Cover of »Architectures of Weaving«: »Stone Web«. Copyright: weißensee school of art and design berlin / Natascha Unger, Idalene Rapp
Now Open Access
The volume »Architectures of Weaving«, a rich anthology edited by MoA members Christiane Sauer, Mareike Stoll, Ebba Fransén Waldhör, and Maxie Schneider, published by Jovis Verlag, Berlin in November 2022, is available open access now at De Gruyter. Taking as its point of departure a symposium of the same title held in July 2021, the lavishly illustrated volume brings together contributions from numerous researchers from various disciplines of the Cluster of Excellence and experts from other institutions.
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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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Plektonik Structural Textiles column – continuous wooden ›Active Yarns‹ 40 mm diameter loops. Copyright: Daniel Suárez & Natalija Miodragović
Cluster Members Beyer, Miodragović, Mossé and Suárez Publish in Proceedings of the UIA World Congress of Architects Copenhagen 2023
The book provides new perspectives from leading researchers accentuating and examining the central role of the built environment in conceiving and implementing multifaceted solutions for the complex challenges of our understanding of planetary resources and circularity, revealing critical potentials for architecture and design to contribute in more informed and long-term ways to the urgent transition of our society. Bastian Beyer et. al. contributed with the article »Towards a Bacterially-Induced Textile Architecture« and Daniel Suárez and Natalija Miodragović an article on »Plektonik— Active Yarns for Adaptive Loop-Based Material Systems«.
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Leben machen. Die Zoëpolitik der synthetischen Biologie. Copyright: DeGruyter
Publikation von Clustermitglied Martin Müller Open Access veröffentlicht
Die synthetische Biologie versucht sich gegenwärtig am Re-Design ganzer Gattungen, arbeitet an der ›resurrectio‹ längst ausgestorbener Arten zur Stabilisierung kollabierender Ökosysteme und greift mittels der Genomeditierungstechnologie CRISPR gezielt in die menschliche Keimbahn ein.
Für eine Kritik dieser prometheischen Biologie verbindet Martin Müller Ansätze aus Medien- und Kulturwissenschaft mit Designtheorie, Wissenschaftsphilosophie und Wissensgeschichte. Seine ›Genealogie der Zoëpolitik‹ ist gleichsam eine neue Macht- und Lebenstheorie. Sie beschreibt einen ›Willen zum Lebenmachen‹, der um 1800 entstand. Dieser intensivierte sich und eskalierte im 20. Jahrhundert in der ›molekularen Revolution‹ und heute im Auftauchen der synthetischen Biologie, welche die planetarische Natur und das biologische Leben in Gänze als ein Interventionsfeld ingenieurtechnischer Kalküle begreift. more
Für eine Kritik dieser prometheischen Biologie verbindet Martin Müller Ansätze aus Medien- und Kulturwissenschaft mit Designtheorie, Wissenschaftsphilosophie und Wissensgeschichte. Seine ›Genealogie der Zoëpolitik‹ ist gleichsam eine neue Macht- und Lebenstheorie. Sie beschreibt einen ›Willen zum Lebenmachen‹, der um 1800 entstand. Dieser intensivierte sich und eskalierte im 20. Jahrhundert in der ›molekularen Revolution‹ und heute im Auftauchen der synthetischen Biologie, welche die planetarische Natur und das biologische Leben in Gänze als ein Interventionsfeld ingenieurtechnischer Kalküle begreift. more
Design, Gestaltung, Formatività. Philosophies of Making. Copyright: Birkhäuser, 2022
A Central Cluster Publication Edited by Patricia Ribault Released – Now Available Open Access
After the release of the anthology edited by Patricia Ribault, including contributions by Cluster members Samuel Bianchini, Cecile Bidan, Horst Bredekamp, Mason Dean, Emile De Visscher, Peter Fratzl, Lorenzo Guiducci, Leonie Häsler, Claudia Mareis, Martin Müller, Jörg Petruschat, Emanuele Quinz, Khashayar Razghandi, Patricia Ribault, Wolfgang Schäffer and Charlett Wenig, we're happy to announce that the publication is now available open access.
