The Sensory Potential of Hospital Matter

In this talk I will explore the sensory potential of materials in the context of the hospital. Hospitals are currently seen as sites of clinical waste, using excessive single-use plastics and disposables, generating mountains of rubbish. Inside hospitals however, people work with materials in many different ways. They might find new uses of objects for example rather than throw them away. They might tinker and repair objects to keep them from discard. We don’t know much about these repurposing practices because they are often “off-protocol”. In this talk I will introduce an ethnographic approach to studying upcycled materials in hospitals and share preliminary observations. I will discuss this in the context of an international sensory ethnographic team project which looks at material practices in sites around the world. I will share some of our creative methods for doing research, including experimenting with open datasets of material improvisations. Our team consists of anthropologists and STS scholars and will expand to include data experts, designers and makers. One of the goals of our research will be to expand current theories of materiality through comparative collaborative ethnography, using practices such as upcycling as ways to interrogate the sensory potential of materials.
Keywords: sensory ethnography, materiality, hospital ethnography, upcycling, circularity

Matthew Halpenny (interdisciplinary artist and researcher, Montréal, Canada)

Gardening the Cybernetic Meadow: Fostering Ecosophic Care using Microbial Fuel Cells as a Temporal Aesthetic Medium

The presentation would detail my graduate research on interdisciplinary art, temporal & more- than-human timelines, and Guattari's ecosophic framework. Primarily, it uses sustainable energy technologies drawing energy from bio-matter (soil microbes) to explore experiential installation works. MFCs are a regenerative energy technology that use soil as medium and uptake energy through collecting by-products of microbial metabolism. When growing plants, the ions left in the soil by this process accumulate and power e-ink poetry over months of exhibition. The garden generates enough energy to generate about a word a day. This creates an extremely "slow", temporal experience of waiting for the output, fostering the experience of sensing more-than-human timescales and subsequently, the contrasting temporal sense of "deep time" energy consumption we rely on with extractive energy sources. Oil and coal are also tied to metabolic growth timelines, but represent millions of years of that same metabolism and growth.

Keywords: Research-Creation, Interdisciplinary Design, Microbial Energy, Temporal Aesthetics, Experiential Learning

Alba Clevenger (Communication Studies, Concordia University, Canada)

Lithium Bodies: (Non-)human Chemical Affinities

Like vehicles, some psychiatrized bodies are ‘made better’ with lithium. Backed by the scientific belief that it is the optimal choice for the perpetual forward motion of these human and vehicular bodies, lithium consumption enables some embodied potentials while foreclosing others. This is an exploratory paper that investigates the material-affective affinities of what I'm calling 'lithium bodies': human, locomotive, and ecological. It maps how processes of extraction, consumption, digestion, and excretion transform these lithium bodies and their sensorial potentials. It traces how lithium acts on these bodies, simultaneously enabling forms of mobility and immobility, offering repair while administering harm.
This paper moves through multiple field sites in Quebec, from open pit mining to microscopy, while remaining anchored in the researcher’s felt sense of her body, in her everyday practice of lithium consumption. Emerging from critical disability and feminist science and technology studies frameworks, this paper moves multiple ethnographic sites in Quebec, from open pit mining to microscopy. Drawing on Mel Y. Chen’s theories of intoxication and chemical intimacy and Jane Bennett’s concept of vibrant matter, this paper seeks out points of affinity, contradiction, and ambivalence while staying attentive to relations of power.

Keywords: disability, ecology, green energy futures, non-human ethnography, embodiment