Permacomputing related research methods

Livinglabs

Livinglabs are both sustainability research method and experimental/development environments and ecosystems.

On the contrary to academic and highly specialized scientific labs, livinglabs are local initiatives, pragmatic and efficient, balancing social, environmental and economical considerations. Livinglabs are places to overcome narrow scientific or engineering specialization and theoretical assumptions and test consequences of technology next to living ecosystems. All actors - human, animal, plant or microbiome and researchers are on the same level to resolve positive or negative impacts. Instead observation of subjects there is principle of co-creation, experiential learning, prototyping involving communities, inclusive social space for designing and experiencing their own future.

Artistic research

Creative inquiry, practice as research.

Practice led research is a distinctive feature of the research activity conducted by arts and humanities researchers, it involves the identification of research questions and problems, but the research methods, contexts and outputs then involve a significant focus on creative practice. This type of research thus aims, through creativity and practice, to illuminate or bring about new knowledge and understanding, and it results in outputs that may not be text-based, but rather a performance.

The paradigmatic shift in thinking and initial concerns about the human ability to maintain the biological livability of the Earth were marked by the formation of systems art in 1960s, when artists started combining technological, biological, and social systems, and whose approach continues to inspire contemporary environmental artistic research.

Scientific critique, interdisciplinarity

Interdisciplinarity means not only multiple disciplines involved (informatics, biology...), but also multiple domains of inquiry.

• Interpretivist discourse: meaning, constructivist, network, dialogue, interdiscipline, integrations, narratives
• Empiricist inquiry: exploratory, conceptual, reflective, discipline-based, designs, simulations, reviews
• Critical process: positionality-change, contextual, transdiscipline, perspective, question, policies, situations, actions
• Art practice: meta-theoretical, practical, reflexive, post-discipline, visual systems, exhibitions, performances

Art practice also come in coupled with critical, interpretivist and empiricist domains in theory dimensions.

Areas of arts practice:¹

• Making in communities: communication, connection, interpretive, textual
• Making in systems: interaction, intersection, structural, virtual
• Making in Cultures: dissonance, collaboration, critical, visual
• Artist as theorist: transformation, reflective, relational, site-based

Example Research fields

Meta-disciplines of trans-discipline of sustainability:

Ecosystems and computational conditions of biodiversity

Sustainability and toxicity of computation

Biodigitality and bioelectric energy

Digital governance conditions of community resilience