2 Advanced Electronic Materials and Devices Group, 
– Àlex Argemí, ICN2 Head of Marketing and Communication.
– Dr. María Heras, Postdoctoral research fellow at TURBA (IN3-UOC).
– Dr. Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, Director Urban Transformation & global Change Laboratory at IN3.