Being Material – A Short History of Mattering Matter at MIT and Beyond

Drawing from »Being Material,« a curated collection of essays and artifacts that emerged from a symposium hosted by MIT's Center for Art, Science and Technology in 2017, the talk followed the unruly lines and resonances activated by five modes of being material – programmable, wearable, livable, invisible, and audible – and address materials as sites of political struggle and active coexistence.

The lecture was given in English. It was part of the online lecture series of the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« entitled »Talking Matters«.

Abstract

»Being Material« is a curated collection of essays and artefacts which resulted from a symposium held in 2017 by the Center for Art, Science and Technology at MIT. I was invited as co-editor and author on the project when I was a research fellow, a journey that brought me to explore the legacy of this institution in a different light.

The title »Being Material« is a response to »Being Digital« (Negroponte, 1995), which suggested that the world’s affairs would leave the contingencies of materiality to reach the weightless state of bits traveling at the speed of light. Two decades later, our everyday lives are indeed ever more suffused by computation and calculation. But unwieldy materiality persists and even reasserts itself. Indeed, despite this claimed move from »atoms to bits,« we continue to live in a world that is both foreclosed and opened by material limits and possibilities. In a bid to sustain open the controversy between bits and atoms, »Being Material« sheds light on how processes that seem immaterial in character function with, and even rearrange, material conditions of production, distribution, communication and circulation. Embedded within MIT’s history, it is both a reflection and a lure to action on the new physical, social and political forms that emerge out of the coming together of the digital and the material.

»Being Material« does not engage in a debate on the status of materiality. It rather seeks to explore unexpected convergences between the digital and the material in the practices of artists, designers, engineers, and scientists to discern how material dynamics limit, expand, transform and /or vivify biological, social and political lives. Combining texts and artifacts, the book is organized around five modes of being material, which act as triggers of exploration, in contrast with encompassing categories: Programmable, Wearable, Livable, Invisible and Audible.

This talk will follow the unruly lineages and resonances activated by these five modes of being material. It will be guided by a series of questions such as: How is materiality activated? How is materiality offered to experience? For whom materiality matters? How do materials impose constraints and obligations? What counts as active matter? What kind of regimes of memory need to be created and accounted for? What is the materiality of abstractions? How do materials become conduits for new abstractions and theoretical claims? Looking specifically at a selection of works from each mode of being, I will address materials as sites of political struggles and active coexistence to engage with how materiality poses problem to politics.

Bio

Marie-Pier Boucher works on the artistic exploration of science and technology, with a specific focus on the design of environments built to sustain life in extreme conditions. She is co-editor of »Being Material« (MIT Press, 2019), »Heteropolis« (2013), and »Adaptive Actions Madrid« (2010). She is the lead convener of the »Space Media« research group at the McLuhan Center for Culture and Technology. Her work has appeared in the »Canadian Journal of Communication«, »Épistemocritique«, the »Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture«, and »Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology«, among other places. She has exhibited collectively at Centre George Pompidou (2021); Tokyo Wonder Site (2014); Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery (2010); and Madrid Biennale (2010). Her research residencies include NASA, Johnson Space Center (2014); Banff Center (2011); Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (2010) and; SymbioticA (2006). She is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, & Technology (ICCIT) and at the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto.