Hoe kunnen we fictie inzetten in een wereld die door door het denkbeeld van de feitelijkheid overheerst wordt?

Fictie is een werkruimte, een methode en gereedschap om woorden en termen die niet verondersteld worden samen te gaan, toch met elkaar te verbinden. Door arti­ficiële talen of code binnen te brengen in een museumcontext, of door science-fiction in te zetten als onderwijsmiddel voor onderzoekers in de sociale weten­schap­pen, kunnen we met behulp van verbeelding en fantasie heel verschillende werelden met elkaar in contact brengen.

Fictie is een middel om in plaats van ons te spreken, om de warrige draad van onze gedachten te volgen, om de realiteit te begrijpen die is opgebouwd uit fouten, vergis­singen, kansen, hybride ontmoetingen, gevaren. Fictie is een middel om plaats te maken voor blijkbaar nog onvoorstelbare zaken zoals geslachts­ver­an­de­ring, het verdwijnen van grenzen, transgressies van werk en huiselijke omgeving, continue diaspora's, het intieme verband tussen mens en machine. Hannah Arendt schreef in Vita Activa dat we ooit “niet meer in staat zullen zijn de dingen te bevatten en begrijpen die onze handen kunnen produceren. In dat geval zou alles zich afspelen alsof ons brein (…) niet langer kan volgen wat we doen, zodat we vanaf dat moment machines nodig hebben om te denken en te spreken in onze plaats.”¹⁾

Fictie is nodig om machines en software anders te zien en in te zetten. Het uit­gangs­punt is een verlangen om collectieve geschiedenissen te vertellen, buiten commercie en reclame, buiten populaire media om. Vanuit de veronderstelling dat we software-fantasieën kunnen produceren die stereotypes overschrijden, die sociale controle vervangt door situering in sociale, geografische en culturele groepen.

Fictie is onontbeerlijk om de verveelvoudiging van profielen, de sporen die we nalaten en verzamelen te kunnen hanteren. Wanneer we ze opvatten als identiteits-scenario's die we naleven, welke verhalen vertellen we dan? Welke realiteitsficties produceren we wanneer we liegen in een formulier of wanneer we een werkelijkheid 'arrangeren'? Hoe visualiseren we het parcours dat onze profielen afleggen door databanken?

Comment pouvons-nous utiliser la fiction dans un monde qui est dominé par l'idée de l’historicité ?

La fiction est un atelier, une méthode et des outils pour relier les mots et les termes qui ne sont pas supposés aller ensemble. En introduisant des langues artificielles ou du code dans un contexte de musée, ou en utilisant de la science-fiction comme moyen d’enseignement pour les chercheurs en sciences sociales, nous pouvons mettre en contact des mondes très différents à l'aide de l'imaginaire.

La fiction est un moyen pour parler en notre nom, pour suivre le fil mal peigné de nos pensées, pour comprendre la réalité qui a été construite de fautes, de méprises, de chances, de rencontres hybrides, de dangers. La fiction est un moyen pour faire place aux affaires apparemment encore inconcevables comme la transsexualité, la disparition des frontières, les transgressions de travail et de l'entourage domestique, des diasporas continues, le lien intime entre l’homme et la machine.

Hannah Arendt a écrit dans la 'Condition de l'homme moderne' qu’un jour, «nous ne soyons plus jamais capables de comprendre, c'est-à-dire de penser et d'exprimer, les choses que nous sommes cependant capables de faire. En ce cas tout se passerait comme si notre cerveau qui constitue la condition matérielle, physique, de nos pensées, ne pouvait plus suivre ce que nous faisons, de sorte que désormais nous aurions vraiment besoin de machines pour penser et pour parler à notre place.»²⁾

La fiction est nécessaire afin de voir et d’utiliser les machines et le logiciel d’une autre manière. Le point de départ est le désir de raconter des histoires collectives, hors de commerce et de publicité, hors des médias populaires. De l'hypothèse que nous pouvons produire des logiciels-imaginés qui dépassent les stéréotypes, qui remplacent le contrôle social par le lien aux groupes sociaux, géographiques et culturels.

