Cloud

Air | Cloud | Speculative Design | Teaching This workshop, led on 14 January by Clemens Winkler at Zurich University of the Arts, invites participants to explore dark, invisible materialities as active agents in artistic research and design-led inquiry. It draws on practices and conceptual frameworks developed within the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« and elaborated in the publication »Stretching Materialities. Negotiating Boundaries in Exhibition Research« (2025), presented through selected material samples, their natural–cultural histories, and key concepts. In a hands-on session, participants collaboratively build three cloud chambers to make cosmic radiation and everyday radioactive phenomena perceptible as matter–energy. Concepts such as intra-action, material efficacy, entanglement, cosmos, and dark matter are explored not only theoretically, but through experimental practice. more

Material Form Function | Collactive Materials | Speculative Design | Air | Climate | More-Than-Human | Robotics | Water | Cloud The symposium »Sensing Common Grounds. Towards Collaborative Speculation«, organized by Léa Perraudin and Martin Müller, asked about the ›how‹, foregrounding the methodologies of such speculations and projections: How to relate speculative design proposals to critical diagnoses of the present and attempts at historical speculation? How specifically can collaborative speculation in inter- and transdisciplinary contexts enable us to sense ›what is in the air‹? What narratives, prototypes, materials, and media hold knowledge (and non-knowledge) of these scenarios? more

Object Space Agency | Air | Biodesign | Cloud | Graphic Anthropology | Haptics | Hemp | Prototype / Model | Stone | Stretching Materialities | XR »TATour« is the title of a virtual exhibition based on preliminary fieldwork we conducted in 2020 at the Tieranatomisches Theater in Berlin (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). This collaborative inquiry served as a preamble to creating a physical exhibition in a museum space based in a former veterinary anatomical theater (Stretching Materialities, 2021-2022). Constrained by the COVID crisis, we invested our efforts in creating a digital tour that focused on the visible and invisible activities that remained there even when visitors could no longer access them. This recent paper by exhibition curators Maxime Le Calvé, Natalija Miodragović, Nina Samuel, Felix Sattler, Christian Stein, and Clemens Winkler, published in ethnographiques.org, issue 47, presents the production process for this immersive work, describes the creative process underlying this immersive work and its unusual approach to doing fieldwork through 360° fabulations inside an exhibition space, using sketching as a primary method. more

Material Form Function | Air | Science Communication | Climate | Cloud | Collactive Materials Clustermitglied und CollActive Materials Co-Projektleiter Martin Müller wurde nach der Eröffnung von »Airbound« am 19. Oktober 2023 im CLB im Aufbauhaus zur Ausstellung interviewt. »Die Luft spielt eine existenzielle Rolle in der globalen Klimakrise. Die Ausstellung soll die Aufmerksamkeit darauf lenken, dass mögliche Zukünfte sich auch an der Luft entscheiden, an unserem Verständnis davon, was es bedeutet zu atmen, mit der Luft zu leben. Wir sind ›airbound‹ – luftverbunden.«. Mehr zur Ausstellung und das ganze Interview gibt es im Tagesspiegel vom 22. Oktober 2023. more

Object Space Agency | Stretching Materialities | Air | Climate | Cloud | More-Than-Human | Sensing – Vibrations | Stone | Textiles | Willow | XR | Performance Matter is dead? Objects are lifeless? Think again! In the exhibition »Stretching Materialities« the liveliness and activity of matter could be experienced in a completely new way. From September 16th, 2021 to March 4th, 2022, the Tieranatomisches Theater in Berlin became an interactive playground: an actual cloud levitated in the middle of the room, reacting to body heat and movement, hovering around the visitors like a strange creature. Stones revealed their weathering as a dynamic process of change. Large willow structures, carefully co-crafted by humans and computers, were interwoven with the inhabitable space. Korean ›durumagi‹, a silk overcoat connecting the digital and physical realm, vibrated on the visitors’ skin as they interacted with diverse materials. Walking through the room with VR headsets on, visitors could enter a glass elevator and travel straight down into the materials presented – into the CT scan of a stone or high up into the clouds to interact with air molecules. more

Air | Water | Climate | Stretching Materialities | Cloud | Performance | Temporality The main interest of our research group lies in an integrative approach for the Cluster »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material« in forming walkable ways of knowing »exhibiting as a research method«. Therefore, this interest follows new forms of witnessing material activities and enacting tacit material knowledge to further co-create and co-speculate on them. Under intensive leadership within our curatorial collective including supervision of responsibilities for the exhibition process over thirteen months, our design research further set the focus on the materiality of atmospheric processes as highly immersive environing mixed media. Through the lens of this media materiality, situated practices are intended to transform our research across our curatorial collective and guide the Cluster's future exhibition projects. more

Air | Cloud | Climate | Stretching Materialities The exhibition space can also be understood as a space for processes metabolizing substances and forms. As a blob-like organism, a relational concept of activity and space makes it necessary to experimentally experience not only human and object-related perspectives, but also their energetic and material permeations. Hereby, it is more likely to link environments known to metabolisms from a human-scale perspective, such as volcanic grounds, to the exhibition space. Metabolic formations such as sediments or traces are in constant intentional and unintentional interaction with techniques and at the same time determine the energetic and material modes of the exhibition space. How can we make these modes more tangible for critical futures acting as systems designers? more

Science Communication | Air | Sand | Bacteria | Cellulose | Cloud | Fungi/Mycelium | Hemp | Prototype / Model | Stretching Materialities | Material Legacies | Daoula Sheen | Textiles | Tree Bark | Yarns/Fibers | XR | Willow | Wool | Water | Wood With the »Activarium«, we want to actively engage with potential partners from the industry, start-ups, NGOs, politics and society as a whole to initiate an exploratory exchange on active materials, bio- & culture-inspired innovation as well as sustainability approaches. We want visitors to experience our prototypes, making MoA’s intentions and research tangible and accessible. The »Activarium« serves as a work-in-progress showcase of different research strands and processes. Our visitors can dive into the research as it's happening before its published results. If you are interested in a visit, please contact us via moa.activarium [​at​] hu-berlin.de to visit! more

Air | Climate | Cloud | Performance | Prototype / Model more