Activities
Filter
Exhibition Opening »Airbound«, 19 October 2023. Copyright: Matters of Activity
19.10.2023–9.11.2023
Airbound. Sensing Collective Futures
Speculative Exhibition by the »CollActive Materials« Experimental Laboratory
Invisible, and yet everywhere. Air is always already on its way to becoming something else. From molecule to atmosphere: the global climate crisis and thus the possible futures of our coexistence will be decided by means of air. How could a new sensorium emerge for the coming? What will connect us in the future? »Airbound« runs until November 9th and provides space for discussing geopolitical urgencies of the present through climate fictions and speculative everyday scenarios.
As part of Berlin Science Week »CollActive Materials« also organizes the workshop »Introducing: The Breathless Choir« November 4th at Naturkundemuseum.
more
Microverse I-6, 2023. Copyright: Kathrin Linkersdorff
26.10.2023–21.1.2024
Microverse
Photographs Created by Kathrin Linkersdorff in Collaboration with Regine Hengge Exhibited at Deichtorhallen
Circularity and sustainability of material flows is a hallmark of intact ecosystems. This principle has now been stunningly visualized in ultrahigh resolution, large format photographs – the MICROVERSE series – created by Kathrin Linkersdorff in collaboration with Cluster member Regine Hengge, Professor for Microbiology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The exhibition at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg will be on view from October 27th, 2023 to January 21st, 2024.
more
Links: Detail des Himmels um die Darstellung der Asia im Deckenfresko Giovann Battista Tiepolos im Treppenhaus der Würzburger Residenz. Copyright: WikimediaCommons, Foto: Myriam Thyes, CC BY-SA 4.0; rechts: Kasimir Malewitsch, Das schwarze Quadrat, Öl auf Leinwand, 1915, Tretjakow-Galerie, Moskau. Copyright: Public Domain.
30.10.2023–12.2.2024
Licht und Dunkel
Cluster Co-Sprecher Horst Bredekamp und Olaf Müller über naturphilosophische und bildwissenschaftliche Perspektiven der Aufklärung
In der Ideengeschichte der Metaphysik, Kunst, Naturphilosophie und Naturwissenschaft treten immer wieder ganze Netze dualer Gegensätzlichkeiten wie die zwischen Licht und Schatten, Geist und Materie, Wärme und Kälte, Plus und Minus, Gott und Schöpfung, Ausdehnung und Zusammenziehung, Vernunft und Gefühl, Denken und Wahrnehmung auf. Die im Wintersemester 2023/2024 von Cluster Co-Sprecher Horst Bredekamp und Olaf Müller angebotene Vorlesung wird in ihrem Versuch, eingeschliffenen Dualismen zu entgegnen, zentrale Anliegen von »Matters of Activity« thematisieren. Im Wechselspiel der Fächer Kunstgeschichte und Philosophie, also auch mit Blick auf die Polarität von Text und Bild, werden historische Varianten dieser Ideen zur Diskussion gestellt und mit dem aktuellen Stand derartiger Überlegungen verknüpft. Start ist Montag, der 30. Oktober 2023 um 18 Uhr, die Vorlesung ist offen für Hörerende aller Fakultäten sowie für die interessierte Öffentlichkeit.
more
Brainroads. Copyright: Lene Zech
2.11.2023
Brain Roads
Exploring Neuroplasticity through Art and Science
Like the sculptor with marble, neurosurgeons dialogue with the brain they operate on. Mapping and representing these ›brain roads‹ can be achieved through various imaging methods, which help neurosurgeons extend their knowledge of the cerebral anatomy. The French Professor in neuro-oncology Hugues Duffau is famous for operating on low-grade gliomas by performing awake surgery with very little technology. His methodology includes a complex mix of techniques, disciplines and experiments based on the concept of neuroplasticity and a limited use of medical imaging in the operating room. The workshop, organized by Patricia Ribault, will explore these »Brain Roads« during Berlin Science Week on November 2nd from 10.00 am– 5.00 pm.
