Discovery Is Never By Chance: Designing for (Un)Serendipity

Serendipity has a long tradition in the history of science as having played a key role in many significant discoveries. Computer scientists, valuing the role of serendipity in discovery, have attempted to design systems that encourage serendipity. However, that research has focused primarily on only one aspect of serendipity: that of chance encounters. In reality, for serendipity to be valuable chance encounters must be synthesized into insight. In this paper we show, through a formal consideration of serendipity and analysis of how various systems have seized on attributes of interpreting serendipity, that there is a richer space for design to support serendipitous creativity, innovation and discovery than has been tapped to date. We discuss how ideas might be encoded to be shared or discovered by ‘association-hunting’ agents. We propose considering not only the inventor’s role in perceiving serendipity, but also how that inventor’s perception may be enhanced to increase the opportunity for serendipity. We explore the role of environment and how we can better enable serendipitous discoveries to find a home more readily and immediately

Muta – Morphosis

Marshall McLuhan, Canadian professor of English literature once said: “We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us.” As soon as the use of digital tools and processes started in art and design, the creative output began to be influenced by these tools, processes and evolved into a new aesthetics. Computers seem to have very precise and strict rules about how one uses them and this concrete ‘mechanical’ aspect leads to the perception that abstract notions like spontaneity and serendipity cannot exist in the course of digital creation. This view is challenged both by scientists and artists. One of the early and significant efforts is ‘Cybernetic Serendipity’; the first large international exhibition of electronic, cybernetic, and computer art which took place at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, UK, from 2 August to 20 October 1968. “The title of the exhibition suggested its intent: to make chance discoveries in the course of using cybernetic devices, or, as the Daily Mirror put it at the time, to use computers ‘to find unexpected joys in life and art.’” (Usselmann, 2003). Creativity is stochastic and assumptive in nature. The importance of randomness in the creative process must not be ignored, underestimated or intentionally disregarded in a condescending way. Notions of chance, randomness, or unpredictability are much important, especially when it comes to artistic creation. For instance, artistic movements such as Surrealism and Dadaism “used impossible, incongruent images to provoke unexpected truths and sentiments through metaphor, mistake, absurdity, spontaneity, and serendipity.” (Hinrichs, 1995) This dimension of unexpectedness can be taken to the apparently paradoxical conception of ‘aesthetics of failure’ level; where, be it good or bad, you find accompanying abstract concepts of surprise, luck or chance. These concepts are quite in harmony with the phenomenon of internet, where non-linear navigation is of intrinsic nature. Internet surfing is a fantastic practice of serendipitous discovery, in which getting lost to find an unanticipated result or content is highly typical

Serendipitous research process

This article presents the results of an exploratory study asking faculty in the first-year writing program and instruction librarians about their research process focusing on results specifically related to serendipity. Steps to prepare for serendipity are highlighted as well as a model for incorporating serendipity into a first-year writing course

Information encountering re-encountered: A conceptual re-examination of serendipity in the context of information acquisition

Purpose In order to understand the totality, diversity and richness of human information behavior, increasing research attention has been paid to examining serendipity in the context of information acquisition. However, several issues have arisen as this research subfield has tried to find its feet; we have used different, inconsistent terminology to define this phenomenon (e.g. information encountering, accidental information discovery, incidental information acquisition), the scope of the phenomenon has not been clearly defined and its nature was not fully understood or fleshed-out. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, information encountering (IE) was proposed as the preferred term for serendipity in the context of information acquisition. Findings A reconceptualized definition and scope of IE was presented, a temporal model of IE and a refined model of IE that integrates the IE process with contextual factors and extends previous models of IE to include additional information acquisition activities pre- and postencounter. Originality/value By providing a more precise definition, clearer scope and richer theoretical description of the nature of IE, there was hope to make the phenomenon of serendipity in the context of information acquisition more accessible, encouraging future research consistency and thereby promoting deeper, more unified theoretical development

On Birthing Dancing Stars: The Need for Bounded Chaos in Information Interaction

While computers causing chaos is acommon social trope, nearly the entirety of the history of computing is dedicated to generating order. Typical interactive information retrieval tasks ask computers to support the traversal and exploration of large, complex information spaces. The implicit assumption is that they are to support users in simplifying the complexity (i.e. in creating order from chaos). But for some types of task, particularly those that involve the creative application or synthesis of knowledge or the creation of new knowledge, this assumption may be incorrect. It is increasingly evident that perfect order—and the systems we create with it—support highly-structured information tasks well, but provide poor support for less-structured tasks.We need digital information environments that help create a little more chaos from order to spark creative thinking and knowledge creation. This paper argues for the need for information systems that offerwhat we term ‘bounded chaos’, and offers research directions that may support the creation of such interface

Chance and Improbability

‘Chance and Improbability’ is an article featuring in a peer-reviewed online journal, Flusser Studies. It focuses on the role of the improbable or unexpected in relation to art practice and discusses the impact of these concepts, drawing on the work of philosopher Vilém Flusser. Digital code and the visual representations it enables are now ubiquitous and the article attempts to excavate some of Flusser’s thinking in this respect and relate it to current practices in the field of art. The article discusses Flusser’s notion of the ‘technical image’ and that one’s role as an artist or cultural producer is to work against the tendency of machines to standardise and homogenise, to strive for the improbable as opposed to the probable. Drawing on the developing interest in Flusser’s work, it provides a resource for artist/scholars and features quotations from an unpublished Flusser manuscript, ‘Between the probable and the impossible’, from the Flusser Archive at Universität der Künste in Berlin (previously at Kunsthochschule für Medien, Cologne). The article also includes reflections on O’Riley’s bookwork, Accidental Journey

Flusser Studies (Chance and Improbability)

This text discusses Flusser’s thinking regarding the ‘technical image’ in relation to a recent artist’s book, Accidental Journey. The book is nominally about the moon and astronomy, and contains images, factual and fictional texts, documents of my own and others’ research, travels, illustrations, scientific diagrams, and so on. Also presented is an excerpt from the book together with a selected quotation from an unpublished work by Flusser, ‘Between the probable and the impossible’, (Vilém Flusser Archiv, number 2723). Often with art it is not clear what goes into formulating and making a work. The research that feeds into the development of the work remains crucial but is often undisclosed. Acting as a repository for the unexpected, the book in this sense was an attempt to enable these things to see the light of day. Flusser’s thinking is important not only towards developing a critical understanding and formulation of theory and a reflection on the practical processes at work, but also in terms of the nature of research itself: that is, the potentialities that proliferate through looking and searching, which hint at a realm of the possible as opposed to the probable. The text is not intended to situate Flusser’s writing other than in terms of my own thinking and the processes that lead to making work, in whatever form that may take