»Manheim Calling«, March 2024. Foto: Rahel Kesselring
Rahel Kesselring Gives Talk at University of Pittsburgh
Cluster member Rahel Kesselring will give a presentation at the conference »Ruin and Reparation: (Dis)Repair in Art and Architectural History« on March 22nd organized at the University of Pittsburgh. The online talk »›Scars remind us that our past is real‹: A queer ecologies' attempt on repair« approaches the notion as omnipresent in contemporary discourses of art and architecture, referring to very different epistemologies and conceptual nuances.
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Image in the background: Shubo (酒母), literally sake mother, is a starter culture that takes weeks to cultivate. Copyright: Maya Hey
Open Lecture and Workshop with Maya Hey
Don't miss our events with Maya Hey, an expert on human–microbe relations in food settings with degrees in dietetics, food studies, and communications. In the open lecture on March 5th and the workshop on March 6th, she will focus on fermentation as a hands-on practice for knowing microbes and working with them. The workshop is already fully booked - there is a waiting list!
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Case studies generated with software MidJourney
MidJourney Workshop with Nicholas Rapagnani on 28 September 2023
MidJourney is a so-called ›Image generating‹ AI software that, through descriptive texts called prompts is able to generate images (few samples in the attached image). This tool is very powerful and has incredible potential to deliver creative outputs aiding designers in developing concepts, products, and scenarios ranging from feasible to speculative (more information in the attached Word document). The workshop trainer Nicholas Rapagnani @s.nich.ers, a designer focusing on footwear, biomaterials (mycelium), and AI currently a research fellow at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.
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Brochures, doctoral presentations 2023. Layout: Ada Favaron. Project coordination: Franziska Wegener
Doctoral Presentations on 27 June 2023
Under the title »matterscapes« the 2nd cohort of the MoA doctoral program gave insights into their dissertation projects. By researching modes of activating and passivating matter in named contexts, this year’s progress presentation demonstrated and discussed the current research progress in one of the cohort’s ›natural habitats‹ — the studio on the 4th floor. All Cluster Members were invited to listen, share ideas, identify common grounds, offer suggestions, and exchange with one another.
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Design of soft robots. Research on form, its deformation and possible function. Copyright: Anna Schaeffner
Cluster Members Anna Schaeffner and Rasa Weber Presented at Major Event on the Global Electronic Art Scene ISEA2023
On May 17th and 18th Cluster Members Anna Schaeffner and Rasa Weber Presented at a major event on the global electronic art scene, that aims to strengthen the dialog between artists, researchers, engineers, designers and entrepreneurs from the cultural and creative industries who participate in the advances of research and creation. Anna Schaffner gave an artist talk »For a Design of Deformation« and Rasa Weber presented her paper »A Sympoietic Ocean. Design Research with/in the Marine Holobiont«.
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Design: NODE, adapted by Franziska Wegener
A Workshop Series for MoA PhDs and Postdocs
As science communication becomes an increasingly important part of any researcher’s life, it is essential - especially for PhDs and Postdocs - to find a science communication style that engages their audience(s) in a meaningful way while also providing enjoyment and mental energy for their own research. In this workshop series, we provide you with the basic knowledge and confidence to craft a science communication style that suits your research topic(s) and individual preferences. In the first workshop, we will take a look at different science communication models, while the second workshop aims to help you choose your preferred individual communication style. Additionally, a media presence training will be offered on June 20th.
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Anna Schäffner. Photo: Michelle Mantel
We congratulate Pre-Doctoral Candidate Anna Schäffner on her successful application to one of the three VOJEXT S+T+ARTS residencies. The selected artists were announced during the S+T+ARTS presentations at European Robotic Forum 2023 in Odense (Denmark). Each artist will receive 30.000 Euros of funding, mentoring and access to robotics labs from March until December 2023. The goals of the VOJEXT S+T+ARTS residencies are twofold: to push for art-driven innovation and societal understanding of human-robot interactions, and to integrate them in industrial manufacturing robotics that work on construction, arts and crafts. Anna Schäffner is taking part in the Social Robots residency, supported by industrial partner and tech-provider IIT (Fondazion Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia). Her project »Soft Collision« focuses on the design of a new robotic membrane that will demonstrate a form of interaction between human and robot through body language.
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MoA Diagram: Workshop Research Modules for the Creation, Cognition and Perception of Matter. Copyright: Franziska Wegener
Intensive PhD Workshop hosted by MoA
For the Cluster's newly formed doctoral cohort the year started with an intensive workshop on interdisciplinary collaboration hosted by »Matter of Activity« under the supervision of Karola Dierichs and Franziska Wegener. The workshop »MATTER. Research Modules for the Creation, Cognition and Perception of Matter through Design, Materials Science and Cultural Science« that was held February, 5th–10th, 2023, invited Pre-Doctoral Candidates to engage in an interdisciplinary discourse and practice diving deeply into the challenge of how to learn and appropriate each other’s scientific language for more productive research collaborations.
