臺灣科技與社會研究學會為臺灣重要的學術組織之一，成員包括社會學者、歷史學者、政治學者、哲學者與藝術創作者等領域的研究者，以多元視角探索科學知識的本質、科學的過去與現在、科學與其他知識之間的交流、科技與社會的交織等主題。過去五年間，本學會與藝術社群有著日益緊密的交流；最重要者便是參與2020年的臺北雙年展「你我不住在同一個星球上」，負責當中的「協商劇場」。值得一提的，當年策展人Bruno Latour便是科技與社會的重要學者；在臺灣藝術創作中廣受討論的行動者網絡理論（actor-network theory, ANT）與針對「非人」之能動性的討論，均牽涉到Latour的學術思想。科技與社會研究與當代藝術間的緊密關係，由此可見一班。 即便科技與社會研究與當代藝術間的交流日益密切，但這兩個畢竟屬於不同的社群；科技與社會研究者主要仰賴學術研討會進行交流，藝術社群則主要透過展覽。有鑒於此，經過三年疫情的螯伏，學會準備以全新的視角與方式推動今年的年會：結合學術研討會與策展，直接讓藝術家、藝術作品與科技與社會研究者同處在同一空間中，創造各種跨領域交流的機會，從而激盪出兩造間互動與合作的可能性。 今年年會主題為「重置世界的尺度」（recaling the world ）。在當今人文社會科學的研究中，研究者開始討論各類尺度，如行星尺度、病毒尺度等。在方法論層次，研究者也倡言「以人為度」。此外，當研究者在討論地方社會、全球化、區域研究時，所謂的地方、區域、全球均是一類尺度。但問題是，什麼是尺度？在這個既有的邊界與測量標準均遭到挑戰的今日，我們需要什麼樣的尺度概念？即便科學家與工程師可以發展出細緻的理論與技術來界定尺度，但特定的尺度要成為標準，得仰賴社會能否形成共識，以及此尺度有無足夠的正當性，這就涉及政府能否設置具有強制力的機構與法律，乃至於維持此標準於不墜的基礎設施。以尺度為切入點，研究者與藝術創作者既可以細緻地探討科技與社會在不同時空背景下的交織，反思科技在當代社會中扮演的角色，以及科技與社會研究可以著力之處。 感謝國科會、洪建全基金會、建蓁環境教育基金會、台積電文教基金會與臺灣大學理學院的經費支持，以及臺灣當代文化實驗場在空間與行政上的支援，今年年會將於9月1日至6日間，於臺灣當代文化實驗場舉辦。在6天的時間裡，計有4位來自美國、澳洲與臺灣的主題講者、將近百篇的論文與海報發表，以及11位藝術家製作的9件作品共襄盛舉。 在行程方面，9月1日下午兩點為開幕式，當天有策展人導覽，以及首位講者Marisa Morán Jahn的演講，接著便是晚會。2日至3日為年會，共有6個平行場次與3場主題演講，主題講者分別為哈佛大學科學史系教授Victor Seow、中央研究院近代史研究所研究員兼所長雷祥麟與澳洲James Cook大學的Hallam Stevens教授，講題涵蓋能源史、中國近現代史與東南亞的電子業與地緣政治。4日至6日則開放展場供大眾參觀，4日至5日下午並有兩場由Marisa Morán Jahn與徐叡平主持的工作坊。 在藝術家與作品方面，參展藝術家分別來自臺灣、拉脫維亞、印度、智利、墨西哥、宏都拉斯與美國。拉脫維亞的藝術團隊RIXC-Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits以《大氣森林》（Atmospheric Forest）參展。該作品運用沉浸式裝置，讓觀眾感知森林、氣候變化和大氣之間的複雜關係。印度藝術家Aarti Sunder以《鬼影剪輯：許多黑盒中的清晰像素》（Ghost Cut: Some Clear Pixels Amongst Many Black Boxes）參展。該作品以廣受爭議的網路市場Mturk為例，探討大數據時代的勞動政治。智利藝術家Nicole L’Huillier則以《種子，與種子手冊》（Semilla, and Semilla Manual）探討種子如何作為抵抗的工具。臺灣藝術家徐叡平與紀柏豪，與宏都拉斯的藝術家Nancy Valladares合作，以《與細菌混了3000年》（3000 Years Among Microbes）探索共生（symbiosis）和親屬關係（kinship），由此想像寓居於星際間的生活樣態。墨西哥藝術家Chucho Ocampo因拉美計畫「尺度・訊號・光譜（Scale, Signal, Spectrum）」來臺駐留，發展了與風共振的聲音裝置原型《卡努 (Khanun)》，透過民眾參與讓大眾能更了解環境尺度的變化。美國藝術家Marisa Morán Jahn則提供《銅色景觀》(Copperscapes)。該作品顯露科學、神話和政治的交織，探討人們如何透過地球來理解自我與他人的奧秘。加拿大藝術家Maggie Coblentz製作了《未定義食物體》（Unidentified Food Objects）。該作品想像各種太空食物的原型，據此勾勒與探索人類與宇宙的生存與依附。臺灣藝術家賴彥勳製作了《文本分析計畫：意識的形構》。由程式掃描累計的字元數，以及科技如何形塑人們的閱讀經驗，該作品討論數據化如何讓個體感受與感知日益失真。臺灣藝術家陳肇彤則以《離岸》、《地殼與星》、《移山》三件現地裝置，利用石頭的各類物質性，以及與展場空間共構的氛圍，凸顯世間各類尺度系統間的互動、相互界定與摩擦。 透過前述設計，我們期待能打造新的年會面貌，促進更多跨領域交流，並營造更多的社群感。藝術社群常稱展覽空間為白盒（white cube），藉此凸顯作品與展場間共同譜出的可能性。與之對照，科技與社會研究者常稱科技為黑箱（black box），並以打開科技之黑箱為志業。科技與社會研究在臺灣已是卓然有成的學術分支，但本屆年會應該是首次讓藝術社群與科技與社會研究社群齊聚一堂，一同打開黑箱與白盒，交互檢視各自的箱子中有什麼，且可以有什麼。
The Taiwan STS Association (TSTSA) is one of Taiwan's foremost academic institutions. Its membership includes sociologists, historians, political scientists, philosophers, and artists, exploring the nature of scientific knowledge, science in the past and the present, the interactions between scientific knowledge and other knowledge, and the interweaving of technology and society from diverse perspectives. Over the past five years, the Association has fostered ever-closer collaborations with artists. An important such collaboration is the Negotiation Theater during the 2020 Taipei Biennial, You and I Don't Live on the Same Planet; the Biennial was also curated by the late