The Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« aims to create a basis for a new culture of materials. The central vision of the Cluster is to rediscover the analog in the activity of images, spaces and materials in the age of the digital. Biology and technology, mind and material, nature and culture intertwine in a new way.
DAOULA | sheen
West African Wild Silk on its Way
Exhibition Poster DAOULA|sheen, designed by Cherry-Ann Davis. Copyright: Matters of Activity
The exhibition »DAOULA | sheen«, which begins in November 2022 and will initially be shown in the Tieranatomisches Theater in Berlin, focuses on the natural formation and the cultural history of wild silk obtained from caterpillars in West Africa, and on the many and complex ways in which this unique material is viewed by microbiologists, materials scientists, and architects in Germany. Curated by MoA members Laurence Douny, Karin Krauthausen, and Felix Sattler, and co-created by a large and diverse multidisciplinary team, this unusual project sets out to stimulate dialogue between West African craft, European science, and design. Please save the date for the opening on November 17th, 2022, and follow the MoA Instagram channel to find out how wild silk is making its way from Burkina Faso to Berlin!
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Round Table »Tesselated Material Systems«
On December 8 at Kunstgewerbemuseum
Round Table »Tesselated Material Systems«. Design: studioeins, adapted by Matters of Activity
The Round Table »Tesselated Material Systems«« continues the new format series accompanying the exhibition »Design Lab #13: Material Legacies« at Kunstgewerbemuseum. The Round Tables represent each of the exhibiting projects and the involved researchers and artists in a moderated dialogue with guests from different disciplines. The format brings a variety of perspectives to the exhibited works, its material legacies and entangled discourses and invites the public to engage. This Thursday, Karola Dierichs, Lennart Eigen, John Nyakatura and Felix Rasehorn will discuss their work with Jörg Petruschat and Alwin Cubasch.
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Design Lab #13: Material Legacies
Upcoming Events at Kunstgewerbemuseum
Poster Material Legacies. Image: Dietrich Polenz and the Experimental Surgery Lab, 2020
The exhibition »Design Lab #13: Material Legacies« at Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin explores contingencies and ruptures between traditional crafts and the most recent developments at the crossroads of material research, design, engineering, and architecture. It brings together artifacts from the museum’s collection with work-in-progress installations by designers and researchers from the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material« to initiate a dialogue about the historical, contemporary, and future conditions under which materiality unfolds. »Design Lab #13: Material Legacies« is curated by Michaela Büsse and Emile De Visscher and is part of the exhibition series »Design Lab« at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin, for which Claudia Banz, Curator of Design at the Kunstgewerbemuseum since 2019, invites selected design studios, students and researchers to present current projects and enter into a discourse with the collection of the Kunstgewerbemuseum. After a grandious opening last week, many more accompanying events are scheduled for November and December.
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ExC Matters of Activity
@exc_moa, 1.12.2022
RT @SFB1567: Morgen spricht @FlorianSprenge8, Leiter des TP A03 „Virtuelle Environments" im #SFB1567 beim Workshop „Automation, Control, an…
Automation, Control, and Incompetence
Workshop on the Socio-Technical Ecologies of Responsible Filtering in the 20th and 21st Century
Design NODE Oslo Berlin. Copyright: Matters of Activity
On December 1st-2nd, 2022, members of the project »Filtering« will hold a multidisciplinary workshop on the topic of »Automation, Control, and Incompetence«. The organizers and guests strive to elaborate the historical and cultural-political dimensions of automation processes, as well as the current challenges of HCI and technology design in the face of diverse societies.
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Scoring Perspectives for Speculative Ethnography
Workshops and Interactive Performance with Dorte Bjerre Jensen
Poster: Scoring Perspectives for Speculative Ethnography
Cluster Members Maxime le Calvé and Yoonha Kim are delighted to invite you to two days of stretching senses school workshops on 24th & 25th of November with Dorte Bjerre Jensen at the Cluster and in the Kunstgewerbemuseum at the »Design Lab #13: Material Legacies« exhibition. The two workshops will help push forward collective experiments in speculative ethnography and research-as-exhibition. They will bring together bodies and spaces into motion, and evaluate the potentials of an interdisciplinary practice of »scoring« to explore, describe and analyze in first-person the activity of images, spaces, and materials based on the micro-phenomenological method.
Deep Material Futures
Exploring the Different Temporalities of Active Matter at MoA's Annual Conference, 16 November 2022
Aerial view Melaka Gateway, Malaysia, January 2020. Copyright: Konstantin Mitrokhov and Michaela Büsse
With »Deep Material Futures«, we want to discuss and rethink the potentialities, strategies, expectances, predictions and imaginaries of desirable futures in terms of interspecies and transgenerational justice. For the temporalities of active matter we speak of are always about incommensurable spaces of memory and oblivion, of extinction and survival. What new and other ways of politics, design, and »healing« through materialized action might there then be at all levels of space, time, and scale? Join us on November 16th and discuss with us and many international speakers such as Sandra Jasper, Nigel Clark, James Weaver, Cymene Howe, Jeff Diamanti, Admir Masic and Vera Meyer! Check out the full program and register now!
