Letters to the Lab

RECOLLECTION OF A GIFT FOR ETHOS – MESSAGES IN A BOTTLE

ETHOS LAB IS 5! On April 17 we hosted an online party,

to celebrate we had an experimental fun 5 years. We asked people to share recollections, stories, and academic moments with us. What does the lab mean to you? What was your best experience? What did you take with you?

See the LIVE anniversary footage of the abandoned lab – by Veronika Skotting

Veronika Raagaard Skotting

Thank you for making me feel at home! It was like finding a oasis of human centric culture inside of ITU!
 
 

Simy Kaur Gahoonia

Hello ETHOS. I miss you a lot, especially right now, in almost-isolation. My best memory of ETHOS was… my entire time as Lab Manager and Lab Assistant ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ What a nice space and time to develop myself as a probable academic, but especially personally, and make friends and connections for, hopefully, life. Never would have had the confidence to pursue academia further without ETHOS and the community. It’s likely that I learned more in ETHOS than on my BA and MA combined… Highlights include: (the ever-unfolding) GDPR event, equipping the lab with fairy lights with the help of interns Sophia and Michela and Bertil; but really also just all the informal co-working and chats under said fairy lights. Thanks to ETHOS for being a warm, fun, intellectually stimulating, crazy community in general, and for someone who used to be staff, a very caring environment to grow your skills and ambitions in. I have been affiliated in many ways now, and been on the inside and outside. No matter from where you look at it, ETHOS Lab is very special, and I’m very happy to have and continue to be part of it. I have a lot more to say, but I lack the concentration to write everything here, so I’ll just send hugs! <3
 

Michael Hockenhull

Dear ETHOS,

To me, ETHOS Lab means meetings, strategies, friends, fellows, overtime, office, data sprints, summer labs, digital methods, data, many messes, budget lines, Raspberry Pi’s, organisational services, junior researcher presentations, publicETHOS, adobe illustrator, newsletter, time-limited contracts, contract extensions, Grace Hopper & Edward Tufte, python study groups, snacks, croissants, those good cookies from Netto, roll-ups, a Novo Nordisk Datathon (that word), server trouble, anxiety, stress, excel sheets, culture night, fun, excitement, pride, being between spaces, home. And many other things.

There are too many best experiences, cheesy as it sounds, and I consider all of it to still be with me. Although I will say that the ReD data sprint and that one Friday night cleaning datasets for NavCom with beers and a live feed from the international space station were pretty great.

Love, thanks and five more years!

 

Brit Ross Winthereik

Five years ago, TiP was rather invisible locally at the ITU. ETHOS was conceived as a way of making TiP research and the ethnographic methods we use in TiP, more visible. Today, TiP is well-known across the ITU. But more importantly, and this is my message to the Lab on its 5-year anniversary, is that the Lab has not only made visible, but also transformed that which was put on display for the world to see, namely ethnography. Therefore, to me ETHOS means NavCom, a vibrant student hub, that has engaged with digital STS, inventive methods, feminist cartography, speculative mapping, making and doing, in ways that have given ethnography new meaning, and transformed what we are able to do when we seek to understand sociomaterial worlds. ETHOS Lab also means outreach and lots of amazing guests. Marisa, Rachel, Michael, Marie, and Simy and the junior researchers, volunteers and researchers in the Lab must be thanked and celebrated for their creativity and care. 

 

Per Rådberg Nagbøl

Ethos Lab is a unique place to initiate and establish friendships and research.
 

Luuk Andreas Blum

From Luuk, reflecting on RethinkIT x ETHOS Lab.
ETHOS lab to me is a space with people that were the first to give support when I needed allies in ITU. Struggling with the ecological community RethinkIT in an institute like ITU seemed like a daunting task, the support from ETHOS related people was and are important pillars that made it possible. From then on I got to know the lab as an entity that dared to challenge existing structures in the academic world and ITU, imagining different futures! I can honestly say that’s it’s the part about ITU I love the most.
 
 

Anonymous

ETHOS Lab is a collective mind, a network of experts, that provides amazing initiatives within STS and academic research while inspiring others.
The experiences I value the most are interactions with experts and other researchers who always open up new knowledge spaces for discussions while creating a supportive environment as well as the experimental workshops encouraging the creation of unique research artifacts always challenging the traditional perception of research.
 

Gifts

A data visualization of ETHOS Lab Google Images on linocut from Brit Ross Winthereik and Tant-Lab! THANK YOU!

Song by members of the Data as Relation project group with the assistance of Kirsten Astrup and Marie Bordorff

Song written for the occasion of the conference Data Times (final conference)

Melody: Should old acquaintance be forgot

 

Verse:

Should all our data be forgot,

(and there we draw the line).

We value privacy a lot,

‘cause it’s welfare by design

Chorus:

We live together in a state

of digi-trust and hope

but who will read our common fate

in the data horoscope?

 

Verse:

Should all health data drive the state,

and be our new gold mine?

Unleash the growth and innovate

all bodies – yours and mine.

Chorus:

We live together in a state … etc.

 

Verse:

Can data do a person’s job

in a mu-ni-ci-pality?

Don’t think, don’t ask – just trust the hub,

then we set the data free.

Chorus:

We live together in a state … etc.

 

Verse:

We fixed the crisis with a lab

and left for cyberspace.

The citizen won’t feel the gap

when nobody sees his face

Chorus:

We live together in a state … etc.

 

Verse:

Donate your traces – take control,

behavior, all your life.

The global race: we must enroll

for now, the time is rife.

Chorus:

We live together in a state … etc.