Scientific Autobiography Postcards

Exhibition

Project Team: Cecilia De Marinis, Dorotea Ottaviani, Alice Buoli (ADAPT-r project ESR team)
Year: 2016
Place: Barcelona (SP) and London (UK)

The exhibition “Scientific Autobiography Postcards” shows the outcomes of the “ADAPT-r Scientific Autobiography: Call for postcards”, launched in April 2016, as part of the ADAPT-r ITN project. The exhibition was showcased twice, in June at RMIT Europe in Barcelona (SP) and in December as part of the ADAPT-r Final Exhibition at the Ambika 3, Westminster University, London (UK).

The call aimed to challenge creative practitioners in unveiling their “Scientific Autobiography” in a postcard.

The “Scientific Autobiography” identifies the narrative that a practitioner tells about their professional and research life. In such narration the practitioner walks through the path of their memory, tracing a “red thread” and identifying connections and relations.

The concept of the Scientific Autobiography refers to the Aldo Rossi’s work “A Scientific Autobiography”, published in 1981, in which the architect brings back memories, places, buildings, objects, forms, insights, tracing a fluent narrative of his professional life through his experiences, projects and reflections.

“A Scientific Autobiography” shows two levels of reading: first, it enables to organise memories in a "discrete disorder"; secondly, it allows to glimpse and imagine future directions and perspectives, creating a connection in time between the past, present and future of the practice.

Starting from this consideration, the Scientific Autobiography hence can assume a key role in Creative Practice Research, being interpreted as an analogy of the narrative of a creative practitioner’s research and professional journey.

The exhibition offers collective storytelling, made by different interpretations, meanings, and nuances that the “Scientific Autobiography” can assume in Creative Practice.

The given format of the postcard alludes to the journey that the creative practitioner undertakes through their research and practice, and also to the urge of communicating and sharing this journey. 

The postcard also requires an effort of synthesis, fostering new reflections and points of view on the research and practice, both for the 'sender' of the postcard (the creative practitioner) and for the 'addressee' (the audience). Synthesis is also a key feature of the Scientific Autobiography, offering an overview of the creative practitioner’s journey. 

This exhibition is meant to be an exploration of the Scientific Autobiography in Creative Practice Research, with the aim to create a growing and permanent archive of 'Scientific Autobiographies'.

Link to the online exhibition and the call