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Poster PhD presentations 2022. Layout: Ada Favaron
Doctoral Presentations at the MoA Retreat 2022
The 2022 presentation of the Doctoral Program »Matters of Activity« at the MoA Retreat in September at Landgut Stober was both a review and an outlook of the doctoral research conducted at the Cluster between 2020 and 2022. Under the title »Scaling Matters: From the Lab to the Field, «Pre-Doctoral Researchers at varying stages of their research — from the very beginning to the final phase of their theses — presented their heterogeneous work whilst continuing to negotiate common themes, methods, questions and tools. The format combined talks and an exhibition and invited MoA Members to engage individually with the presentation and a selection of their research objects.
Thanks to everyone involved for making possible this all-around successful event. Enjoy some visual impressions of the exhibition, as well as the talks and have a look at the booklet.
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Situated Digital Agencies. Copyright: Maxie Schneider
Seminar Series between MoA's Doctoral Program and the Department of Digital and Experimental Design at UdK Berlin
During the summer semester 2021, the teaching format »Situated Digital Agencies« bridged institutions just as much as cultures of knowledge, research and teaching. Along transdisciplinary and dialogic encounter it followed how digital technologies are situated between discourses of arts and design, humanities, and sciences – and suggested how precisely in these moments, they are altered, appropriated and possibly augmented towards epistemological and ontological surplus.
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Talk Series Curated by Jen Clarke and Cluster Member Maxime Le Calvé
On April 15th at 3 pm, Predoctoral Researcher Yoonha Kim (Object Space Agency) talked with fashion designer Zil Vostalova about the possibilities of virtual clothing as part of the »Field/Works« conversation series.
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New Materialist Informatics Conference »Computing and Worldmaking«
Cluster Member Frank Bauer is Giving a Workshop, Hosted at the University of Kassel
In March 2021, the New Materialist Informatics Conference 2021 »Computing and Worldmaking« bridged disciplinary boundaries between informatics, humanities and social sciences through innovative, material-driven perspectives. It was the 11th in this series and it invited participants to investigate the possible intersections between, and beyond, new materialism and informatics. The conference was organized by the Gender/Diversity in Informatics Systems Research Group (GeDIS) and the Research Center for Information System Design (ITeG), University of Kassel.
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Magic Circle Symposium weissensee school of art and design berlin, »Erosive Modeling«. Copyright: Kristin Dolz.
Symposium for Interdisciplinary Exchange on 25 February 2021
In the production of knowledge, design processes are fundamental, although the experimental settings in the sciences, in the arts, in design differ in assumptions, execution and conclusions. But the richness of the material, its property of being able to change itself, its active effect on the surrounding space as well as its reactive shaping to forces and energies allow other domains of knowledge immediate points of contact and give them stimuli for their own or joint knowledge production. The symposium »Magic Circle« was organized by the »Forschungskreis« of the weißensee school of art and design berlin (khb) in cooperation with »Matters of Activity«, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Jörg Petruschat with contributions from various Cluster members.
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Meditation as a matter of activity. Copyright: »Matters of Activity«
Immersive Workshop by Maxime Le Calvé on February 20th
The aim of this workshop was to share techniques and tools to overcome the obstacles that occur in academic writing, and in particular that of the dissertation. It allowed early-career-stage researchers to initiate an investigation into the journey of text making, and toward a sustainable balance that will contribute to a good quality of life and a high quality of writing. As a follow-up, »Shut Up and Write« sessions as well as thematic trainings will be offered within the Cluster.
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»Kiki Prototype«. Design: Rasa Weber, rasaweber.com. PhD Project: «SymbiOcean». Location: STARESO - Calvi (FR). Diver: Noémie Chabrier. Installation team, assistance and monitoring: Arnaud Boulenger, Sandra Bracun, Noemi Chabrier, Mélodie Chapat, Sylvain Coudray, Stéphane Jamme, Leonie John, Teal Jordan, Michael Karle, Mathieu Kelhetter (design intern), Michaela Roger, Bram van der Schoot, Kelly Stiver, Anja Wegner, Lena Wesenberg, Aubin Woehrel. Date: June 2023. SNF research project: «Interfacing the Ocean». Hosting University: Zurich University of the Arts & University of Art and Design Linz. Photo: Stéphane Jamme @stepp_aquanaute.
PhD Project Rasa Weber
The practice-based design research project «SymbiOcean» explores cultivating marine habitats with/in other-than-human marine environments as a form of «Sympoïetic Design». Inspired by the process of ocean mineral accretion by electrolysis for the construction of artificial reefs developed by Wolf Hilbertz and Thomas Goreau under the name Biorock (1970), the project brings together design, anthropology and marine biology to develop a new approach to the creation of artificial reefs.
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Armchair, flamed birch wood with ivory and mother-of-pearl inlays, designed as part of a bedroom ensemble by Mackay Hughes Bailly Scott, made by the Dresdener Werkstätte für Handwerkskunst in 1903, Bröhan-Museum, Berlin.
The PhD project »(Hi)Stories of Transformation: Tracing Materials in the British Arts and Crafts Movement« by Kaja Ninnis investigates the environmental implications of the sourcing and transformation of ›raw‹ materials in the context of the British Arts and Crafts Movement.
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Revaluating Pine Bark
»Revaluating Pine Bark« is a practice-based research project that aims to increase the value of pine bark and to present a variety of possible processing techniques and shapes that rise discussions and speculations about future use-cases. This is done by studying the material properties and through the development of holistic design concepts and artefacts.
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Diagram of energy and material relationships and negotiations between the inside and the outside. Copyright: Dimitra Almpani-Lekka
Methods of Activating the Building Envelope for More-Than-Human Commoning
The aim of Dimitra’s research is to investigate emerging architectural design protocols of activating the building envelope with the treatment of water in order to restore and promote ecosystemic functions and local biodiversity. In this framework the building envelope is approached as a voluminous, programmatic and infrastructural space of opportunity for integrating the building into the metabolic processes of the ecosystem. The envelope is explored as a porous membrane rather than a barrier, a vehicle for mutually beneficial human and non-human symbiosis that allows for material and energy negotiations and exchanges between the outside and the inside. Therefore, the envelope is re-thought as a potential space of communing for all local species.
The actuator of the envelope is water, one of the most vital resources for the sustenance of ecosystemic activity. This approach requires the study of water related functions, properties and phenomena across different scales (macro- (urban fabric), meso- (building/device), micro-(study of microorganisms and properties of matter). With the use of dynamic design tools, the architectural design is formed by the dynamics and temporalities of water. Alliances between the fields of biotechnology, natural sciences and environmental engineering as well as humanities, landscape architecture, animal aided design and biomimetics are employed to incorporate biological growth and water treatment methods in an architectural design method that addresses the topic of co-habitation in contemporary cities, especially in the context of pressing climate related problems such as droughts, floods and the contamination of natural water resources.
Over the last years Dimitra has been working in Berlin in the field of Landscape Architecture with a focus on the creation of socially and environmentally sustainable public spaces. She joined the Cluster in 2021 and is working on the Myko.Plektonik project in parallel to her PhD, exploring fungal mycelium as a co-designer in the architectural context.
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›One Big Green Thought‹
Repair, Regeneration and Rewilding as Artistic Practices in Damaged Environments
In her dissertation, Rahel investigates artistic practices, which are set in damaged environments and have plants, trees, and forests as their object of investigation. By analyzing selected case studies from the field of contemporary art and recent art history, the project aims to discuss arboreal politics, their medial modes of representation, and the epistemologies brought together in them
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Strategies of (Re-)Staging Process-Based Art by Otto Piene
within the Context of the 1960s
In her thesis, the art and visual historian Babette Werner researches the analog and digital (re-)stagings of process-based and inter-media art from the late 1950s until today and their potential for sustainable archival and curatorial practices. Werner explores the notion of an ecological aesthetic with her practice-based and theoretical research. At the intersection of art and visual history, conservation and media studies, the focus is put on artist Otto Piene, who experimented with natural phenomena, and light and slide installations
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Physical damage on the tree due to beetles and fungus. Left: Bark beetle galleries and larvae under the bark of a spruce tree. Middle: Bark beetle galleries on the sapwood of a spruce tree. Right: Other insect holes and brown rot streaks on spruce wood. Pelin Asa, MPICI, 2023.
Reversible Components from Low-grade Wood
Spruce forests in Europe face significant challenges from increasing bark beetle attacks, partly attributed to droughts and extreme weather conditions. Drawing from field research conducted in Feldbuch, Germany, this project analyses factors that lead to bark beetle outbreaks and their impact on the trees, local forests, and communities. As bark beetle infestations escalate, there is a growing focus on understanding their impact on trees and forests, yet research into beetle-affected wood and its potential applications in architecture and digital fabrication remains limited. This research aims to address this gap by identifying key questions surrounding beetle-infested wood and showcasing its potential for valorisation.
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