STS scholar, Bruno Latour, whose Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and the notion of agency of the "non-human," have profound impacts among Taiwanese artists. Despite the increasingly closer relationship between STS and contemporary art, they each remain distinct communities. STS researchers interact through academic conferences, whereas the art community predominantly relies on exhibitions as its mode of expression. This is why the Association embarks on a novel approach to the annual conference this year after three years of pandemic-induced disruptions. By combining an academic conference and art exhibitions, artists, artworks, and STS researchers can be in the same space, and thus create opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations. The theme of the 2023 Taiwan Science, Technology & Society Association Annual Conference is “Rescaling the World”. “Scale” is an indispensable aspect of our daily lives, government policies, capitalist expansion, engineering designs, and humanities and social science research. However, what is scale? What are the epistemological and ontological foundations of scale? What are the past, present, and future of scale? What is the most suitable scale for understanding the past, present, and future world? What insights can STS and the history of science bring to these questions? Even if scientists and engineers can develop sophisticated theories and technologies to define scales, a certain scale can only become a standard when it has gained sufficient authority and legitimacy with social consensus. By studying scales, researchers must consider technology, society, politics, instruments, scientific communities, and other related subjects at the same time. This constitutes a great challenge for researchers and requires interdisciplinary cooperation and dialogue to address. Thanks to the generous financial support of the National Science Council, the Hong Foundation, the CHENG CHEN Foundation, and the College of Science of National Taiwan University, as well as the Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab's assistance in space and logistics. This year's conference will take place from September 1st to 6th at the Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab. Over six days, there will be four keynote speakers from the United States, Australia, and Taiwan, nearly 100 papers and poster presentations, and nine artworks created by 11 artists. The event will be opened by a ceremony on September 1st at 2:00 PM, followed by a curator-led tour and a speech by Marisa Morán Jahn, and an evening reception. The annual conference will be on September 2nd and 3rd, with six parallel sessions and three keynote speeches. The keynote speakers are: Victor Seow, assistant professor of the history of science at Harvard University, Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Dean and Research Fellow of the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica, and Hallam Stevens from James Cook University in Australia. Their topics cover energy history, modern Chinese history, and the Southeast Asian