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Heidi Jalkh Awarded with Humboldt Price »Research to Innovation« 2022
Presenting the Humboldt Award to Heidi Jalkh. Photo: Phil Dera. Copyright: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Cluster member Heidi Jalkh has been awarded for her master thesis »Making matter active through form. Fabricating bio-inspired behavior with auxetic structures« with the Humboldt Award 2022 in the category »Research to Innovation«. Our warmest congratulations! The thesis at the department of Cultural History and Theory and is part of the Master »Open Design« and shows how the use of geometry and spatial arrangement can be used to provide a conventional elastic material with unconventional behavior and functionality. Thus, through interdisciplinary research, Heidi Jalkh has succeeded in weaving concepts from biology, materials science, and engineering from a designer's perspective to create new »active materials«.
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Interactive VR Installation »Die Umgebung der Wörter - Ausstellung eines Romans«
Vernissage on 17 November within the Exhibition »Sprache im technischen Zeitalter«
Poster of the exhibition »Sprache im technischen Zeitalter«
On November 17, 2022 at 3.00 pm, an exhibition will open that explores the subject of language in the technical age. In several interactive installations. The occasion is the 100th birthday of the poet, literary scholar and literary mediator Walter Höllerer, who taught at the TU Berlin from 1959 to 1988. Under the direction of Cluster Members Christian Stein and Claudia Blümle as well as Hans-Christian von Herrmann in collaboration with the design studio »Above & Below«, the interactive VR installation »Die Umgebung der Wörter - Ausstellung eines Romans« (the environment of words - exhibition of a novel) invites visitors to explore Höllerer's novel »Die Elephantenuhr« (the elephant clock) in an immersive exhibition space.
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ExC Matters of Activity
@exc_moa, 29.11.2022
Do you want to keep up with some exciting news from our #Filtering project members? In their new blog post, they d… twitter.com/...
Round Table »Self-Shaping Textiles at the Intersection of Fashion, Architecture and Technology«
On 24 November at Kunstgewerbemuseum
Self-Shaping Textiles. Design: studioeins
The Round Table »Self-Shaping Textiles at the Intersection of Fashion, Architecture and Technology« kicks off a new format series accompanying the exhibition »Design Lab #13: Material Legacies« at Kunstgewerbemuseum. The Round Tables represent each of the exhibiting project in a moderated dialogue with guests from different disciplines. The format brings a variety of perspectives to the exhibited works, its material legacies and entangled discourses and invites the public to engage. On November 24th Lorenzo Guiducci and Agata Kycia will discuss their work with the architect Giovanni Betti and the fashion sociologist Antonella Giannone.
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Sketching Brains
An Ethnographic Participant Exhibition at the Neurosurgery Department of Charité in Berlin
Sketching brains. Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé
»Sketching Brains« is a collaborative exhibition-as-research project which intends to trigger new conversations around the act of sketching in and about neurosurgical practice. Based on a series of fieldwork within the Neurosurgical Department at Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin by graphic ethnographer Maxime Le Calvé and on the research of neurosurgeon and cultural scientist Anna L. Roethe, this initiative takes the form of conversations based on graphic-based stories, presented and continued both onsite and online. In German and English, the texts are comment-enabled to bring the community to react and question the description. The ›participant exhibition‹ becomes a vibrant collaborative forum, choreographed by the ethnographer, to understand more profoundly the implications of neurosurgery in people’s lives, on both sides of the scalpel.
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Berlin Science Week 2022
MoA Involved with Several Events – Secure Your Ticket Now!
Dissect event, »Behavioral Matter« symposium, 29/03/2019 © Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris)
From November 1st-10th, Berlin will once again host the Berlin Science Week, a 10-day international festival that brings together the world's most innovative scientific organizations in Berlin and online to celebrate science and facilitate an open and interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and knowledge. The Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« will provide insights into its research at three locations: At the Tieranatomisches Theater on the North Campus of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, we warmly invite you to take part in one of the »Dissect« events, a round table live performance on contemporary art and design. Moreover, we will celebrate the opening of the exhibition opening of the »Design Lab#13: Material Legacies« exhibition at the Kunstgewerbemuseum. Last but not least we are looking forward to meeting you in the CollActive Materials' speculative design workshop about our material futures at the Berlin Science Week Festival Campus at Naturkundemuseum Berlin.
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stretching senses school Workshop Series
at UdK »InKüLe – Innovationen für die künstlerische Lehre«
Stretching senses school logo with a photo of mycelium growing on willow, 2022. Copyright: Natalija Miodragovic & Dimitra Almpani-Lekka, Biomaterials Lab TU Berlin and MoA, 2022
The stretching senses school, an MoA project curated by Cluster anthropologists Yoonha Kim (OSA) and Maxime Le Calvé (Cutting), is starting a longer teaching collaboration with the UdK-based project InKüLe »Innovationen für die Künstlerische Lehre«. The stretching senses school is an emerging learning community around immersive arts, creative coding and speculative ethnography. It aims to explore more-than-human perceptions through making practices bringing in conversation various immersive media. The collaborative workshops with InKüLe are focused on the potential of artistic education to change our relations to the environment through an engagement at the level of anthropotechniques.
