Tipping Points in Translation
Beginn des PhD-Programms / Start of the PhD-Program: WS 2021
Betreuung / Supervision:
Manuela Naveau
Inspired by the raising recognition of translation as an art of its own, the proposed project aims to investigate translation as an artistic practice. In this project, translation specifically refers to the process of passing a message between a scientific narrative and an archive of things and sounds. The subject of translation will be thematically centred around the phenomenon of tipping points, described from a scientific perspective. Tipping points are a state of dynamic systems in which a small change can radically disrupt an equilibrium and beyond which large and irreversible changes are likely to occur. As the phenomenon of tipping points affects countless biological systems, the project will draw from two specific fields in which it features: tipping points in the ability to adapt to environmental conditions (as described in chronobiology literature) and tipping points in climate change (focussing on climate modelling literature). Besides it being the subject of translation, the tipping point dynamic ties a bond between the theoretical and the practical part of the project: its relationship with the research process lies in the search for the limit of translatability, in de-coding and recoding. Investigating tipping points implies working within a transition space between the predictable and the unforeseeable.
By focussing on the translation of neuroscience topics into visual and auditory experiences, Marta Beauchamp (born 1990, IT/UK) shapes an interface through which to materially encounter this process. She is interested in the difference between understanding based on keeping-in-mind and understanding through experiencing. Sound and objects allow her to inflate dense scientific topics to room-scale installations which offer more space and dimensions for comprehension.
Weblink:https://work.martabeauchamp.de/
Foto © Pascal Mächteln