Output details

A Conversation about Models and Prototypes

<29> An exploration of rapid prototyping as maquette-making, its part in testing hypotheses and its impact on simulation and virtuality. Part of Prophet’s on-going body of research to explore the role of models in facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration, developed alongside research with stem cell teams which had multiple outputs in art and biomedical science, and a second international collaboration with 50 partners. In associated outputs, Prophet analyses the role that our formal language models, computer science and artistic visualisations have played in the transformation of our scientific beliefs. Prophet was Co-I on GBP50,000 interdisciplinary research project funded by the Design for the 21st Century award from the EPSRC. In, Model Ideas: from stem cell simulation to large-scale floating art installation, Leonardo: The Journal of the International Society for The Arts, Sciences and Technology, Vol. 43, No. 3. MIT Press, 2011, Prophet accounts for the role that some easily understood models have had in fostering scientific orthodoxy, while the practical research includes the design of online tools to enable people to build computational models to form and test hypotheses. Prophet broadens her approach to modelling by addressing behaviour and compulsion, specifically the way psychosis impacts cognitive and behavioural models of the world in her first-person artist’s text, Modeling Psychoses, Rheinsprung 11, Vol. 2, NFS Bildkritik / NCCR Iconic Criticism at the University of Basel, November 2011. The originality is in the scale and breadth of the interdisciplinary teams, the conscious co-development of a shared language to facilitate collaboration in each project, and the subsequent analyses of the way such teams work most productively. Rigour can be seen in the systematic way the collaborative process was documented and prototype were developed. The body of research was significant as a catalyst for discussion about the process of collaboration through designing and making models.