Cofinanced Ph.D. project initiated by Philosophy at RU and Novezymes.

Allan Alfred Birkegaard Hansted (Ph.D. student and Project Leader)

Søren Riis (Supervisor)

Collaboration: On the edge of a new paradigm?

The Documentary film project and Ph.D.-dissertation studies the newest tendencies within collaborative research and knowledge creation. The project deals with and specifies the possibilities and problems concerning collaborative methods creating research and knowledge, and seeks to describe how collaborative networks can act as a catalyst to new knowledge and organization forms.

The documentary film which illustrates the complexity of what happens when opposite systems tries to catalyse new knowledge processes, starts out at home in Denmark. In Denmark among other things we explore the first Danish Bio-hackerspace “Labitat”.  A Hackerspace can be understood as a community-driven joint venture, where people with common interests, often computers, gaming, technology or science can meet, socialize and work together. Labitat is working on a radically innovative collaboration, involving Center for Synthetic Biology, led by Professor Birger Lindberg Møller and the well-established knowledge company Novozymes. In this tension field, between Hackerspaces and established organisations, a new knowledge and research paradigm opens up. To understand the beginning of this paradigm shift the film takes the viewer on a journey of knowledge to Berkley and Silicon Valley, California. Here we find the roots to the new wave of do-it-yourself Hackerspaces and Open science initiatives. The film and the dissertation focus on how these new collaborative networks in the meeting with new technology are moving limits for how research is created. A radical change which pushes our basic understanding of terms like research, knowledge and knowledge creation and opens up for a new perspective on how to understand learning and innovation in the 21st century. The film will be finished in June 2014, where it for instance will be shown at ESOF14 in corporation with CPH:DOX.

Film as method. The documentary film is in itself an experiment in collaboration, as the film places itself in the cross field between the Humanities, Natural Science and the new internet based technologies. In a world of increased complexity and where information and knowledge have got new global infrastructures, we use philosophy as a possible way of creating a common understanding humans and systems among. Philosophy is in its basic structure evident to illuminate a possible paradigm shift. Based on Philosophy, with a basic focus on the human being and its skill to see and create worlds within the world, it creates a common thread in the film. Because, when it comes to creating science, innovation and creativity, the newest productions or the newest technology does not matter, it is the people behind that do.  The documentary film as method thereby also proves to have strength to illuminate how knowledge cultures evolve through nearby networks. This is tried clarified in the written dissertation, where the film media and the filmic angle supplement the traditional academic presentation forms. At collaborativesociety.org you can follow how we use film-documentarism as a cross-media communication’s tool.