New-media arts-based public engagement projects could reshape the future of the generative biology

Abstract

Research in the sciences of new-media arts aims to develop original research questions and borrows many different interdisciplinary research methodologies that often involve collaboration with professionals from non-art fields to provide real investigations. Over the last four decades, new-media arts provided unlimited strategies to integrate the laypeople into real interactive conversations allowing them to express their opinions and reflect their concerns regarding boundless scientific, environmental, political and ethical issues. Within this context, this article illustrates the parallel and growing attention to perform effective joint public engagement projects between both new-media arts and biological science domains and how biological science could benefit from the new-media arts projects to allow the laypeople to actively participate in decision-making processes regarding critical biological issues that seek more open and democratic biological investigations. This article, therefore, monitors the developments of public engagement as a concept in biological sciences and its practical principles, which they have been enhanced under the influence of today’s new-media arts strategies of engagement. As an extension of the existed efforts, the article, finally, highlighted one of the most recent international conversation led by the author regarding an assumed new-media arts protocol to use stem cells in new-media arts labs and the role of such protocol to secure the highest standard level of public engagement, by which the laypeople could control and reshape the future of generative biology and personalised medicine.

Gender impact on STEM online learning- a correlational study of gender, personality traits and learning styles in relation to different online teaching modalities

“…In our experiment the correlation of GPA and Test results with gender reviled differences in offline and online course delivery, while female students acquired higher GPA’s meaning they exceed in traditional courses, male students achieve better academic results in online courses. These results are in line with other researches [ 49 ] that male students perform better in online courses, while female students which study STEM courses in traditional environments, finish their studies with even better results than male students [ 4 ]. What is also notable is that the correlation of test results with gender has a smaller value in contrast to the correlation of GPA and gender, which indicates test results differ less than GPA’s between male and female students.…”

“…By using interdisciplinary practices STEM has been enhanced to STEAM that includes art as a means of inclusive integration. This should create an infinite number of opportunities for indiscriminate initiatives at both the individual and institutional levels.The implementation of STEM education through STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics) lends itself to interactive and participatory dialogic art; this juncture provides a nonjudgmental space to cultivate the question-making aspect of inquiry, the ability to comfortably hold uncertainty, and sensitivity to the process of discovery [ 4 ]. While STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education alone does not guide females into environments where leadership is encouraged and mentored, research does suggest the benefits of adding the ‘Arts’ to STEM in order to further positive workplace investment.…”

The Evidence Chamber: Playful Science Communication and Research Through Digital Storytelling

“…We believe this project demonstrates the potential for new media arts projects as a vehicle for meaningful, interactive public engagement with science and believe there is a need for further exploration of different new media arts tools and formats for this purpose. New media arts are already established as a field of public engagement with biomedical sciences (Ahmedien, 2021) but there is a need for further practice, research and evaluation in other scientific fields.…”

“…More recent work has focused much more on two-way interaction (Rowe and Frewer, 2005). Ahmedien, meanwhile, argues that new media arts are an ideal vehicle for this interaction, because the digital technology deployed allow scientists to "communicate to laypeople and, simultaneously, collect their responses" (Ahmedien, 2021), and that "new-media arts can ensure the maximum level of the engagement of the public towards research. "…”

SDGs in new‐media arts for science

“…New‐media arts are a genre of interdisciplinary practices that are inspired by and use non‐artistic disciplines; these artworks employ various techniques and scientific methodologies to investigate concepts and phenomena for a wide audience. New‐media arts are, therefore, an unconventional channel for scientists to recontextualise their experiments within the context of the humanities and social sciences to promote a better public understanding of the sciences (Ahmedien, 2020). The growing thesaurus of new‐media arts research lists many communicative practices that provide a wealth of opportunities for science communication.…”