more
2.11.2023
Clear the Stage for Science
Science Slam of All Berlin Clusters during Berlin Science Week
Slammin’ like there’s no tomorrow - at our Cluster Science Slam, researchers try everything to entertain their audience, regardless of whether the subject is e.g. mathematics, neuroscience or active material. The sky is the limit when it comes to what’s possible. Costumes, props, movies, PowerPoint presentations or other experimental setups – it is all allowed. Only time sets the limits – every slammer will have ten minutes at most. And the audience will decide which presentation is best!
more
Copyright: Photo by My Walking Diary from Pexels
2.11.2023–22.2.2024
Worlds by Design. Mapping the Field of Interdisciplinary Design Studies
Online Lecture Series Organized by Prof. Dr. Claudia Mareis
From academic knowledge production to policy making, urban resilience planning or disaster management, there are few fields today that are not linked to design processes and practices. While (Western) design discourse has traditionally been connected to industrial production, modernist aesthetics and rational problem solving, more recently the concept of design has been invoked in debates that seek to address world-making and complex problems on a planetary scale from a position of limited knowledge.
In this lecture series, together with invited speakers, we seek to understand such virulent and all-encompassing understandings of design in their potentials and limitations. How can they be theoretically framed, historically and genealogically located, and critically engaged from the perspective of interdisciplinary design studies? more
In this lecture series, together with invited speakers, we seek to understand such virulent and all-encompassing understandings of design in their potentials and limitations. How can they be theoretically framed, historically and genealogically located, and critically engaged from the perspective of interdisciplinary design studies? more
Film Still Building (with) Nature, 2023. Copyright: Michaela Büsse.
3.11.2023
Building (with) Nature
Michaela Büsse Contributes to Film Screening & Discussion at Berlin Science Week 2023
What kind of knowledge about environments do models create? And how can artistic media be deployed in making sense of these knowledge practices? In this panel at this year's Berlin Science Week Campus at Museum für Naturkunde Berlin on November 3rd, Associated Investigator in the »Material Form Function« research group Michaela Büsse will be in conversation with anthropologist Andrew Gilbert (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) and human geographer Rossella Alba (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) about the role of technologies for environmental governance and film as a means of research. Based on Michaela's short film »Building with Nature« the audience is invited to engage with the engineering principles behind Zandmotor, an artificial peninsular close to The Hague in the Netherlands. The panel will be moderated by Stefan Schäfer, research group leader at the Institute for Sustainability Helmholtz Centre Potsdam where Michaela currently is a fellow.
more
Poster with Abstract Visual Associations. Copyright: Rüdiger Wenk
7.11.2023
Cybernetic Auditive Associations
Lecture Performance Organized by »Object Space Agency« During Berlin Science Week 2023
In this lecture performance, Rüdiger Wenk presents his auditive associations of images in the plural based on his cybernetic algorithm as part of analog sound synthesis. Rüdiger Wenk first explains the basics of his cybernetic algorithm consisting of envelope follower (signal input), modal synthesis (body), and asynchronous granular synthesis (space) in the context of feedback within this current lecture performance.
The visual works, which will be shown in the course of the Berlin Science Week 2023 by the Institute of Art History of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in cooperation with »Object Space Agency« on November 7th, can be seen from 6:00 pm in the Medientheater. The lecture performance starts at 7:00 pm.
more
Syntopia 1—Soma I Body. Copyright: Karola Dierichs, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, weissensee academy of art and design and Matters of Activity
8.11.2023–9.11.2023
Open Space – Active Matter on Stage
MoA is Opening its Doors
We are surrounded by matter that is vibrant and active. Yet we often treat matter as if it were passive. Instead of using active material properties and structures, industrial and digital manufacturing, as well as conventional approaches to engineering, design and architecture, still heavily rely on the passivation of materials and external energy is added. »Matters of Activity« is opening its doors during Berlin Science Week 2023 to show you active matter on stage during exciting hands-on workshops and tours through our new »Activarium«, MoA's very own showroom!
