ROUNDTABLE

Stefanie Koemeda, first semester student with a background in biology, presented her intention of working on the field of scientific language, to assess on the former experience of learning and using a rather difficult scientific vocabulary. In collaboration with several PHD students from the IST Austria, the Institue of Science and Technology, she is looking for scientific terms being used in biology and she will try to develop a procedure, to discover the realities behind them.
A vivid discussion emerged around the usage of metaphors in science, language itself as a shifting process, the non-capacity of not using metaphors and not categorizing. Questions arised like: What is the essence? What is truth?

 

Words like instinct should be handled with care and also careful with the trap of metaphoric illustration. This could be avoided by taking the metaphors literally and creating lists of different versions.

We contemplated around metaphors like WAR, ANTIBODY, IMMUNE SYSTEM, AUTOANTIBODIES, WELTFORMEL and the reconceptualization of metaphors and their meaning. But, concluding with Freud: "Sometimes a banana is just a banana."

 

"Michal Marencik presented five concepts, groping around the issue of human vs and as machine. Some of the concepts would need a longer process in the lab. For that purpose Michal is in touch with www.dialog-gentechnik.at, a platform of scientists which has the agenda of preparing funded scientific information for the interested public and with students of the digital arts.

 

He also showed us some works, which go in this direction, like the seemanlab4 -  3D bacteria and nanotechnology, the colourlovers - colouring bacterias, and the film "48 Köpfe aus dem Szondi Test" by Kurt Kren. In discussion terms like transhumanism, posthumanism arised and again, Michal referred to the metaphor of WAR: Is it about money or simply part of human nature? And why would the bacteria fight if they have no money?