Bioethics, Storytelling and Sound: Immersing Ourselves in Bioethical Vignettes

This exhibition will demonstrate how the affordances of new technologies and immersive storytelling (or ‘story living’) can help us re-think methodologies in case-based bioethics and bioethics communication. Whether this is teaching, influencing policymakers, communicating to patients or delivering findings to broad audiences.

For many years Bioethicists have utilized the tools of vignettes: brief evocative descriptions, accounts or episodes to communicate their work to peers, students and patients; but this work has been almost exclusively written. In this event, audience members will be invited to critically reflect on what happens given that we can now enable the recipient (collaborator, patient, research subject or audience) of these bioethical vignettes to immerse themselves in these vignettes, through sound or spatial storytelling. What futures of bioethics can they imagine? In what ways does this energize the future (without forgetting the past)? What space does this provide for inclusive public discourse?

This exhibition will showcase the work of the first year of a new creative lab based at a prominent Bioethics institution focused on innovative ways of communicating bioethics. This exhibition will demonstrate how storytellers, journalists, creators and bioethicists can work together to elevate the stories, and the role such work can have in bioethics scholarship and public communication about bioethics. It will have a particular focus on storytelling in sound and will share examples of projects coming out of the lab such as podcasts, documentaries, apps and immersive projects.