Towards Sensemaking in the Meshwork of Technology, Ecology and Society: Symbiosis of Aesthetics, Performance, and Digitalization

Claudia Schnugg

With Daniela Brill and Christian Stary

To act, humans first need to make sense of the world. Thereby, sensemaking goes beyond accumulation of pure information of objects or rational knowledge production, but it encompasses additional information such as meaning, mindful engagement, socially embedded knowledge, cultural and work contexts.

To navigate in diverse environment sensemaking becomes central to social settings, also to en-gage with technologies and understand dynamics in ecological environments. In a complex world where technologies are added components of everyday life and are envisioned as partial means to approach global challenges, social, technological, and ecological environments become intertwined. This meshwork of environments also means to bring together different kinds of knowledge as a base of sense-making through experience.

In the Digital Sensemaking project we specifically look at digitization processes, the interaction with IoT Elements and Digital Twins through the lens of performance art to elaborate on the non-cognitive core constituents of sensemaking processes: em-bodiment, action-sense nexus, and temporality. We show that aesthetics can be found as an important dimension to bridge the cognitive and non-cognitive process and explore the role of art in this kind of research. It facilitates process and technological development in organizations entangling the social, technological, and ecological.

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Dr Claudia Schnugg is a curator of art science collaborations and a researcher of the intersections of art and aesthetics with science, technology, and organizations. As social and economic scientist with an additional background in cultural science, her work focuses on intertwining artists and art projects with scientific research and technology.