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Scaling Matters: From the Lab to the Field
Doctoral Presentations at the MoA Retreat 2022
Poster PhD presentations 2022. Layout: Ada Favaron
The 2022 presentation of the Doctoral Program »Matters of Activity« at the MoA Retreat in September at Landgut Stober was both a review and an outlook of the doctoral research conducted at the Cluster between 2020 and 2022. Under the title »Scaling Matters: From the Lab to the Field, «Pre-Doctoral Researchers at varying stages of their research — from the very beginning to the final phase of their theses — presented their heterogeneous work whilst continuing to negotiate common themes, methods, questions and tools. The format combined talks and an exhibition and invited MoA Members to engage individually with the presentation and a selection of their research objects.
Thanks to everyone involved for making possible this all-around successful event. Enjoy some visual impressions of the exhibition, as well as the talks and have a look at the booklet.
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ExC Matters of Activity
@exc_moa, 22.11.2022
RT @MpiciPotsdam: We congratulate Prof. Peter Fratzl who has been appointed honorary fellow of the @ChineseChemSoc. 👏🥳 After Markus Antonie…
»Tipping Points« Now Part of MoA Virtual Cluster Space
View Conference Contributions of MoA Annual Conference 2021 in 360° Knowledge Rooms Now!
Panel »Interdeterminacy and Liveliness« at MoA Annual Conference »Tipping Points« 2021. Copyright: Matters of Activity
The 2021 MoA Annual Conference »Tipping Points« was all about matter in motion. We will discuss transition and contingency, processes of acquiring and losing form, and the creative potential of the unfinished and indeterminate. All conference contributions our now shown as part of MoA's Virtual Cluster Space, where you can view a variety of 360° knowledge rooms and all contributions of the four panels »Plasticity & (In–)Stability«, »Interdeterminacy and Liveliness«, »Fragile Entanglements« and last but not least »Contingent Matters«.
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What is our Future Made Of? Active Materials and Bio-Inspired Design
Episode 18 of the DFG Podcast Series »Exzellent Erklärt« Gives Insights Into Matters of Activity
How do we deal with materiality in the age of digitalization? Can other understandings of materiality lead to other modes of production or other ways of living? Episode 18 of the DFG podcast series »Exzellent erklärt« (English: Excellent Explained), available from 1 September 2022, focuses on the interdisciplinary research at »Matters of Acticity«. Journalist Larissa Vassilian speaks with Cluster Co-Director Prof. Dr. Claudia Mareis, designer and cultural historian, and Research Associate Dr. Khashayar Razghandi, a materials scientist and design teacher about topics like sustainability and bio-inspired design and what active materials have to do with it.
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Engage with Fungi
New Open Access Publication by Vera Meyer and Colleagues
Cover »Engange with Fungi«, Berlin Universities Publishing (BerlinUP)
The recently founded Open Access publishing house Berlin Universities Publishing (BerlinUP) has published its first book: »Engage with Fungi«. How do we want to live in the future? How do we take responsibility for the future of the Earth, for our environment, for our society? Fusing the creativity engines of science, art, and society enables us to develop visions for a sustainable future and viable paths towards it. The publication exemplifies such a transdisciplinary endeavor and focuses on collaborative research on and learning from fungi.
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Ramified Surfaces
New Publication by MoA Member Michael Friedman on Branch Curves and Algebraic Geometry in the 20th Century
Ramification point of 2. order on a Riemann surface (model: 258). © Göttinger Sammlung mathematischer Modelle und Instrumente.
The latest book of MoA member Michael Friedman was published in September 2022 within the series »Frontiers in the History of Science« at Birkhäuser Cham. »Ramified Surfaces« offers an extensive study on the convoluted history of the research of algebraic surfaces, focusing for the first time on one of its characterizing curves: the branch curve. Starting with separate beginnings during the 19th century with descriptive geometry as well as knot theory, the book focuses on the 20th century and will be of special interest for both historians of science and mathematicians.
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What Does Ropemaking Has to do With Active Matter?
Next »Talking Matters« Event on 11 October Focuses on this Ancient Cultural Technique
Scaling Nature (1): Wrinkles«: Liquid Lacquer. Copyright: weißensee school of art and design berlin / Luis Magg | Bacterial cellulose curtain. Copyright: Bastian Beyer and Iva Rešetar
We are very happy to invite you to our next »Talking Matters« lecture on October 11th as an on-site event in the Sophienstraße. With our guest César Enrique Giraldo Herrera, Social Anthropologist from the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research in Bremen, we are looking forward to an inspiring discussion about »Winding intentionalities and the harmony of ropes«.
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ExC Matters of Activity
@exc_moa, 22.11.2022
RT @algorhythmics: next week, Berlin, 1st and 2nd of Dec.: matters-of-a... Workshop on the Socio-Technical Ecologies of Responsible…
Design, Gestaltung, Formatività. Philosophies of Making
A Central Cluster Publication Edited by Patricia Ribault Released
Design, Gestaltung, Formatività. Philosophies of Making. Copyright: Birkhäuser, 2022
We are excited to announce the release of the new anthology edited by Patricia Ribault including contributions by Cluster members Samuel Bianchini, Cecile Bidan, Horst Bredekamp, Mason Dean, Emile De Visscher, Peter Fratzl, Lorenzo Guiducci, Leonie Häsler, Claudia Mareis, Martin Müller, Jörg Petruschat, Emanuele Quinz, Khashayar Razghandi, Patricia Ribault, Wolfgang Schäffer and Charlett Wenig. Congratulations! Through the concepts of »Design, Gestaltung and Formatività«, this book sheds a new light on the processes of formation and transformation of the material world we live in. In the first part— »Giving Form« —philosophers, historians, psychologists and cultural studies scholars question our modes of giving form, while in the second— »Form Given« —artists, designers, engineers and scientists unfold their creative processes. These »philosophies of making« invite us to reflect on what we do, what we can do, and how to do it, but they also spur us into action.
