Abstract

Scientific representations like maps, brain scans, and botanical illustrations are central to the practice of science, and forty years of research in science and technology studies have helped us to understand the social processes behind the production of scientific evidence. But today, widely accessible technologies can create lifelike algorithmically generated images – photo-like pictures made not with lenses but through the manipulation of digital data. These new kinds of images have allowed us to see the unseeable, but have also introduced distinctive challenges to our ability to trust the things we can see with our own eyes. With data drawn from a multisited ethnographic study focused on sensor-based photographish visualizations as evidence between science and the law, this talk focuses on the everyday production of both veracity and verisimilitude, and the challenges faced by those who hope to balance both truthfulness and its appearance in new kinds of images.

Short Bio

Alison Gerber is Associate Professor of Sociology at Lund University in Sweden. Her research focuses on value in culture, science, and public life, from tax audits to noise music. She leads Show&Tell, an ERC-funded project focused on algorithmically generated images and emerging digital 3D methods for documentation, visualization, and analysis as they move between science and the law. Recent work includes research on evaluation in emerging research disciplines, the weaponization of uncertainty in olfactory claims-making, and the relationships between artistic and scientific knowledge production.

What is an AIAS Seminar?

The AIAS Seminar Series is a session of seminars held by the AIAS fellows, AIAS Visiting or Tandem Fellows or by other speakers proposed by the fellows. In each seminar, a fellow will present and discuss her/his current research and work-in-progress to an interdisciplinary audience for 30 minutes, closing off with 30 minutes for questions, comments and discussion.

All seminars are in-person and held in English. To attend online, please contact Cecilie Horshauge at cecilie@aias.au.dk by 9:00am on the day of the semimar as the latest to request a link.