Function
Serpil Aksoydan is the observer, lead translator and the person responsible for the Aksoydan Laboratory.
She is responsible for the direction of the research, methodological decisions and the laboratory’s publications.
Her work focuses on making differences in frameworks, language, status and levels of evidence easier to understand without conflating them.
A translation role
The Aksoydan Laboratory brings disciplines, bodies of work, human observations and technical systems into relation.
Serpil Aksoydan’s role is not to replace the relevant forms of expertise.
It consists in examining what each framework makes visible, what it leaves outside its scope, what it actually allows us to establish, where several frameworks seem to speak about the same thing without necessarily referring to the same phenomenon, and what can be translated from one framework to another without being conflated.
Translate without annexing. Compare without merging.
Clarifying language and reasoning
An important part of her work concerns the methodological unpacking of language.
A single word can group several realities under one label.
A sentence can contain at once an observation, an interpretation, a hypothesis, a value, an assumed causality, a degree of certainty or an implication for action.
The work consists of making these layers open to inspection so that we can distinguish what is observed, interpreted, assumed, established or still undetermined.
This practice is now at the heart of the laboratory’s clarification services.
A practice informed by multiple tools
Her work draws on skills, tools and bodies of work with different statuses.
Some support close observation of experience and interaction; others help question language, shift perspective, reveal configurations or put a hypothesis to the test.
These resources may include tools for observation and questioning, practices for precision in language and attention, symbolic systems used as heuristic supports,
historical, philosophical or contemplative bodies of work, contemporary science, field observations and artificial intelligence systems.
These resources are not placed at the same level of evidence.
They are used according to their function, with their status, original framework and limits preserved.
Methodological stance
The work is not intended to protect a theory.
It aims to increase the precision of what can be observed while leaving enough room for formulations to be revised when a better distinction emerges.
Limits of the role
Serpil Aksoydan does not present herself as an expert in every discipline the laboratory draws on.
Her role is not to arbitrate between areas of expertise or decide who is right on their behalf.
It is to make the interfaces between them easier to understand, distinguish substantive disagreements from differences in framework, and preserve the actual status of what is being claimed.
A useful translation increases our ability to distinguish without artificially increasing certainty.
Working with the Laboratory
This work of translation and clarification can be applied to words, sentences, exchanges, documents, reports, decisions, institutional wording, AI systems or interdisciplinary situations.
We note. We observe. We translate.