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. more

What does materiality mean for art and culture from today’s perspective? How can materiality be understood in our post-digital age, where digital technologies permeate creative work from start to finish, both in terms of tools and materials and conceptually? The exhibition »Extended Reality – Code and Materiality in Art and Culture,« September 3rd to 30th, 2021, illuminates various aspects of (digital) materiality through selected works from design, art, literature, music, performance and science that have been created with Extended Reality technologies (Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality). more

The project proposes and explores a space in-between, using virtual reality (VR) technology and a digitized archive of images, it wants to invite reflection and research on various modes of knowing in connection to materiality and code, activity of images and the space needed for this. Can digital humanities open up to new comprehensive experiments around the presence and the absence, on the material picture-relations and the gaps of the in-between, moving toward regions of human knowledge which meaning cannot convey? more

MoA researchers have succeeded in determining more precisely the relation between certain brain networks and the language function. The interdisciplinary team investigated language dysfunction on a voxel-level using the voxel-lesion-symptom-mapping method in glioma patients. more

From September 5th–7th, 2021, the 25th Annual DRHA Conference »Digital Matters: Designing/Performing Agency for the Anthropocene«, will take place in Berlin. The event is hosted by the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and further supported by a partnership with the Cluster of Excellence »Temporal Communities - Doing Literature in a Global Perspective«. The conference is co-organized by Cluster member Christian Stein and several MoA members are involved by contributing to the conference. MoA Director Claudia Mareis will deliver a keynote lecture entitled »Designing resilience: on a third culture with many transitions« on Monday, September 6th at 2:00 pm. Registrations for the hybrid event are still open until Friday, September 3rd. more

Our two-week »Talking Matters« lecture series, launched in May, is moving on to the next round. On September 14th, we look forward to an inspiring lecture and discussion from and with anthropologist Ignacio Farías from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin on »Urban Vibrations: How Physical Waves Come to Matter in Contemporary Urbanism.« more

The ongoing climate disaster puts many worlds in imminent danger. But conveying the entanglements of the more-than-human relations is an arduous task. Playful approaches can directly affect our sensory faculties beyond the realm of power and knowledge. The »stretching senses school« is an education-as-research project at the Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin (TA T) attached to the »Stretching Materialities« exhibition, co-partnered with the Node Institute Berlin. Through this workshop-based contribution to the exhibition, we intend to foster collaboration between anthropology and immersive interaction design. We will engage with research creation in order to raise awareness of the public on the multiscale and embedded interconnections between humans and other earthly beings. »stretching senses school« is issuing a call for application to the VR community until September 15th. The participation will be compensated. more

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 January 22nd, 2022, Mon-Fri, 2–6 pm.   more

This year, MoA Director Claudia Mareis is a guest member of the jury for the Artist in Residence program of the Textile and Design Alliance TaDA. The innovative program is aimed at practitioners in the fields of visual art, design, architecture, literature, performing arts or on transdisciplinary projects with a strong interest in textile production and its context. It is run by the cantons of St.Gallen, Appenzell Ausserrhoden and Thurgau and offers a unique opportunity to work together with renowned textile companies in Eastern Switzerland. Applications are open until October 4th. more

In search of non-extractive production models, biological systems became a central interest for the design practice since 10 years. Designers embraced growing strategies rather than shaping technologies, transient organisms rather than stable materials, environment-sensitive assemblages rather than resistant and passivated objects. How this »biological turn« is questioning the methods, tools, attitude and political role of designers today? The virtual symposium »Material Negotiations« gathers design practitioners to discuss and understand the scope, challenges and interest of such a shift. The symposium is hosted by Prof. Dr. Claudia Mareis and Dr. Emile de Visscher as part of the »Material Form Function« group. more

Materials such as water, sand, coal or crude oil are essential resources for industrial production, technological and infrastructural development. Although they are omnipresent in everyday life, their genealogies, epistemologies and ontologies are rarely called into question. This lecture series, organized by Cluster Co-Director Claudia Mareis, focuses on the ecological, sociopolitical and symbolic interrelations that unfold around the industrial utilization and commodification of materials. A critical historical perspective shows, among other things, that materials are often the result of and object to precarious geopolitics and biopolitics as well as unsustainable modes of production and consumption. As such the lecture series connects to discourses on material/political and power/knowledge relations. more