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Science and Technology in Cultural Context

Innovations Forum

About The Innovation Forum

This is a conference event that takes a novel approach to presenting innovation. Focusing on the creative impulse that drives innovation, the forum invites presenters from all disciplines who acknowledge that “a need for change” is the key-driving factor behind all forms of innovation. Exercising openness in participation and including all possible categories of knowledge and practice, the Innovations Forum pushes forward by embracing counter factual thinking to support ideas outside the realm of common expectations, lending attention not only to possible possibilities but also acknowledging the impossible possibilities. The Innovations Forum this year takes the form of a three day conference spread over the duration of an exhibition focusing on innovations in both art and technology and it is where all things meet and mix informally and where appreciation and support for art and science find their meeting point culturally. The Innovation Forum is organized by Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich and Seoul National University SNU

DATES

Saturday, 11th October 2014:
On SCIENCE: Hybridity and Convergence
Saturday, 8th November 2014:
On ARTS: Creativity and Ingenuity
Saturday, 15th November 2014:
On SOCIETY : Innovation, Opportunity, Entrepreneurship

VENUE

Auditorium, Museum of Arts Seoul National University → more info

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE

Arthur Clay (USA/CHE), Sogang University Seoul
http://creative.sogang.ac.kr/index.html
Bernhard Egger (CHE), Seoul National University
http://csap.snu.ac.kr/bernhard
Haru Ji (KOR), Sogang Unversity Seoul
http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~jiharu/new/about.html
Prof. Raymond Saner (CHE), Professor Emeritus of International Management
http://sgpp.ac.id/facultystaff/read/detail/23
Lichia Saner Yiu (TWN/CHE), CSEND Co-Founder
http://www.csend.org/aboutcsend/founders
Graham Wakefield (GBR), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology(KAIST)
http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~wakefield/bio.html
Monika Rut (POL), Conference Management Timothy Senior, University of Bristol
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/science/events/2014/9447.html Gabriel Gaudi, Milano Polytechnic

INNOVATIOSN FORUM PROGRAM

Society Day: Innovation, Opportunity and Social Entrepreneurship

History has taught us that during times when maintaining the status quo failed, people long for change and for ways to get out of an experience of impasse. Today, more and more of us believe that the real linchpin of successful change will be brought about solely by practices that are socially, economically and ecologically sustainable. Observing individuals, groups and organizations in this context, a trend has emerged towards experimentation and reconfiguration of socio-economic conditions of living. Individual, group or institutional actors are reshaping the social, political and economic landscapes with their imagination, energy and empathy. Such social entrepreneurship is the result of “innovative thinking” in concurrence with an “opportunity for change” where both opportunity and innovation are not only about solving known problems, but about tackling novel and the unknown challenges ahead. Social entrepreneurship is also a result of “shared interests” in concurrence with an “opportunity to participate in co-producing public goods”. Incubators, spin-off and social initiatives have not only challenged aging organizations but also give rise to the new “hybrid equilibrium” or “ecosystem of re-alignment” in the new economic landscape.

Society Day Program: more info

Science Day: On Convergence and Hybridization

DATES: Saturday, 11 October, 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

ABOUT: Interdisciplinary research that converges ideas from two or more different fields has the potential to provide the igniting spark necessary to give rise to novel areas of research and to spawn entire new industries. The near future will bring exiting new possibilities based on fruitful convergence of technologies such as Augmented Reality that link the virtual to the real, or new innovative models for personalized health care which tailor medical management and patient care to the individual characteristics of each patient. The convergence of digital appliances with the Internet to give “smart ability” to almost any device or the interdisciplinary scientific field of bio-informatics where software tools are developed to generate biological knowledge are two prime examples. The conference focuses on approaching the concept of convergence from various angles to discuss the difficulties, benefits and the potential of emerging convergence practices in order to expand and to stimulate approaches to convergence. Under the umbrella of the guiding main themes of the conference, presenters will cover a diverse range of topics, in order to nurture the interaction between different speakers and their topics of choice, while providing fertile ground for conveying diverse thoughts and letting them converge in the context of the conference audience.

Science Day Program: more info

Arts Day: On Creativity and Ingenuity

DATES: Saturday, 8 November, 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

ABOUT: Creativity may well be the survival skill for the 21st century human. From rare and metaphysical origins, creativity has become a near-ubiquitous virtue. Once only gods and nature could create, yet over three millennia this status has spread to poets, then to artists, composers, scientists, designers, architects, engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and to almost everyone else; yet despite the obvious ubiquity, the claim that we are more creative than ever can be challenged. Creativity remains stubbornly mysterious: resisting practical measurement and often standing in for what we cannot rationally automate. The mind that is creative enjoys accident, embraces open-ended play, and is entranced by paradox. The ancient Greeks understood it as poïesis: rather than the praxis of a willful action that finds its own completion, poïesis ‘unveils’ the real through continuation and leads a new world into being. Where combinatorics works within in a pre-defined system, transformative creativity changes the system itself; making the unreal by going beyond the principles in which it begins, like revolutions of speciation. All organisms must adapt creatively to the abrupt challenges of an unpredictable environment, yet by doing so they also change this environment. Moreover, without immediately measurable benefit, life engages in open-ended exploration, rewriting itself along strange new lines. We have hands to carry, but we also sculpt; minds to calculate, but we also imagine. A world devoid of creativity could be imagined, but must be creatively opposed.

Arts Day Program: more info

Copyright @ ETH Zürich

Page last modified on October 13, 2015, at 10:26 AM