In the face of complex, real-world problems, interdisciplinarity has become increasingly important in fostering innovation. Collaborating across disciplines opens up the potential for new ways of understanding and knowing while negotiating differences. However, these productive tensions and collaborative processes are predominantly facilitated by methods that aim to develop a common language and favor words and diagrams over expressions of tacit or embodied knowledge. At the same time, the arts – through engaging with material, space, and body, are disciplines that advocate for the development and expression of tacit knowledge. To invite these forms of artistic knowing into the transformative conversation of the interdisciplinary process, there need to be practices for creating openings to tacit knowledge. The question driving this lab is: How can expressions of tacit knowledge gained from the arts become part of the transformative dialogues and methodological practices in interdisciplinary collaboration?
In exploring this, I wish to experiment with playful approaches and propose practices that create opportunities for incorporating the implicitly known into a dialogue not just based on words, but movements, artifacts, and sounds. During this process engaging with artists and the SoC Community through exchange, observation, role-playing, journaling, and co-reflection will be invaluable in understanding various interpretations of tacit knowledge and experimenting with playful strategies/methods/tools. For example, I would like to explore an adaptation of the game charades to playfully express embodied knowledge in a group context. The outcomes of this process will be documented as a collection of practices for inviting openings for tacit knowledge integration within interdisciplinary collaboration.
