Terramorphosis II: Patterns

This day-long event will explore the intersection of the biological, the geological, and the digital. Through concepts of morphogenesis (the biological development of form) and pattern formation, the symposium will invite a cross-disciplinary group of scholars to discuss overlapping histories and theories of computation, materiality, and information in both Western and non-Western contexts. The symposium will consider forms of life, intelligence and communication that extend beyond fixed boundaries of the human, the organic, and the machinic. It will explore questions of biological and computation neural networks; human and plant communication; geological and architectural structures; ecological and social systems.

The event brings together leading scholars in the Digital Humanities (N. Katherine Hayles, Wolfgang Ernst, Mark B. N. Hansen); the Sciences (Peter Fratzl, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Giuseppe Longo, Paco Calvo) and Art and Design Theory (Olga Goriunova, Patricia Ribault).

In Terramorphosis I Oct 2022, Lisbon Architecture Triennale, ›Terra‹, saw morphe, or form as the ›intentionality of matter‹. Terramorphosis II, London 26 Jan 2024, shifts our gaze to patterns, (see also Turing patterns) as what is not beyond, but instead arguably between classical form and modern matter.

The event will be streamed online at the following address: https://zoom.us/j/99950978831

More information and the detailed program can be found here: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/

Cluster Co-Director Peter Fratzl and Cluster Professor Patricia Ribault will be part of the panel »Engineering Patterns«, together with Cluster Advisory Board Member Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent:

Engineering Patterns: (13:00-15:30 GMT)

Michel Serres wrote of the bio-geological. Here, biological patterns are also a question of physics, of engineering, of less genotypical than phenotypical engineering on the interface of system and Umwelt. What about geological patterns? What is their system, their ecology, their temporality? How is this design, this techne, mediated by homo sapiens?

Peter Fratzl (Director at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam)
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent (Professor Emeritus in Philosophy and History of Science at University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne)
Patricia Ribault (Professor for Performative Design Research at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule, Berlin)