The round table on Victims' symptom, held after Marko Peljhan's debate on Antartic project, was quite intense, still not crowded. Opposite to other debates this one was intense and running longer. There were many questions (primarily of identity, women in war, notion of the extreme...), but the most important actually was - the role of artist and scientist in times of war.

There is also a teaching of another project, running for ten years, Leonardo's Artists and Scientists in times of War. Artists and Scientists in Times of War Every couple of years someone comes with the topic, and still there is no big outcome (as for example a doctors without borders initiative have reached).

Why artists and scientists do not want to discuss these topics until the problem comes to their doorsteps?

One of the reasons is keeping research and work usually quite expensive in production un-political, avoiding asking questions if tools developed and knowledge gained can be used against humanity (I would recall here famous Russell Einstein: Manifesto ). The other problem is most of resources for research projects are actually national (which was the issue of Peljhan's presentation).

But, the issue of ethics, arriving with many of presentations is quite inherent to development of new technologies. In the next post, as the conference is finishing today, on this blog there will be summaries of some of discussions and important questions rising from discussions on extreme, climate change and synaesthesia...