Report from the EU H2020 Research and Innovation Project Artsformation: Mobilising the Arts for an Inclusive Digital Transformation The Role of the Arts in the Digital Transformation Ana Alacovska, Peter Booth, Christian Fieseler This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870726. Report of the EU H2020 Research Project Artsformation: Mobilising the Arts for an Inclusive Digital Transformation State-of-the-Art: The Role of the Arts in the Digital Transformation Ana Alacovska1, Peter Booth2, and Christian Fieseler2 1 Copenhagen Business School 2 BI Norwegian Business School This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 870726 Suggested citation: Alacovska, A., Booth, P. and Fieseler, C. (2020) The Role of the Arts in the Digital Transformation. Artsformation Report Series, available at: (SSRN), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3715612 About Artsformation: Artsformation is a Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation project that explores the intersection between arts, society and technology Arts- formation aims to understand, analyse, and promote the ways in which the arts can reinforce the social, cultural, economic, and political benefits of the digital transformation. Artsformation strives to support and be part of the process of making our communities resilient and adaptive in the 4th Industrial Revolution through research, innovation and applied artistic practice. To this end, the project organizes arts exhibitions, host artist assemblies, creates new artistic methods to impact the digital transformation positively and reviews the scholarly and practi- cal state of the arts. The following report is one part of this ongoing effort. For more information, please visit our website: www.artsformation.eu Table of contents Table of contents ................................................................................................................... 4 Executive Summary ............................................................................................................... 5 1. The Transformative Potential of the Arts: A Pharmacology of the Arts .............................. 5 1.1 The arts as catalysts of enlightenment ................................................................................ 8 1.2. The arts as a pharmakon .................................................................................................. 10 2. In the Art’s Pharmacy: A Review of the Pharmacological Agency of the Arts .................... 12 2.1. Art’s agency: how does art ‘get in action’? ...................................................................... 13 2.2. A four-pronged typology of the pharmacological effects of the arts ............................... 14 2.3. Re-enchantment: the arts as healing and transformative therapeutics .......................... 17 2.4. Care: arts as a remedy for social, communal and neighbourhood ills ............................. 21 2.5. Imagination: arts as laboratories of future better worlds................................................ 22 2.6. Capabilities: the arts as a prescription for critical citizenship .......................................... 25 3. Arts as a remedy and stimulus for digital transformations ............................................... 26 3.1. Digital re-enchantment .................................................................................................... 27 3.2. Care against technological carelessness .......................................................................... 31 3.3. In the imagination laboratory: creating a better technological world ............................. 33 3.4. Technological capabilities: enhancing digital citizenship ................................................. 36 4. The way forward ............................................................................................................. 38 4.1. Summarizing the transformative potential of the arts .................................................... 38 4.2. Challenges to enacting the transformative potential of the arts ..................................... 39 4.2. Future steps ...................................................................................................................... 41 References .......................................................................................................................... 42 4 Executive Summary The following report is part of a project entitled ‘Mobilising the Arts for an Inclusive Digital Trans- formation’ (hereafter referred to as Artsformation), funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. In this project we are investigating the potential of the arts to help transform our society to become more inclusive and sustainable in the context of a digitalized future. The ultimate aim is to develop arts-based methods capable of bringing together technologists, policymakers and stakeholders to deliberate on feasible ways of creating and implementing new technologies and business models. The initial stage of this project involves a set of three literature reviews of the state of re- search on the following core topics related to the arts and digital transformation: the transform- ative potential of the arts and artists (this report); the interplay between the arts and enterprises (O’Dea, Alacovska, & Fieseler, 2020); and the socially engaged arts that give voice to stakeholder interests and needs (Andersen, Renza, Fieseler, Papadopoulos, & McDermott, 2020). The current study proceeds with some preliminary thoughts on how the arts may instil or impede change for better or for worse, drawing parallels from previous thinking on transfor- mation achieved through the arts with the current set of challenges our society faces as part of ongoing digital transformation. We propose a set of four interrelated mechanisms through which the arts are intertwined with processes of change, finding that the arts foster empathy and a notion of care while radically empowering imagination and bestowing capabilities to act on change. We then proceed to discuss these mechanisms in the light of digital transformation and put forward a set of proposals regarding the agency of the arts. These proposals will be empirically validated and leveraged in the subsequent field work and innovation phases of the project. This overview will conclude with some key findings as well as an outlook on critical ques- tions for future research on the potential of the arts for empowering positive change in the context of digital transformation. 1. The Transformative Potential of the Arts: A Pharmacology of the Arts The transformative potential of the arts has long been a topic of fierce contestation, philosoph- ical speculation and scientific measurement (Belfiore and Bennett 2007). Philosophers, psy- chologists, sociologists and neuroscientists have all been intrigued by questions related to the agency of the arts. What do the arts do? What is the influence of the arts on people’s lives? How do the arts affect society? What is the social impact of the arts? The answers to these questions are still open: evidence of the agency of the arts remains inconclusive and the efficacy of the arts to bring about change is still debated. With this review we take stock of the multiple, het- erogeneous, and interdisciplinary ways in which the transformative effects of the arts, including their agentic, active and dynamic influences, have been theorized, discussed, measured and evaluated. The arts have always been looked to in times of social, economic, and cultural upheaval. So- cial and political crises have sparked new artistic movements throughout history. The dadaist 5 and surrealist movements, for example, aimed at new ways of making sense of human existence after the First World War. The horrors of the Second World War and Auschwitz moved the arts resolutely in the direction of abstraction and the poetics of the absurd. The current covid-19 pandemic, a health catastrophe of planetary dimensions, has given rise to artists, artistic move- ments and artistic practices making upbeat and colourful coronavirus murals, paintings, and pas- tiche digital works to imbue our despondent daily existence with hope, to raise morale and ease isolation (Sayej 2020). Arts offer comfort in times of distress and disaster. The current digital transformation constitutes another major social, cultural and economic shift triggered by technological advances such as smart technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of things (IoT), and automation processes linking digital networks and data-tracking tools and algorithms (Park and Humphry 2019). Amidst this profound digital transformation, people are more likely to seek to make sense of their own positions and to look for guidance and consolation, not least in and through the arts (Swidler, 2001). At the same time, artists are harnessing the power of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence as mediums of expres- sion in order to experiment with new genres and new techniques that raise critical questions about the future of humanity in the face of often black-boxed, inscrutable and unthinkable soft- ware operative mechanisms (e.g. Hito Steyerl, Holly Herdon, Krostoffer Ørum, and many others). Figure 1: Hito Steyerl: Still from "How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic”, 2013 dismagazine.com Digital