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Frictioned Functionality. Un/Designing Un/Sustainable Matter
MoA's First Interdisciplinary Autumn School 17–22 October 2022
Poster »Frictioned Functionality«. Copyright: Matters of Activity
Against a background of ecologies in crisis, the interdisciplinary Autumn School »Frictioned Functionality: Un/Designing Un/Sustainable Matter« invites Post-Docs, PhDs and MA students from the humanities, natural sciences and design to work through the conflicted entanglement of materiality, design and un/sustainability, using frictioned functionality as the guiding principle. In the context of this Autumn School, frictioned functionality is understood as a working concept to reopen other narrative and performative spaces of imagination in and beyond unruly times. The autumn school takes place from October 17th–22nd, 2022.
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Model and Mathematics
Open Access Volume by Editors Michael Friedman and Karin Krauthausen Published Now
Thread model by Hermann Wiener of a cone of third order and genus 0. Copyright: Collection of Mathematical Models and Instruments at Georg-August-University Göttingen, all rights reserved
The open access book »Model and Mathematics: From the 19th to the 21st Century«, published in August 2022, collects the historical and medial perspectives of a systematic and epistemological analysis of the complicated, multifaceted relationship between model and mathematics. Contributions and expert interviews range from, for example, the physical mathematical models of the 19th century to the simulation and digital modeling of the 21st century. The aim of this anthology, edited by MoA members Michael Friedman and Karin Krauthausen, is to showcase the status of the mathematical model between abstraction and realization, presentation and representation, what is modeled and what models.
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VR Installation »Immersive Slideshow« Invited to be Presented as Part of the Best Practice Exhibition of SPUR.lab
Cluster Members Maxime Le Calvé and Mareike Stoll Present their Work from September 28th until October 20th at HBPG Potsdam
Interactive Slideshow. Copyright: Maxime Le Calvè, Mareike Stoll and Dionysios Zamplaras
The VR installation »Immersive Slideshow« is invited to be presented part of the »Best Practice« exhibition of the SPUR.lab, funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, on September 28th and 29th. The »Immersive Slideshow« is a collaboration of Cluster Members Maxime Le Calvé & Mareike Stoll, with the interaction designer Dionysios Zamplaras and the team of Spatial Media at ENSAD Lab in Paris. It explores the virtual presence of the digitized slide collection of the Berlin-based art historian Peter H. Feist (1928-2015).
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Bacterial Cellulose: Co-Weaving Biofilms
An Installation for the Triennale XXIII: »Unknown Unknows, An Introduction to Mysteries«
MoA Project »Bacterial Cellulose: Co-Weaving Biofilms« at the Milano Triennale 2022. Copyright: Triennale Milano – photo by DSL Studio
Cellulose of different forms and origins is woven together in this structure: pieces of wood, paper threads and biofilms grown by bacteria. A collaborative textile is created – human, plant and microbial. Three MoA research projects, Weaving, Material Form Function and Object Space Agency and with that many MoA Members worked together on the project »Bacterial Cellulose: Co-Weaving Biofilms« shown at the Triennale di Milano XXIII »Unknown Unknows, An Introduction to Mysteries«, in the thematic exhibition »Alchemic Laboratory«, curated by Ingrid Paoletti, from July 15th to December 11th, 2022.
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ExC Matters of Activity
@exc_moa, 17.11.2022
RT @UniSysCat: Eine neue #Podcast Folge von #exzellenterklaert ist da! 🎧 Dieses Mal nehmen euch Forschende von @marum_de mit in die Tiefe d…
Growing Sensescapes
Open Design Master's Students' Projects Exhibited at Humboldt Lab
Flyer MOD at Humboldt Lab Event. Copyright: June Audirac
Our ever-so-evolving world presents us with numerous dilemmas and challenges when it comes to designing a better tomorrow. A new sensibility is required, gathering and collaborating with intelligences within nature, and thus fundamentally shifting away from obsolete and destructive routines.
The students of the Open Design Master Program are facing those challenges by radical unlearning, creating new strategies focused on the necessity of »growing sensescapes«. We are happy to invite you to a day full of the growth of sensescapes on July 25th at Humboldt Lab.
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Bioinspired Architectural and Architected Materials
Special Issue Edited by Cluster Members K. Razghandi, C. Sauer and P. Fratzl Out Now
Multiscale architectures. Left: the wooden tower of Lake Mjøsa, Norway Reproduced with permission from [1]. Copyright: Voll Arkitekter AS & Ricardo Foto. Right: the internal structure of wood based on parallel tube-like wood cells with diameters in the range of tens of microns (shown for several wood species from top to bottom). The white arrow points to a sketch where nanometer-thick cellulose fibrils are indicated by black lines [2] John Wiley & Sons. Copyright: 2020 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH GmbH
Architecture stands as a paradigm for the development of structural entities, which define functionality from the nanoscale to entire buildings. However, the distinction between structure and material becomes totally blurred in biological systems where it is impossible to distinguish between material and device or organ. A tree stem, as a prototypical example, is both material and plant organ with specific biological functions. Partially inspired by this, there are recent parallel movements—in materials development as well as in architectural design—towards the merging of materiality, structure and function into one integral construction system.
