Science & Public 2007
Science & Public 2007 took place on Saturday 19th May at Imperial College. It was organised and hosted by the Science Communication Group, with the aim of bringing together “diverse strands of academia that consider science as it intersects with non-scienfific cultures” (reference from the welcome pack).
There was indeed a broad range of papers, including a short presentation I gave on Biojewellery. I was excited by a session called “Constructing pasts and futures” which included papers from David A. Kirby, Mark Erickson and Alice Bell.
David A. Kirby’s paper was fascinating, exploring the role of technical advisers in Hollywood. These advisers were drawn from science and engineering communities, translating the detail of current research into a “realistic” narrative about technological futures. Kirby describes these expert-curated representations of technology in film as “diegetic protoypes”.
I argue in this essay that for Hollywood technical advisors cinematic depictions of future technologies are actually “diegetic prototypes” that demonstrate to large
public audiences a technology’s need, benevolence, and viability. I show how diegetic prototypes have a major rhetorical advantage over true prototypes: in the diegesis these technologies exist as “real” objects that function properly and which people actually use.
Kirby showed a clip from Destination Moon (1950), a space rocket launch sequence with the actors cheeks wobbling realistically, and another clip of a high-powered military meeting where the race to the moon is gravely revealed to be a race for a lunar weapons launching base. Powerful arguments for the mechanisms through which potential applications of science and technology become described by film, and imbibed with cultural value.
Still from Destination Moon (1950) referenced in Kirby’s paper.