Wunderkammer Set #2 at Kunstgewerbemuseum

»More-than-human sketching« as part of the Wunderkammer set #2 exhibits the results of a participative design anthropology research process, which centers around the repurposing of an emerging digital design tool, 3D drawing, to delve into the collections of the Kunstgewerbemuseum through collective acts of spatial sketching. Building upon the ongoing experiments in digital anatomical training currently under development at the Speculative Realities Lab (Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« / Department for Neurosurgery, Charité), researchers and workshop participants engaged in co-designing interactive augmented performances. Together, they created new scores to immerse themselves in the more-than-human crafting processes embedded within the collection objects.

Sketching has long been the mark of the designerly knowing. At the core of the modern forming process, there is a mysterious act that partly evades the maker's intentions: when hand, paper, and idea meet, an intuitive digestion of spatial knowledge happens through quasi-conscious gestures. Like the motile fingers of mycelium networks growing through their environment, these lines embrace forms, making sense of their relations.

What if design and humanities could ally to imagine new visual and performative arguments to counteract the anthropocentric views on material cultures and biomedical visual knowledge?
In the four vitrines of the Wunderkammer, colorful graphic ethnographic field notes display how groups of visitors sketched in 3D following these performative scores, while embracing a new perspective on the activity of materials. Along with the images, 3D prints of the objects in various materials (resin, clay) stand in the place of the museum objects that were sketched and digitally »digested« by the participants.

The project is part of the second edition of the Wunderkammer in the framework of the new platform More than Human. Design after the Anthropocene, curated by Claudia Banz.

Project Team

Maxime Le Calvé
Elaine Bonavia
Paulina Greta Stefanovic
Nayeli Vega
Kotryna Slapsinskaite

Exhibition Opening

The exhibition opening will be on 12 July, at 7 pm, at Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin.

Guided Tours with Augmented Reality Headsets

Based on the outcomes of this work, guided tours of the Kunstgewerbemuseum are now being offered for the first time using augmented reality headsets. Visitors are invited to sketch in 3D (in augmented reality and on paper), following a score inspired by design research, graphic anthropology and experimental anatomical pedagogy.

See all dates and register on the website of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.