The struggle for the best ideas is also a social survival strategy, believes the design researcher Claudia Mareis. Her ideas are changing how we view design. | Image: Kostas Maros / 13Photo. Copyright: Horizons
Interview with Claudia Mareis in »Horizons – The Swiss Research Magazine«
When we hear the word ›design‹, we usually think of shapes and colours, maybe of specific chairs, lamps or appliances in the area of product design. Perhaps even architecture comes to mind. But the projects and publications of Claudia Mareis open up a completely different field. She is concerned with ›governance through design‹, with so-called active material, techniques of creativity and knowledge cultures. How does all this fit together? There are two traditions of thought, says Mareis in an interview with »Horizons – The Swiss Research Magazine«.
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Schematic illustration of constraints for making neural networks more similar to real brains: The models can be used as tools to predict and/or explain behavior and brain activity patterns. The brain area and connectivity diagram on the right has been kindly provided by Rosario Tomasello and the local circuit diagram in the middle is reprinted, with permission, from Schmidt et al. 2018.
Friedemann Pulvermüller and his Team Publish Study on Causal Effects of Language on Thought
The influence of language on human thinking could be stronger than previously assumed. This is the result of a new study by Professor Friedemann Pulvermüller and his team from the Brain Language Laboratory at Freie Universität Berlin. In this study, the researchers examined the modeling of human concept formation and the impact of language mechanisms on the emergence of concepts. The results were recently published in the journal »Progress in Neurobiology«.
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Frontispiz der Scienza Nuova von Giambattista Vico, Neapel 1730. Entwurf Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, umgesetzt von Antonio Baldi
Podiumsdiskussion zu Giambattista Vico mit Sabine Marienberg und Jürgen Trabant
Der Philosoph Giambattista Vico warnte Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts vor dem exklusiven Rationalismus seiner Zeit, was ihm zuweilen den Ruf eines Gegenaufklärers einbrachte. Dabei steigt in Vicos weltgeschichtlicher Konstruktion die Menschheit durchaus aus der dunklen und poetischen Barbarei der Sinne in einem Dreischritt hinauf zum Licht menschlicher Rationalität. In der vollends aufgeklärten Welt droht allerdings dialektisch eine »Barbarei der Reflexion« (barbarie della riflessione), die das Menschengeschlecht in eine neue Finsternis zu stürzen droht, aus der es sich erneut ans Licht emporarbeiten muss. Vico gemahnt mit seiner Kritik am anmaßenden Rationalismus der Moderne an die Präsenz des Poetischen und Phantastischen in der aufgeklärten Kultur der Menschheit. Über diese italienische Version von Aufklärung diskutieren am Montag, den 16. Oktober, die Clustermitglieder Sabine Marienberg und Jürgen Trabant mit Ugo Perone.
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Conference Poster »Landwirtschaft und Literatur«, July 2023, photo »Weizenernte bei Eldagsen« by Michael Gäbler, 2013, and Anonymus: »Lesende Frau«, around 1950, from Cornelia Brink: Fotogeschichte. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Ästhetik der Fotografie, Nr. 98, 2005, p. 7; adapted by Node. Copyright: Matters of Activity
Internationale Tagung organisiert von MoA-Mitgliedern Stephan Kammer und Karin Krauthausen
Über ihr initiales Wirken für menschliche, tierische und pflanzliche Lebensformen hinaus bildet die Landwirtschaft nicht nur ein kontinuierliches Element in der Entwicklung vielfältigster Kulturtechniken, sondern beschäftigt als Topos über Jahrtausende hinweg die kollektive Imagination. Genres wie Georgik und Bukolik, aber auch unterschiedlichste Erzählmodelle zeugen bis heute von den Wechselverhältnissen zwischen Agrikultur und Textkultur. Die Tagung, organisiert von den Clustermitgliedern Stephan Kammer und Karin Krauthausen, geht dem Themenkomplex »Landwirtschaft und Literatur« aus literaturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive nach, aber bezieht dabei wesentlich auch medientheoretische und kulturhistorische Fragen und Wissensbestände ein. Adressiert wird das Feld in seiner ganzen historischen Breite: von Georgik und Bukolik und deren neuzeitlichen Nachwirkungen über erzählerische Kultivierungsunternehmungen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts bis zum Erzählen der Gegenwart.
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Visual Writing Workshop, Stuart McLean, May 2023. Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé, Matters of Activity
Writing Workshop on 11 May with Anthropologist Stuart McLean
What new possibilities for thinking and living might result from extending the notion of creativity beyond the human realm? The worlds that humans often pride themselves on creating are not and have never been exclusively human but are dependent upon and inflected by a multitude of other-than-human powers and presences, including animals, plants, geological formations, weather systems, and a range of humanly manufactured artifacts fashioned from a variety of materials. On May 11th, from 11 am–3 pm, Stuart McLean, professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, is invited by Cluster member Maxime Le Calvé as part of the stretching senses school (Cutting/OSA) to give a writing workshop on multimodal anthropological fabulations – you're kindly invited to join!
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Sketch by Maxime Le Calvé, 2022, Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé, Matters for Activity
Maxime Le Calvé Presented Paper at the Film Festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Posting graphic fieldnotes can be brewed into a method to broker some attention from busy professionals. But what are the benefits of the practice? And for a potential publisher? What are the drawbacks and inconveniences? What’s the best practice in this domain? A paper, presented by Maxime Le Calvé at the Film Festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute (London, UK), on March 7th, 2023, focuses on the collaborative ethnographic process conducted within a neurosurgery department as a »radical open-access« pre-publication.
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Karin Krauthausen Gives Guest Lecture in Graz
On Wednesday, January 18th, MoA Member Karin Krauthausen holds a guest lecture at the University of Graz. Karin Krauthausen researches one of the most famous French writers and writing theorists around 1900: Paul Valéry and his handwritten writing practice initiated in the »Cahiers«. These practical and theoretical engagements with a ›writing in motion‹ shape all of Valéry's subsequent printed publications as well as his understanding of authorship. In her lecture, Karin Krauthausen will talk about the role of the ›hand in motion‹ that oscillates between writing, drawing and scribbling. The hand movement on the paper and the body movement in space trigger the French writer to numerous reflections of a ›thinking in motion‹ and the relationship between thinking and line on the sheet of paper, which Krauthausen will discuss with the help of examples and in doing so also pursue the question of the technical printing preparation of the notes.
Cover Make It Real. Copyright: Diaphanes
Published by Karin Krauthausen and Stephan Kammer
The publication »Make it Real. Für einen strukturalen Realismus« (Make It Real - For a Structural Realism) of the Cluster members Karin Krauthausen and Stephan Kammer deals with the relationship between structuralism and realism. The literary realisms of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries must – like structuralism itself – be understood via a tension that not only takes place between the formal-abstract structure and the diversity of empiricism or the contingency of history, but also captures and dynamises the concept of structure itself.
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Schematic drawing of a part of a warping board. Source: Joachim Jungius, »Texturæ Contemplatio«, fol. 55r; in: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek – Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, Martin Fogel collection of Zettelkasten, folder: Ms XLII, 1923: delta 28 © Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek - Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek; Public Domain.