[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_kNQXqQ4_4]

I had my mind blown and some assumptions challenged recently when I attended a seminar by Genevieve Bell as part of the ISEA symposium in Sydney last week.  She was terrific – both an incredibly polished presenter, and obviously playing with some really interesting ideas (as well as being both funny and quite sexy).  I mean, one could level all the same criticisms of TED talks at her – yes it lacked depth, was very ‘whizz-bang-pow’ etc… But nonetheless she illustrated some really interesting perspectives on Big Data and the way we view it.

I don’t want to go into a blow by blow recap of her actual presentation, but the thing that I really came away with was a renewed awareness of the precariousness of Empiricism (with a capital E) as a valid investigative world-view.  Whilst I understand and have grappled with the limitations of such a world-view in the past – it was interesting hearing Genevieve really stick the boot in.  For me this was also timely since I have been really trying to come to terms with the validity of much of the approaches prevalent in the social theory component of the Audio Culture material I have been teaching.  I found reading a bunch of Adorno, Deleuze and Guattari, Attali etc… immensely frustrating.  My default position has long been that without any attempt at empiricism – no data at all apart from the occasional anecdotal example – how can such sweeping statements and indeed entire critical frameworks be seen as useful?

So it was good for me to hear what Genevieve had to say.  And sure – I get it – the Social Sciences have indeed delivered untold riches in terms of approaches in the last 50 years.  Gender studies, queer theory, Marxism, post-modernism etc… It’s just that at the end of the day I still remain unconvinced of an argument without data and a rigorous implementation of experimental method that is used to attribute cause and effect.  Hmmm… I am clearly still working through this.  And perhaps it’s one of those things one never neatly finishes with.

This is the next thing on my reading list: ‘After method: mess in social scienc research‘.  It was recommended to me by an amazing young academic, Katie Hepworth, who suggested it as the next step in my downfall from the cold, unfeeling, and frequently cross-eyed creaky tower of Empiricism.  I’ll report back when I’ve read some more but it looks like a ripper of a read.  From the dust jacket:

“Most current methods look for clarity and precision. It is usually said that only poor research produces messy findings, and the idea that things in the world might be fluid, elusive, or multiple is unthinkable. Law’s startling argument is that this is wrong and it is time for a new approach. Many realities, he says, are vague and ephemeral. If methods want to know and help to shape the world, then they need to reinvent themselves and their politics to deal with mess. That is the challenge. Nothing less will do.”

Link to .pdf here.

Oh and other, largely unrelated ISEA gossip: Apparently, in the opening few sentences of Assange’s keynote address he stopped, looked at the crowd and asked ‘Can artists even UNDERSTAND what it is that we do?’.  Hi…lar…i…ous.  And finally – if you’re in Sydney and haven’t made it down to Carriageworks to see the Ryoji Ikeda installation yet – GO NOW!!  It’s astonishing.