La fiction est indispensable pour pouvoir manipuler la multiplication des profils, les traces que nous laissons et rassemblons. Si nous les interprètons en tant que scénarios d’identité que nous respectons, que racontons-nous alors ? Quelles fictions de réalité produisons-nous si nous mentons dans un formulaire ou si nous ‘arrangeons’ une réalité ? Comment nous faisons-nous une idée claire du parcours que nos profils suivent par les bases de données ?

Notes en Cadavre Exquis (PDF document)

Pierre, Peter, Kris, Wendy, Nicolas, Nicolas, Michel, Femke

Peter introduces. Rode draad of fil rouge?

Le livre d'or

beginnen met voorstellen van projecten verbonden aan fictie als werktuig

wendy stitch zand split utiliser le imagination and fiction als manier om te reflecteren op de huidgie tijd beinvloedt, in antwerpen spraken we over aliens, maar daardoor konden we ook spreken over wie er buitenstaannder is in antwerpen, dus een eufemisme,

not only fiction as a possible different problems solutions,

Kris: why constant was invited to participate in gent; department of education: fiction as a tool is central in the progra=m reflection, general, reflection on social issues narrative, studnets are used to making papers, desire for structure, frame, clear methodology constant proposed to rework reality into fiction, they wrote a science fiction scenario based on their own background as social workers,

het departement werkt veel met fictie :een project over schoolfilms, nu werken ze veel met theater: Wunderbaum,

can you implement fiction in system how do you test / measure the effect? discussion groups / qualitative research telling personal stories based on thje fiuctions thjey see; reflectie verslagen,

n: what difference is there when students shift from learning to making? difficult to say: from de-constructing to constructing the students are not expected to be creative

uncunsciously they are always constructing narratives, but making it real is different

A: jeanne v H did a project in hospital where they created a soap in which the hospital and its patients featured, what was done: how to construct a story / plot select a contemporary problem, think about a future in which this problem was solved. Deus ex machina and pills were not an option; example: communication with an alzheimer patient (problem) solution: a robot was invented

focus on technology; science and social work: technoloation and medicalisation of social work were put forward because it is somethoing they encounterin their daily work

W: Workshop with foam is about future and technology but there was no mention of fantasy or fiction

F: why do we connect fiction and computers? yoogle and profiles and stitch and split relate?

yoogle born out of uncritical absorption of web 2.0

who owns? correlation?

enthousiasm about everyone being able to publish – privacy? paranoia?

reverse engineering: we needed a game a paranoia fiction. If it is a game … something must be real

test out a dynamic you can learn from

google histories…

if you type something… social control is much stronger than letting google know what you are looking for

F: is fiction a carrier? A way to guild the bitter pill?

N: the game is a way to discover, to build more interesting hypothesis. It is only interesting when we want to be educated to.

Tool + fiction: what kind of instrumentalism

Werktuig als fictie?

K: the metaphor is a tool – can be good and bad in education … stories are supposed to be GOOD – it can be confusing too how can you really learn from a narrative (it can be limiting, but opening up too)

fiction as a tool… you need to look critically at this relation too

“what is the added value” … how to answer that? It gives more values!

The tool is never neutral. The way the advertisement is constructed, is not neutral

what is a fiction?

does an advertiser write fiction? Or do we make fiction out of it?

P: popular stories that have a hidden or culturally determined story?

data is fiction? The queries you make are already a narrative … if you produce profiles … the data is raw material for creating fiction

S: a form where you fill in to tell you who you are and than it would tell you: thank you for your data

N: web 2.0 … people are strategic about it, but not all elements are visible / transparant It was exciting for me when AOL released a part of their date. The idea was that it would help to make things better. But they could reconstruct persona's from it through datamining; the first thing they did was to construct narratives from it.

A: narrative vs fiction?

P: you can narrate something 'real'

fiction and truth are always blurred

A: is the intention the difference?

