Abstract Artist and researcher Nadia J. Armstrong (NCAD/CONNECT) will present her Cyborg Feminist framework for her practice-based research which is an examination of knowledge production in the field of quantum-based research. Armstrong’s project is in pursuit of the imaginaries at play in the production of technoscientific research. Drawing on STS scholar Sheila Jasanoff’s analytical framework of the sociotechnical imaginary and Karen Barad’s philosophical framework of agential realism, this project presents the quantum imaginary as a fertile site of knowledge-production within technoscientific innovation.

Armstrong will break down some of the practice-based research methodologies she adopts in order to examine “quantum” as a sociotechnical imaginary. Her project is a capturing of imaginaries that circulate in the quantum-based research field. Her practice seeks to make visible the potential futures emerging from this field of research. Through inviting chance, immanence and uncertainty into the research, Armstrong’s practice is equipped to pursue the quantum imaginary.

Drawing on quantum phenomena and behaviour as the starting point to devise her methodological approach, Armstrong employs quantum research’s established principles as conceptual and performative practice-based modes with which to interrogate the constraints of technoscientific knowledge production. In this presentation Armstrong will describe her interpretations of the quantum principles as philosophical frameworks for “knowing” that may enable us to reinstate other forms of knowledge that typically exist outside the technoscientific paradigm; forms of knowledge that rely on instinct, intuition, belief and imagination.