electronics industry and geopolitics. September 4th to 6th will open the exhibition to the public, and workshops led by Marisa Morán Jahn and Hsu Rae-yuping will be held in the afternoons of September 4th and 5th. Participating artists come from Taiwan, Latvia, India, Chile, Mexico, Honduras, and the United States. The Atmospheric Forest by Latvian art collective RIXC-Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits is an immersive installation where the audience can experience the complex relationship between forests, climate change, and the atmosphere. Ghost Cut: Some Clear Pixels Amongst Many Black Boxes by Indian artist Aarti Sunder examines the labor politics of the Big Data era with the controversial internet marketplace, MuMturk. Chilean artist Nicole L’ !&Huillier explores seeds as tools of resistance in Semilla, and Semilla Manual. Taiwanese artists Hsu Rae-yuping and Chi Po-hao, collaborating with Honduran artist Nancy Valladares, present 3000 Years Among Microbes, imagining symbiotic and kinship relationships in interstellar life. Mexican artist Chucho Ocampo is in Taiwan for the art project Scale, Signal, Spectrum, developing the prototype sound installation Khanun, a resonance with the wind that helps the public understand the environmental scale changes. American artist Marisa Morán Jahn’s Copperscapes intertwines science, mythology, and politics to explore how people understand the mysteries of self and others through the Earth. Canadian artist Maggie Coblentz presents Unidentified Food Objects imagining prototypes of space food to explore human survival in the cosmos. Taiwanese artist Lai Yen-hsun’s Textual Analysis Project: Constructing Consciousness discusses how digitalization alienates individuals' perceptions over time through characters accumulated by program scanning and how technology shapes people’s reading experience. Taiwanese artist Chen Jau-tong Chen creates three on-site installations, Offshore, Crust and Star, and Moving Mountains to highlight interactions, mutual definition, and friction among various scale systems through the materiality of stones and the atmosphere co-constructed with the exhibition space. Through the endeavors above, the Association hopes to create another possibility for the annual conference, facilitating more interdisciplinary exchanges and fostering a stronger sense of community. While the art community refers to exhibition space as "white cubes" to express possibilities jointly crafted by artworks and venues, STS researchers refer to technology as a "black box," and strive to open the box. In Taiwan, STS is already a well-established academic field, and this year's conference will bring together the art community and STS community together for the first time, opening the white and black boxes, exploring what each other has in the box, and creating other possibilities.
【籌備團隊】 臺灣科技與社會學會 理事長｜陳恒安 秘書長｜陳佳欣 行政助理｜吳希勻 年會總召｜洪廣冀 - 策展人｜紀柏豪 策展執行｜賴慧珈 展場技術統籌｜張暉明 展場技術組長｜林瑜亮 展場技術執行｜王學淵、何育葦、郭子耘、許哲豪、黃育晨、黃子晏 研討會執行團隊｜李昇峰、李翊媗、周如怡、林于煖、林立、林宗洧、林筑韋、吳希勻、陳貞妤、陳詩翰、張庭榕、曾昭鈺、游淳詔、鄒欣寧、王衡政、于治維 主視覺設計｜萬向欣 網站設計｜古昀玄 平面攝影｜張耀翔 動態影像｜謝仲維 音樂演出｜DJ Dusa