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Launch of the Tessellation Archive
An Online Collection of Tiled Tissues and Architectures from Across the Natural World
Collection Overview - Tessellation Archive. Copyright: Felix Rasehorn
Tessellations are structural motifs made up of repeating tiles, found in many forms and serving a variety of functions in nature. Perhaps partly inspired by natural examples, tessellations have also been a part of human history in art, design and culture, commonly in the form of mosaics, and more recently in the realm of bio-inspired design and engineering. This collection showcases the diversity of this motif, exploring commonalities in structure and function across environments and taxa, to inspire biological and biomaterials research, but also bioinspired design and architecture. Follow the link to explore the classification scheme and compare the similarities and differences between the tessellations.
https://tessellated-materials.mpikg.mpg.de
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Joining Perspectives on Haptics
Online Documentation of Interdisciplinary Cluster Workshop
Design Workshop. Copyright: Felix Rasehorn
Why is the topic of haptics important to us humans and what does this mean for the multitude of scientific disciplines represented in the Cluster? In three dense days of workshop, the participants explored the topic of haptics together through the lens of design practice, history of knowledge, cultural studies, philosophy and computer science. Through experiencing demos, creating rapid prototypes, and reflection experiments, a practice-based mode of exploration was collectively developed. Through this rather broad approach, the participants sought to unfold the layers that make up haptic experiences in order to develop a shared understanding and vocabulary of the term. This is the beginning of a critical exchange on haptics with the goal of establishing a dynamic platform for MoA researchers around the haptic sense(s).
In the online documentation the group shares their abstracts, the workshop findings and questions, and invites to future collaborative formats and projects.
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FriBriX @ Structural Paper Workshop
MoA Members Maxie Schneider, Jojo Shone and Lorenzo Guiducci Contributed to Bauwende Festival 2022
The Pergola at Rundgang Weißensee School of Art and Design Berlin. Copyright: Maxie Schneider/ Matters of Activity
On May 27th, the FriBriX team (Lorenzo Guiducci, Christiane Sauer, Maxie Schneider, Jojo Shone) organised the Structural Paper workshop @ Bauwende Festival. Here participants have explored playfully the potential of paper as building material for constructing interwoven structures, simply holding together through friction. We understand paper as a contemporary urban resource and use waste paper to design a bottom up building process. Aftre two intense days of collective work a large pergola has been erected. The structure can still be freely visited at the premises of the Atelier Gardens, BUFA.
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ExC Matters of Activity
@exc_moa, 17.11.2022
RT @artandeducation: Matters of Activity, Cluster of Excellence at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin presents “DAOULA / sheen: West African Wi…
What are Futures Made of?
The Experimental Laboratory »CollActive Materials«
CollActive Materials Workshop. Copyright: CollActive Materials
In the experimental laboratory »CollActive Materials«, society and science are speculating together about the materials of tomorrow: What might they look like or feel like? Could they be more active or more intelligent than the materials of today? By trying things out together, the speculators develop new future scenarios, stories and objects and invite discussion of various conceivable futures.
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Materials Matter
Conversation and Workshop about Central Cluster Anthology »Active Materials«
Poster Materials Matter. Copyright: Matters of Activity
On the occasion of the publication of the central Cluster anthology »Active Materials« (De Gruyter 2021), a public panel discussion and workshop was held at the Humboldt Laboratory on May 4th and 5th. The organizers of the event, co-editors Karin Krauthausen and Michael Friedman, were particularly pleased that, in addition to many of the contributing researchers to the volume, they were also able to win historian of science Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent for the event to present central theses of the volume and to engage in a cross-disciplinary conversation about them with the interested participants.
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Limits of Formalization (»Grenzen der Formalisierung«)
New Publication by Cluster Members Michael Friedman and Angelika Seppi
Cover Publication »Grenzen der Formalisierung«. Copyright: Spector Books
What role does mathematical formalization play in our understanding of knowledge and science, and how does it influence our conceptions of the unknown, of the unconscious as well as of the non-conscious? What is the relationship between the monopolization of calculable rationality and the increasing computerization of our Lebenswelt? And, last but not least, when reality is translated into symbols, what resistance does this process encounter?
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Tendons as Strong as Wire Ropes?
A Team of MPICI Researchers Discovers New Properties of Collagen
Collagen fiber bundle after mineralization with bone mineral calcium phosphate under an electron microscope. Copyright: Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces
A team at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) has discovered new properties of collagen: During the intercalation of minerals in collagen fibers, a contraction tension is generated that is hundreds of times stronger than muscle strength. »This universal mechanism of mineralization of organic fiber tissues could be transferred to technical hybrid materials, for example, to achieve high breaking strength there,« says Prof. Dr. Peter Fratzl, Director at the institute and Co-Director of »Matters of Activity«.