more
Samples of Flax Fiber Bundles as a precursor for Architectural Yarns, adapted by Node Berlin/Oslo. Copyright: Maxie Schneider, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, weißensee school of art and design, Matters of Activity
8.11.2023
Threads: Localities & Temporalities of a Fiber Bio-Economy
Activating Circular Networks Goes Berlin Science Week 2023
How can we deal with the complexities of transitioning to a bio-economy in which natural fiber could play a major role? Various actors are involved in pushing for this material and socio-economic transformation, from policymakers to producers, corporate investors, climate activists and social entrepreneurs. However, the challenges to reconfiguring the localities and temporalities of circular supply chains on the ground, range from missing technological infrastructures and conflicting regulatory constraints to land use policy, implementing the principles of regenerative agriculture, and managing the material life-cycle. Join us in »Activating Circular Networks« II during Berlin Science Week 2023!
more
Syntopia 1:Soma I Body. Roland Halbe
13.11.2023
Cultures of Creation. »The Intelligence of Art« in Computational Design
Cluster Professor Karola Dierichs Holds Lecture at IntCDC on November 13
Karola Dierichs lecture at the Cluster of Excellence Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture (IntCDC) is a first attempt at arguing for an »intelligence of art« in computational design. It will do so by introducing the notion of design as the creation of novelty and will ask the question how this novelty is produced: is it a result of computational data processing or are there other forces at play?
more
Layout: Node & Jann Mausen. Image: Jann Mausen
17.11.2023–18.11.2023
Critical Times. Part 1: Multiple Matter
Workshop with Contributions by T. J. Demos, Sandra Jasper, Kiran Pereira & David Weber-Krebs
Time has become an increasingly critical factor and concept in the wake of Anthropocene debates. Multiple reworkings of its understanding foreground the present entanglement of processes of dis/continuation, rupture and disruption — all of which problematize a narrow conception of linear, human, or chronological temporality of late liberalism. Acknowledging and simultaneously problematizing the time of crisis immanent to the discourse of the Anthropocene, we ask what other times and temporalities need to be included and inserted to prevent an all human and by that enlightened and Western conception of time? With »Critical Times«, we ask what times and temporalities shape the pressing crises of the present but also what temporalities allow for a critical response to a homogenizing crisis of such a present.
more
Copyright: Jann Mausen
17.11.2023
Radical Futurisms: Ecologies of Collapse / Chronopolitics / Justice-to-Come
Public Lecture by T. J. Demos as Part of »Critical Times. Part 1: Multiple Matter«
How might we rescue the future from the grips of planetary negativity, capitalist longtermism, and generalized catastrophism? It will take nothing less than cultivating an emancipated chronopolitics emerging from the traditions of the oppressed in relation to an undetermined not-yet. T. J. Demos presentation addresses recent creative modelings of radical Indigenous and Afrofuturist worlds-to-come and their radical temporal reconfigurations, founded upon social justice and environmental flourishing.
more
Buntmarmore aus Goethes geologischer Sammlung, Foto: Gordon Welters
1.12.2023
Wie und warum stellt man Goethes Sammlungen aus?
Nina Samuel moderiert am 1.12. Panel im Nationalmuseum in Weimar
MoA-Mitglied Nina Samuel wirkt an der Tagung »Denkmal, Dichterhaus, Vermittlungsort. Das Goethe Nationalmuseum im 21. Jahrhundert« in Weimar mit, die diesen Donnerstag und Freitag, 30.11.-1.12.2023 stattfindet. Samuel moderiert das Panel mit dem Thema »Wie und warum stellt man Goethes Sammlungen aus?«, bei dem Nicola Lepp, Kuratorin und Professorin für Kultur und Vermittlung an der Fachhochschule Potsdam mit Andreas Beyer, Professor für Kunstgeschichte der Neuzeit an der Universität Basel, diskutieren wird. Das Panel wird wie die gesamte Tagung live über den YouTube-Kanal der Klassik Stiftung gestreamt.
more
MidJourney generated AI images for the prompts »architectured material across scales«, »topological interlocking«, »elastic instabilities« by Charlett Wenig | Poster Design: Node Berlin Oslo
13.12.2023–14.12.2023
Architectured Materials Across Scales
Registration is Closed
The workshop on December 13th and 14th will bring together scientists, engineers, architects and designers. The goal is to discuss the role of structure in (re-)defining active and adaptive material properties from the nanoscale to the dimensions of a building. The workshop will include renowned international speakers, as well as researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Potsdam, the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Actvity« as well as the weissensee school of art and design berlin. All places are already fully booked.
more