Toni Meier

Introduction: In October 2015, the Cluster of Excellence Image Knowledge Gestaltung. An Interdisciplinary Laboratory at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin staged a symposium entitled Science meets Comics. Academics from various disciplines converged along with artists from all over the world in order to discuss the future of global nutrition – and the medium of the comic strip as a communication tool for the complex issues in this  field. The open two-day symposium was followed by a closed, three-day workshop wherein the artists and cluster members took up the issues raised at the symposium and worked on possible directions for the future.
How did this somewhat unusual meeting come about? To answer this question, we must look back to 2013 and the inception of the cluster. The Cluster of Excellence assembled 25 different research disciplines from the areas of Gestaltung and science – natural, cultural, and social as well as the humanities. This combination of disciplines allows relationships to germinate that would unfold in new perspectives on the objects and processes of our times. The laboratory created a forum for academic work that previous rigid disciplinary limits and institutional barriers had precluded; until then, universities were, for the most part, organised in disciplinary departments and faculties. The aim of the cluster was, and is, to discover possible synergies through new collaborative methods and interlinked interdisciplinary (i.e. not simply multidisciplinary) research approaches; it aims to unearth their potential and consolidate knowledge gains with the help of the subjects more readily associated with Gestaltung.
One of the cluster base projects, The Anthropocene Kitchen: A laboratory connecting home and world, was part of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory. We (the editors, together with other project scientists) investigated the kitchen as an in influential locus for the exchange of energy in the 'Anthropocene' age – our current geological era, the era of humankind. Our focus was the kitchen as one of the most energy- and resource-intensive loci, the terminal of a global production chain and logistics systems, through whose daily practices – native or general – the Anthropocene takes shape. Two levels of observation and measurement were involved and interlinked: on the one hand, the cultural level of preparing and eating food; on the other, the level of natural science, where resources, energy, and material  ows are itemised on the balance sheet. The overriding aim was to highlight the fact that the Gestaltung of everyday life itself requires the contemporisation of global chains of effect which involve individual actions and a consideration of outsourcing practices that have persisted until now. The topic of food, which a ects everyone in equal measure, is a perfect candidate in this endeavour.
Ten experts from the  fields of geology, biology, geo-ecology, architecture, design, and geo-informatics worked on the base project, concentrating on themes that had augmented over the years and setting out to  find solutions for the future of the global food supply. A conscious decision was taken to select diverse forms of publication.
Our group, with a focus on global resource  ows and a working title of 'Welt' (world), decided to take the comic as a communicative medium of Gestaltung. The possibilities it provided for combining word and image gave us the necessary means to represent complex contexts in a visual and appealing way, without having to simplify things. The use of narrative and personalisation can moreover convey factual information along diverse channels of perception. The embedding of facts within a narrative seems more than necessary, particularly at a time frequently described as 'post-factual'. This interlacing is especially evident in the cultural and artistic diversity of the comic which was implemented by 12 international graphic artists. A further emotional level of meaning transpired through this project, which could not have been carried by words alone.
However, the production of a factual comic strip has one more objective, as yet too seldom countenanced: In order to make social dynamics and processes apprehensible and researchable in a societal context, one needs to remove the distinction between 'producing scientific knowledge' and the 'communication of science'. These two areas are particularly closely linked in the  field of food and nutrition by acquired know-how, itself strongly influenced by culture. The narrative of each chapter was developed from interviews with people from ten different countries on the subjects of food habits and eating cultures. We took this dialogue-driven 'co-design' as a basis for generating the subsequent scientific research need. We did not attempt to formulate hypotheses in advance, in order to then seek empirical backing through interviews; instead, we let our research be directed by the protagonists' answers. Consequently, some unexpected re-combinations, linkages, and new evaluations in our scientific work arose out of that process.
In order to attain the necessary transdisciplinarity, particularly the involvement of society and thus the fusion of knowledge generation and transfer, we deliberately kept the development of the storyboard relatively open, having  first defined a few conditions to the structural framework. This required the theme of nutrition be discussed and tested against potential and possibly expandable options for the future, focusing on three main elements: 1) materials  ows (local, regional, and global), 2) infrastructures (transport routes, markets, the home, and especially, the kitchen), and 3) the greatest possible diversity of cultural contexts. This was presented by means of a 'journey' through various countries. We did not address the three elements in a standard progression but adapted them to the storyboard as drafted together with the protagonists. This was because many aspects crystallised only after an intensive exchange of ideas.
The main part of the comic provide an outline – one might also say an exemplary mapping of the food behaviours in today's Anthropocene era – and thus of the cultural preferences of the protagonists and the resulting outcomes for local, regional and global environments, and the entire earth system. The last chapter on the future of global nutrition was, as mentioned above, undertaken by all the artists involved in the book at the workshop (read more about the content of the book in the epilogue on page 111-117).
This much on the background. Now, to return to the symposium, which the present volume seeks to document. The  first day of the symposium was dedicated to comics studies. Following the welcome speech by Reinhold Leinfelder, Principal Investigator for the project, comics studies scholar Jaqueline Berndt, back then still at Kyoto Seika University, surveyed science manga with a special focus on nutrition and food safety after the Triple Disaster of Fukushima on 11 March 2011. Nick Sousanis, assistant professor of the School of Humanities and Liberal Studies at San Francisco State University, US, who published his doctoral thesis entirely in comics, spoke about the educational potential inherent in the interweaving of image and text. Science journalist Lukas Plank from Vienna invited people to discuss whether scienti c cartoon strips should be subjected to rules and guidelines in order to make sources and facts more transparent. Stephan Packard, a researcher into media culture at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and President of the German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor), developed this theme further by asking "How factual are factual comics?". This was followed by a presentation by illustrator Veronika Mischitz and Henning Krause, of the Helmholtz Society's science communication department, of excerpts of their monthly web cartoon strip Klar soweit? (Savvy?). Finally, Reinhold Leinfelder explained the background for the Eating Anthropocene comic as a format for intercultural, cross-discipline, and participative communication.
The second day was dedicated to the subject of nutrition. It was introduced by Arnold van Huis, Emeritus Professor at Wageningen University, Netherlands, a leading expert on insects as animal feed and human food. He expounded the potential of insects as an alternative source of animal protein, both for human consumption and for feeding animals. Cultural scientist Katerina Teaiwa of the Australian National University in Canberra joined the symposium by Skype and talked about the environmental effects of phosphate mining on Banaba, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. She also discussed the social and political effects of mining on the population of Banaba in order to provide for rich harvests in the agricultural  fields of Australia and New Zealand. Anne-Kathrin Kuhlemann, Managing Partner of BE Solutions & Blue Systems Design GmbH, spoke about the economic chances of sustainable and modern cycles of food production speci cally in urban settings, citing as an example TopFarmers in Berlin.
The agricultural and nutritional scientist Toni Meier of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, provided the audience with a lot of theoretical and practical input at the 'Lunchtalk' with reference to the environmental footprint of various foods and diets. This was accompanied by a chickpea stew – a dish with a very tiny ecological footprint. As dessert we served a bee sting cake with drone larvae, made to a recipe featured in the comic.
This volume of symposium proceedings contains contributions from all the participants in a variety of formats including essays, lectures, comics, and an interview. We hope that this blend will foster the promising cooperation between science and the humanities by using the medium comic.
Reinhold Leinfelder, Alexandra Hamann, Jens Kirstein, Marc Schleunitz, Theresa Habermann