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Materials of the Future
MoA Member Bastian Beyer and Daniel Suarez led Workshop on Biocalcification hosted by Aurélie Mossé at École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs Paris
Workshop on Biocalcification led by Bastian Beyer and Daniel Suarez at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs Paris, March 2022. Copyright: Daniel Suarez
The workshop at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs Paris with students of the course »matérialités futures« led by Aurélie Mossé aimed to further explore intersections of biology and textiles. The course centred around the topic of biocalcification, a biochemical process very common in nature where calcite is formed through an enzymatic process involving specific strains of bacteria. Previous research done by cluster member Bastian Beyer and Daniel Suarez provided the conceptual and material framework for the workshop.
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ExC Matters of Activity
@exc_moa, 16.11.2022
Time for lunch! #deepmaterialfutures kicked off with keynotes from @sandra_jasper, @InhumanNigel and James Weaver.… twitter.com/...
Young International Fellows at the Cluster
The Young International Fellows are a funding format of the Cluster which is intended to give projects the opportunity to obtain additional expertise and experience. Funding is provided to young international researchers for measures, programs, and activities that support the individual academic and professional qualifications and goals of the applicants and ideally also strengthen a culture of equal opportunity and diversity within the Cluster. We are happy to introduce our current Young International Fellows. We are happy to introduce our fellows for 2022.
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Exhibition »Stretching Materialities«
Hidden Activities in Objects and Spaces at Tieranatomisches Theater
MoA Exhibition »Stretching Materialities«. Copyright: Offshore Design
Matter is dead? Objects are lifeless? Think again! In the exhibition »Stretching Materialities,« which was opened on September 16th 2021, the liveliness and activity of matter can be experienced in a completely new way. The Tieranatomisches Theater has become an interactive laboratory space that allows completely unexpected insights into thinking about matter – and makes it tangible how active the world around us really is. The exhibition curated by multidisciplinary researchers and designers of the project »Object Space Agency« under the direction of Prof. Dr. Claudia Blümle and Clemens Winkler can be visited until March 4th, 2022, Mon-Fri, 2–6 pm.
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Sound Symbolism in Humans
MoA Member Friedemann Pulvermüller Involved in Significant International Study
Kanzi, a bonobo (Pan paniscus), performing a match-to-sample task at his home Ape Initiative
in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. Print-screen from: Margiotoudi K et al., Proc. R. Soc. B, February 2022 (https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.1717) [see online video materials].
Is the ability to perceive connections between words that »sound round« and things that »look round« specific to humans? Or can other animals, including our closest living relatives, the great apes, also infer that a meaningless speech sound is ›sharp‹ or ›round‹ and refers to a curved or spiky shape? An international and multidisciplinary team of researchers, including MoA member Friedemann Pulvermüller, has now been able to answer this question using a new experiment with a language-competent bonobo. The results of the collaborative study by multidisciplinary researchers in Europe and the United States, led by Konstantina Margiotoudi, was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B on February 2nd, 2022.
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»Exzellent erklärt – Spitzenforschung für alle«
New Science Podcast of All Clusters of Excellence Now Online
Podcast »Exzellent erklärt«, Episode 1: Tactile Internet. Copyright: Exzellenz erklärt; Image: CeTI/TU Dresden
57 Clusters of Excellence – one podcast: »Exzellent erklärt« (»Excellent Explained«) regularly reports from one of the research networks that are funded as part of the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments. The journey goes right across the country and the topics are just as diverse as the locations: from African studies to the future of medicine. All Clusters of Excellence share a common motivation: they address important issues of our time, work on unusual questions and conduct research for the society of tomorrow.
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Tipping Points: Plastic, Contingent and Unstable Matters
Annual Conference of the Cluster on 16 & 17 November
Tipping Points. Copyright: Josef Luis Pelz & NODE Berlin Oslo
This year's MoA Annual Conference is all about matter in motion. We will discuss transition and contingency, processes of acquiring and losing form, and the creative potential of the unfinished and indeterminate. We live, create and act in a time of tipping points. On a planetary scale, the tipping point is understood as an abrupt and irreversible change that is causing the Earth´s climate and other systems to fall out of their stable state. Such transitional phenomena are particularly significant in climate research, but no less in material, biological, anthropological and aesthetic contexts.
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ExC Matters of Activity
@exc_moa, 16.11.2022
Sandra Jasper (@sandra_jasper), Geography of Gender in Human-Environment-Systems @HumboldtUni in conversation with… twitter.com/...
Bacteria as Architects
Interview with Bastian Beyer and Skander Hathroubi
Still from Interview with Bastian Beyer and Skander Hathroubi showing the making of parts of the »Active Curtain Project« shown at the exhibition »After Nature« at Humboldt Lab. Copyright: Anne von Petersdorff (info@annevonpetersdorff.com) for Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
The Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material« investigates materials that are built by bacteria. Architects and biologists work together to explore new, sustainable materials. Some of these bacterial structures are on display at the Humboldt Lab. In the interview with Cluster Members Bastian Beyer and Skander Hathroubi, parts of the development of the »Active Curtains Project« are presented in more detail.
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Matters of Activity Film at Humboldt Lab
Cluster Video Online Now
All 7 Berlin Clusters of Excellence are represented with a film at the foyer at Humboldt Lab. Copyright: Matters of Activity, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
The Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« is represented with some exciting objects in the exhibition »Nach der Natur« at the Humboldt Laboratory of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. You can also watch an introduction to the Cluster right here. Follow the link to the video in German with either English subtitles or in easy German language.
