Speculative Enquiries

Abstract

The third annual conference of the ECT Lab+ was held over three days in November 2023 in Limassol at the Media Arts & Design Research Lab (MADLab), Cyprus University of Technology. The conference brought together experts from the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Technology, and other fields to explore ways of enquiry that enrich (non-)positivist ways of knowing as well as post-structuralist critique towards them. Given the political, representative and epistemic crises of the current times, there is a need for transdisciplinary responses to overcome siloed thinking of academic fields of study and offer solutions by revisiting questions of speculation as the basis of science, engineering, education, design and the arts. Under the title Speculative Enquiries: Aesthetic, Ethical, and Epistemic Technologies, the conference reflected on speculation as an analytical, imaginative, political and experimental means and intended to inspire the production of artifacts (engineering, design, arts, crafts) to get beyond the current epistemic Krisis.