K: naturally occuring narratives vs. provoked narratives

the core of a narrative or an account – it is a thin line but

precausality of a narrative – how did a startingpoint effect the way a story evolved.

when do you talk about a story / narrative?

and a statement

Na: you need links between facts to make a narrative Narratives that work, and those that don't – what conditions; scientific narratives: speculation, stories are conditions to produce working conditions.

writing a dossier

A: the idea that you can create fiction from data – we interviewed commuters and people hang around. I was asked to write a story about it. I took patterns and wrote a fairy tale with it. It works very well when you have a lot of data.

archetypes (templates) – profiles

Na: the effect of fiction a difference between a bottle not responding to the story while you, listener will change as a result. The meaning matters – who you are talking to and about who are you talking to

words are tools narrative words are different kinds of tools

K: logical, mathematical knowledge vs narrative knowledge

Pi: Humans are tools to effect bottles

how do stories challenge a overfactual world

you need to be careful not to want to make everything a narrative. It needs to be next to each other … you need some sort of standardisation. But not a single story!

narratives and fiction can be an antidote, but they do not need to take over

P: what kind of stories – story as a medium

if everything is fiction we can maybe change things. is everything rhetoric? By looking at rhetoric we can start to see what stories mean

rhetoric as internal 'efficace'

histories are stories = fiction

how can you think about history as fiction, you give the key to see that it is a construction

everything is a tool > there is always something in a story; we can enjoy a story we are not agreeing with.

can you influence views by influencing stories

stitch and split … otherness

rethoriek = woordenkramerij. it is a persuasion – more ethical. You can make yourself and others aware

manufactured tools do not help me to construct other tools what kind of construction, empowering

being a strategical user… are you empowered?

being transformed by a fiction … in some sort of stable way … how it is empowering

Na: i was not thinking of GB but I was thinking of Brico…

W: we are fictionalizing fiction.

Pi: theory is about storyte“lling, when writing you dont think anymore, working on a workshop fiction writing for radio, wanting to engage radiomakers to revalidate fiction

ni: fictions that work and fictions that do not work, fictions are sometimes inside the wrong genre, when do they dis / appear, you are talking about all kinds of aspects when thinking about disappearing media ….. attention,

is radio drama moved elsewhere, or is it no/somewhere?

when we talk about tools we have to talk about their re-configuration,

an: opening the box doesn't make you constructive / creative

open source tools ?

fe: spreekt over notaties van an in boeken die ze leest, daarin is een aandacht besloten die haar niet duidelijk is maar die intrigeert

ni: when we speak about bookmarks it is a good moment to change to shiftspace, an: i wrote a fictional story through shiftspace post=its, people can leave comments, thepos-its are on urls, placed in the context of wenbpages, next phase includes thinking about the software as a tool for net-native writing

organise two workshops … with volunteers

by following the trails … temporality precise narration A: one criteria was, that it should be fiction, not just narrative. but it can be associative.

when you talk about the project … you don't mention what the story is about. Ni: i would like to know more about the story A: I was curious about how you make a novel, was caught by it. I had the desire to make one myself, but the context of the classic novel needed another kind of context

i am curious about co-authorship but i have a story to tell

Ni: if the meeting point for the story is the structure but not the story itself Oulipo is a safe game strategies for collaborative writing are often distant.

collaborative projects in literature… ask long term investment free jazz and stories are not exclusive?

groups that all together write software

how is that different from writing a novel

Ni: the difference is that code can be benchmarked… you can reach a consensus based on “it works better” the level of consensus is much higher

we don't want to have the same tools as we had before

collaborative writing

all stories are already written

Na: An, is your idea of participative collaborative digital writing constrained by tools – or is it a way to feed, learn the way you are learning.

when you write a story it is difficult to make decisions – to deal with all the possibilities you have participative writing can help to give some material constraints, that are not external but part of the process

if you don't define the type of advantages you expect… can produce anything

problem with free collaborative projects… over time, people come in to say hello and than spammers…

Na: experimentations are always done in precise ways… you try to create a device

MIT … a teacher assigned characters to people who decides the structure you need limitations

W: science of future studies

structured speculation what is under collaborative discussion and what not

if it is important to give different perspectives… but on what?

there is a movie… la valse (sliding doors), constructed around a meeting