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Can Bacteria Spin a Yarn? We Need a New Culture of Materials
Cluster Members Opened Event Series »MitWissenschaft/ WeSearch« at the Humboldt Forum
Can Bacteria Spin a Yarn? Kick-Off event »MitWissenschaft/ WeSearch«, Humboldt Forum Berlin, 29 April 2021. Copyright: Humbolt Forum
On Thursday, April 29th, 7–9:30 pm, members of the Cluster gave insights into the research of »Matters of Activity« in an interactive live show, thus opening the event series »MitWissenschaft/ WeSearch« at the Humboldt Forum.
Using concrete examples from the Cluster projects »Weaving« and »Filtering«, MoA members Bastian Beyer, Alwin Cubasch, Peter Fratzl, Regine Hengge, Claudia Mareis, Léa Perraudin, Christiane Sauer and Wolfgang Schäffner showed how the natural sciences, the humanities and the design disciplines work closely together to find innovative solutions to contemporary problems.
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Passivity Matters! Transience and Conservation Practices. Examples from the 18th Century until Today: A Talk by Nina Samuel
Berlin Museum of Medical History at Charité in 360° – Knowledge Room of MoA’s Virtual Cluster Space. Copyright: Matters of Activity
Since conservators have perfected the practice of passivating materials and slowing down their material transformation process, they have acquired a comprehensive knowledge of the activity of materials and can be considered experts in active and passive matter. The talk investigates pathological specimens and wax moulages from the conservation laboratory of the Berlin Museum of Medical History at the Charité. Asking which practices of activating and passivating are associated with these objects, the talk analyses their intrinsic activity. Linking the findings to aspects of the history of conservation, the talk argues that the dominant conservation paradigm still active today can be regarded as a legacy from the late 18th and the 19th centuries. The talk concludes with a reflection on the contemporary challenges of preserving and remembering, and with the question of how processes of material disintegration can be made productive in an ever-expanding museum culture and age of collecting. Find out more in Nina Samuel's knowledge room in MoA's Virtual Cluster Space.
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Joint Project of The Clusters of Excellence »Matters of Activity« and »Science of Intelligence«: Wenn Materie lebendig wird
New Funding for Experimental Laboratories of Science Communication from the Berlin University Alliance
Copyright: Felix Noak, ExC Science of Intelligence
One of the core objectives of the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) lies in strengthening the multidirectional exchange of knowledge between universities and other important figures and stakeholders. The BUA defines knowledge exchange and therein science communication as a multidirectional process through which scientific ideas and research results are transferred to the public and external perspectives flow back into research. The experimental laboratory »Wenn Materie lebendig wird« is dedicated to socially highly relevant changes and, within them, to a knowledge production process that cannot take place in isolated research spaces, but should involve different social groups in a participatory process using innovative methods.
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ExC Matters of Activity
@exc_moa, 16.11.2022
This year's #MoA #AnnualConference #DeepMaterialFutures @silent_green Kulturquartier Berlin is about to begin – don… twitter.com/...
Soft Fibrous Structures: Spatial Concepts for Cellulose Biofilms: A Talk by Bastian Beyer and Iva Rešetar
Bacterial Cellulose Environment in 360° – Knowledge room for the lecture »Soft Fibrous Structures: Spatial Concepts for Cellulose Biofilms«. Copyright: Matters of Activity
As a biological material, bacterial cellulose belongs to a new generation of renewable polymers that are fundamentally different from standardized, industrial materials. Its outstanding properties, such as high water absorption and filtering capacity, high crystallinity, and the ability to withstand high tensile forces, are dependent on cultivation methods, microbial activity and a constant exchange with the environment. In contrast to conventional chemical-intensive processes for extracting plant cellulose to manufacture derivatives and products, design with bacterial cellulose opens up the possibility of bringing design practices closer to the processes of organic growth. Find out more in the 360° bacterial cellulose environment in the Virtual Cluster Space.
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Natural Active Materials: A Talk by Peter Fratzl
MicroCT Laboratory at Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam in 360° – Knowledge Room of MoA’s Virtual Cluster Space. Copyright: Matters of Activity
Material Activity is discussed in the context of biological and bioinspired materials. A material property defines the relation between input (voltage) and output (current). The responsiveness of materials is defined as the change of material property through an external signal, which for the resistivity could simply be the temperature. Another example is shape-change due to humidity, which is typically found in wood. Adaptive materials respond in a feedback loop to the output serving as an (internal) signal to modify the material property if the input changes. This can lead to homeostasis or to instabilities, depending on the sign of the feedback. Adaptive growth and bone remodeling are discussed as examples of adaptivity. Finally, the emergence of complex shapes and structures from simple interactions is considered in the context of tissue growth under the influence of the environment. Find out more in Peter Fratzl's knowledge room at MoA's Virtual Cluster Space.
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Welcome to our Virtual Cluster Space
3D Anchor Room of Annual Conference. Design by Helen Galliker and Object Space Agency. Copyright: Matters of Activity
Click more to find the entrance to the Cluster's virtual environment with its 3D »Anchor Room« and the 360° knowledge rooms of our Annual Conference with all lectures, talks, digital laboratories and research objects.
