Where Art Meets Science
When you take a technology as controversial as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and use it as a basis for a ‘genomic art’ exhibit, you can change the conversation.
That’s what Holly Longstaff found when, while completing her PhD thesis on risk communication and emerging technologies, she came up with the idea of “Distorted Conversations: On and Offline Explorations of Genomic Art”.
The art installation grew out of Longstaff’s online blog, where participants were invited to share their hopes and concerns about PGD. With the consent of blog contributors, Longstaff ‘reduced’ portions of their conversations into minuscule bits of text and glued them onto Petri dishes similar to those used during PGD procedures. Exhibit visitors were then invited to join in this “distorted conversation” by viewing the conversation snippets through a microscope.
“What had been bothering me was seeing complex issues surrounding PGD reduced to what I call ‘ethics sound bites’,” explains Longstaff. “Making this installation was my way of venting about that – to show how reductive these sound bites can be. I also believe that using the arts to engage the public about emerging technologies holds a lot of promise.”
Longstaff has long been fascinated with exploring new methods of engaging the public about emerging technologies, using theatre, art and other novel methods. Her intersecting focus on arts and academics harkens back to her undergrad days at the University of Manitoba, where she double-majored in theatre and philosophy. After acting professionally for six years, she was drawn back to academics, earning a Master’s degree in Resource Management and Environmental Studies from UBC in 2004.
“I loved the arts, but I also loved the rigours of academic research.”
As she embarked on a PhD program in risk communication and bioethics, Longstaff was able to mine her theatrical background. As part of a CIHR-funded research project, she briefly worked as a research assistant on a production of Orchids, a play about PGD led by Drs. Sue Cox and Jeff Nisker. When Genome BC later sponsored a production of A Number, Caryl Churchill’s play about cloning, Longstaff was hired to write a report about the project, among other activities.
It was during PhD research on PGD that Longstaff’s creativity found a new form: genomic art. Her genomic artwork has been shown in galleries in both the US and Canada, and she has also taken her art online, including the Genome BC-sponsored virtual group show Allegories of the Genome Project, a show exploring genetic and genomic science from an artistic viewpoint. She is currently collaborating with Vancouver-based Sonja Hébert, a professional visual artist.
Comments Longstaff, “The arts are an amazing way to foster public dialogue and debate about the social and ethical dimensions of emerging technologies, which are sometimes not reflected in the scientific literature.”
Now a post-doctoral fellow at the CAE, Longstaff is part of two multidisciplinary research teams developing innovative risk communication methods vis-à-vis global climate change and stem cell research projects. Ultimately, Longstaff’s goal is to find novel ways to help people make better decisions concerning ‘systemic hazards’.
“The domains of risk have changed dramatically. Climate change, genetic engineering, biotechnology – these new risks are unbounded,” she explains. “New and emerging technologies may have implications we don’t yet know about or can even imagine, and so we need new approaches for engaging the public. Systemic hazards like climate change will entail massive change and we can’t go forward without the public. A well-informed public is capable of finding really innovative solutions to problems – solutions that experts alone can’t come up with.”
While Longstaff acknowledges that “saying we need to involve the public in decision-making is very ‘motherhood-and-apple-pie’,” her goal is to “apply lessons learned from the controversy surrounding PGD, and develop some solid empirical evidence for risk communication and public engagement methods that work, to help us find a way forward.”
“If we can learn some lessons, maybe we can get ahead of new systemic hazards.”
But now that she’s earned her PhD, she’s also taking some time to pick up a good book. Although she admits to having sometimes “binged” on favourite reality TV programs like “Top Chef” and “Project Runway” while completing her thesis, Longstaff had not read strictly for pleasure during her entire, five-year PhD research program (“I felt that I should only be reading books that would help me with my dissertation”), and so immediately after defending her dissertation in September 2009, she went looking for some escapist literature. Her first choice? An Agatha Christie page-turner.
Snapshot
Research interests: experimenting with and evaluating new methods of deliberative risk communication and public engagement processes
Research objective: to help people make better decisions concerning systemic hazards
Subject areas: environmental domain (salmon aquaculture, global climate change, and fostering disaster-resilient infrastructures), health domain (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and stem cell research)
Mentors: Dr. Michael McDonald and Dr. Tim McDaniels
Some biographical highlights:
- BA (philosophy and theatre) (1995)
- professional actor (1995-2000)
- Pre Master’s in philosophy and geography, University of Manitoba (2000-1001)
- Internship, Harvard Radcliffe Summer Theatre, Harvard University’s Loeb Drama Center (studied Chekhov and Shakespeare) (2001)
- MA, Resource Management and Environmental Studies, Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability, UBC (2004)
- doctoral fellow in CIHR’s Ethics of Health Research and Policy Training Program through the CAE: helped create a deliberative public engagement process to better address the gap in developing policy around genomic and genetic issues (part of Genome Canada– and Genome BC–funded “Building a GE3LS Architecture” or “GE3LS ARC”) (2004-09)
- PhD in risk communication, UBC (2009)
- currently a post-doctoral fellow with UBC’s Centre for Applied Ethics (CAE)