TY - BOOK

T1 - Unsecurities Lab: Art as Environment for Rethinking Security

T2 - No1: Charybdis/Abiogenesis_Unknown Incident Response in Deep-Sea Contexts

AU - Jones, Nathan

PY - 2025/6/11

Y1 - 2025/6/11

N2 - What is Unsecurities Lab?Unsecurities Lab is a new platform for exploring how immersiveartworks can help us rethink security in an era of global complexity. Developedat Security Lancaster, the Lab brings together researchers, artists, technologists,and policymakers to engage with speculative artworks as if they were real-worldevents—treating art as a research environment where urgent questions about ecology, intelligence, and resilience can be rehearsed.What happened in the March 2025 workshop?In the first Lab, held in Lancaster University’s 180° immersivedata suite, over 20 participants from neuroscience, marine biology, defence,cybersecurity, political theory, and the arts encounteredtwo immersive films by artist Joey Holder.→ In Session One, the film Charybdis was presented as a security incident.Participants applied adapted incident response protocols, revealing how traditionalmethods break down when faced with unfamiliar, emotionally intense data.→ In Session Two, groups developed “stabilisation protocols” for fictionalmarine intelligences introduced in the film Abiogenesis—prompting participantsto think like nonhuman entities and design radically different models of security.Why does this matter now?Our security institutions are structurally unprepared for thechallenges already emerging: deepfakes that destabilize visual evidence,AI systems that exceed human comprehension, climate disruptions that operateon ecological timescales, synthetic biology that blurs the boundaries betweennatural and artificial.Unsecurities Lab reveals three critical failures in currentsecurity practice:1. Emotional disruption breaks expert analysis - When incidentsare genuinely unprecedented and emotionally destabilizing, traditionalframeworks fail2. Disciplinary silos cannot process complex threats - Cyber-physicalbiologicalchallenges require sustained interdisciplinary collaboration3. Human-centered models inadequate for nonhuman actors -AI, ecological systems, and synthetic life require new forms of negotiationand coexistenceWhat could change?The findings point toward potential institutional reforms:Crisis Training Revolution: Incident response should prepare analysts for scenariosinvolving unreliable visual evidence, emotional disorientation, and threats thatdon’t fit existing categories.Interdisciplinary Environments: Security institutions can use standing teamsthat bring together technical experts, social scientists, ecologists, and creativepractitioners as core operational capacity.Post-Human Governance: Consider frameworks for engaging with autonomoussystems, ecological actors, and synthetic intelligences that don’t conform to humanassumptions about agency and negotiation.Institutional Adaptation: Organizations could utilise creative and immersivemechanisms to explore functioning effectively under conditions of fundamentaluncertainty—when the nature of the threat itself is unclear, but intuition and'hunches' are amplified.What’s next?→ A second Lab will run in July 2025, centred on the speculativefilm LUMI by Abelardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka.→ A co-authored discussion paper is in development, drawing fromtranscripts and participant responses.→ Future Labs will deepen the method, strengthen cross-sectorpartnerships, and develop new frameworks for embedding art into securityresearch, strategy, and policy.

AB - What is Unsecurities Lab?Unsecurities Lab is a new platform for exploring how immersiveartworks can help us rethink security in an era of global complexity. Developedat Security Lancaster, the Lab brings together researchers, artists, technologists,and policymakers to engage with speculative artworks as if they were real-worldevents—treating art as a research environment where urgent questions about ecology, intelligence, and resilience can be rehearsed.What happened in the March 2025 workshop?In the first Lab, held in Lancaster University’s 180° immersivedata suite, over 20 participants from neuroscience, marine biology, defence,cybersecurity, political theory, and the arts encounteredtwo immersive films by artist Joey Holder.→ In Session One, the film Charybdis was presented as a security incident.Participants applied adapted incident response protocols, revealing how traditionalmethods break down when faced with unfamiliar, emotionally intense data.→ In Session Two, groups developed “stabilisation protocols” for fictionalmarine intelligences introduced in the film Abiogenesis—prompting participantsto think like nonhuman entities and design radically different models of security.Why does this matter now?Our security institutions are structurally unprepared for thechallenges already emerging: deepfakes that destabilize visual evidence,AI systems that exceed human comprehension, climate disruptions that operateon ecological timescales, synthetic biology that blurs the boundaries betweennatural and artificial.Unsecurities Lab reveals three critical failures in currentsecurity practice:1. Emotional disruption breaks expert analysis - When incidentsare genuinely unprecedented and emotionally destabilizing, traditionalframeworks fail2. Disciplinary silos cannot process complex threats - Cyber-physicalbiologicalchallenges require sustained interdisciplinary collaboration3. Human-centered models inadequate for nonhuman actors -AI, ecological systems, and synthetic life require new forms of negotiationand coexistenceWhat could change?The findings point toward potential institutional reforms:Crisis Training Revolution: Incident response should prepare analysts for scenariosinvolving unreliable visual evidence, emotional disorientation, and threats thatdon’t fit existing categories.Interdisciplinary Environments: Security institutions can use standing teamsthat bring together technical experts, social scientists, ecologists, and creativepractitioners as core operational capacity.Post-Human Governance: Consider frameworks for engaging with autonomoussystems, ecological actors, and synthetic intelligences that don’t conform to humanassumptions about agency and negotiation.Institutional Adaptation: Organizations could utilise creative and immersivemechanisms to explore functioning effectively under conditions of fundamentaluncertainty—when the nature of the threat itself is unclear, but intuition and'hunches' are amplified.What’s next?→ A second Lab will run in July 2025, centred on the speculativefilm LUMI by Abelardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka.→ A co-authored discussion paper is in development, drawing fromtranscripts and participant responses.→ Future Labs will deepen the method, strengthen cross-sectorpartnerships, and develop new frameworks for embedding art into securityresearch, strategy, and policy.

KW - security

KW - immersive art

KW - artistic research

KW - immersive

M3 - Commissioned report

BT - Unsecurities Lab: Art as Environment for Rethinking Security

PB - Lancaster University

CY - Lancaster

ER -