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Symbolic Material
Symbolic Material. Copyright: Myfanwy Evans, adapted by NODE Berlin Oslo
The change of view from allegedly passive material to »active matter« that engenders symbolic processes according to its inherent structure provokes a shift in the traditional boundaries between nature and culture. Thus, other traditional opposites (body-mind, active-passive, material-symbolic) can also be rethought as changeable polarities. The project »Symbolic Material« investigates the material foundations of symbolic processes in interaction with the symbolic dimension of materials from the viewpoint of Philosophy, History of Mathematics, Physics, and Neuroscience.
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Material Form Function
Copyright: Matters of Activity
From a historical-genealogical perspective, modern culture and technology have been extensively built on passivated materials, like concrete, steel, plywood and glass. The modern techniques of material passivation account for the exhausting consumption of resources and energy – heavily contributing to the anthropogenic ecological crises of today. Against this paradigm, the interdisciplinary exploration of the inherent self-activity of (bio-)materials can be understood as a critical intervention towards novel modes of technicity and making: for the imagination of more sustainable futures and for a new culture of material.
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ExC Matters of Activity
@exc_moa, 10.11.2022
RT @fuelsciencenter: What is our future made of? 🤔 In the podcast #exzellenterklärt Prof. Dr. Mareis and Dr. Razghandi (@MpiciPotsdam ) fro…
MoA Blog
Launch of a New Publishing Platform
Copyright: Matters of Activity
The MoA Blog is where the researchers of the Cluster write about their work. The Cluster contains more than 40 disciplines from Natural Sciences, Humanities and Design and aims to create a basis for a new culture of material. You will find articles, event announcements and insights from an international and interdisciplinary team and gain an insight into Germany's top-level research. Find out more about our topics.
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New Research Group »Adaptive Fibrous Materials«
Members Charlett Wenig and Johanna Hehemeyer-Cürten Were Awarded 2nd Place at Idea Competition of »Die Junge Akademie« for »The Bark Project«
»The Bark Project«, Charlett Wenig. Copyright: Patrick Walter, MPIKG
The MoA research group »Adaptive Fibrous Materials« is interested in interactions between biological material and its environment. The fact that plants are sessile make them particularly interesting regarding their adaptability and optimization strategies – there is no way for them to escape. Remodeling processes, such as those found in the animal kingdom, are absent and adaptation takes place by growth. The junior research group is jointly funded by »Matters of Activity« and the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Surfaces (MPIKG).
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Exploring Filtering
A Short Project on the Filtering Process
Exploring Fitering. Copyright: Veronika Aumann, Thomas Ness
In the week-long short project »Exploring Filtering«, Cluster member and interaction designer Thomas Ness, and textile designer Veronika Aumann dealt with the topic of Filtering with an open-ended mindset. The goal of this creative exploration of filtering processes was to gauge and express them in a practical and tangible way, respectively.
The point of departure for this was not a particular substance to be filtered or a specific substrate to be attained. Rather, the interest lay much more on the actual processes of filtering in and of themselves and the filter as an object. In the »Design Lab«, different kinds and methods of filtering processes were tested hands-on with familiar prototyping materials and techniques and transformed into six narratively and visually impressive representations.
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Cutting
Fiber tractography delineating the white matter of the brain. Copyright: Lucius Fekonja, adapted by NODE Berlin Oslo.
Cutting is one of the oldest cultural practices. It is a fundamental way for human beings to enter into correspondence with materials. With these specific gestures and tools, people alter and reshape material boundaries and intertwine different entities. Those activities span across wide forms of tacit knowledge, from ancient craftsmanship to current high-tech procedures. In the domain of art, the cutting of text, music or film material produces new compositions that can provoke new insights. Similarly, in the domain of medicine, surgeons cut the body to understand and to heal it. Embedded in the way we think, write and speak, the act of cutting is ubiquitous: it means distinguishing and choosing between ›good‹ and ›bad‹ in a multitude of symbolic ways.
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ExC Matters of Activity
@exc_moa, 10.11.2022
RT @artandeducation: Matters of Activity, Cluster of Excellence at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin hosts the conference “Deep Material Futur…
Object Space Agency
Flour Cloud. Copyright: Clemens Winkler, adapted by NODE Berlin Oslo
In »Object Space Agency«, the researchers of the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« are gathered to examine the relationships of active materials in the sphere of objects, persons and architectural structures. Material objects appear to be temporally and spatially at once stable and changeable. Check out the brand new project website.
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Where Analog Solutions are More Efficient than Digital Ones
Interview with Peter Fratzl in Austrian »DerStandard«
In »DerStandard« MoA's Co-Director Peter Fratzl is talking about the efficiency of analog solutions compared to digital ones. In his interview, the Director of the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces and Deputy Director of »Matters of Activity« also discusses information processing in nature and recycling problems. The article is available in German.
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Weaving
Cellulose in E. coli biofilm. Copyright: Diego Serra & Regine Hengge, adapted by NODE Berlin Oslo.
The project combines expertise from the fields of Anthropology, Cultural History and Theory, Literary Studies, Biology, Design/ Architecture, Material Sciences and Mathematics. The researchers investigate resources, practices and forms of weaving, focusing on the activity that is structurally anchored in the materials and as a process.
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Filtering
Filters. Copyright: NODE Berlin Oslo
The project »Filtering« investigates filters using historical, experimental and computational approaches. What information, for example, can be enhanced by new filter techniques?
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