Through the concepts of »Design, Gestaltung and Formatività«, this book sheds new light on the processes of formation and transformation of the material world we live in. In the first part— »Giving Form« —philosophers, historians, psychologists and cultural studies scholars question our modes of giving form, while in the second— »Form Given« — artists, designers, engineers and scientists unfold their creative processes. These »philosophies of making« invite us to reflect on what we do, what we can do, and how to do it, but they also spur us into action.
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Syntopia 1—Soma I Body. Copyright: Karola Dierichs, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, weissensee academy of art and design and Matters of Activity
Paper Published on Augmented Reality (AR) Framework
Elaine Bonavia, Jessica Farmer, Alexandre Mballa-Ekobena, Nikolai Rosenthal, Laurence Douny and Karola Dierichs have published a paper on an augmented reality (AR) framework that uses hand-based motion tracking and data capture. The main contribution lies in the use of haptic data flows rather than visual ones. The AR framework was tested in a one-to-one scale architectural application emulating the spinning behavior of silkworms.
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Image of the cortical ends of the white matter of the human brain, created in the »Matters of Activity« Cluster of Excellence. Copyright: MoA/Lucius Fekonja
In this prognostic study of 112 patients and 70 patients with glioblastoma, published in JAMA Neurology, a newly developed white matter tract density index (TDI) was significantly associated with the overall survival of patients with glioblastoma. The TDI had a stronger correlation and survival prediction than other commonly used prognostic factors. The TDI appears to be a reliable predictor of patient outcomes; given these findings, this index may be considered in future clinical trials and potentially incorporated into clinical practice.
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Copyright: »Spontaneous Generations«, https://www.spontaneousgenerations.com/
Karin Krauthausen and Michael Friedman Published Article in Special Issue of »Spontaneous Generations«
»Spontaneous Generations«, the Journal of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto launched a special issue on ›agency‹. The volume »From Bacteria to Gaia: Levels of Biological Agency« includes an article of the Cluster members Karin Krauthausen and Michael Friedman on the agency and activities of materials in the 21st century.
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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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Chemical Reviews, Special Edition »Sustainable Materials«, Design: Ella Marushchenko, 2023. Copyright: Chemical Reviews
Editorial by Co-Director Peter Fratzl in the Special Issue of Chemical Reviews
The current special issue of Chemical Reviews entitled »Sustainable Materials« was coordinated by the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) in Potsdam-Golm, a crucial partner institution of Matters of Activity. The editorial by Cluster Co-Director Peter Fratzl, also heading the Department of Biomaterials at the (MPICI), covers quite a few aspects that are also discussed in the MoA Cluster.
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Petrification, publication at .able Journal, 2023. Copyright: Emile De Visscher, Ophélie Maurus
Emile De Visscher Publishes in Recently Launched Image-Based Journal .able
On March 23rd, 2023, Emile de Visscher's contribution about petrification was published with the launch of .able, an innovative image-based journal at the intersection of art, design, and sciences responding to the complexities of today’s society. To explore the new format of scientific publishing offered by the .able Journal, Emile de Visscher invited Ophélie Maurus, independent art director and photographer for the Petrification research project. The main focus was to take advantage of the different layers of content in the platform to present the different dimensions of the project: speculative, symbolic, technical, etc. One of the most intriguing and difficult steps concerned the referencing systems as every scientific article is structured and built upon one. But how to create references with images rather than words?
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.able Journal, Going with the Flow, 2023, Image: Gisèle Trudel. Copyright: .able
.able Journal Out Now – Join the Launch Week!
On March 23rd, 2023, .able Journal, an innovative image-based multiplatform journal for publishing research at the intersection of art, design, and sciences was launched. .able reinvents the publication form by making research accessible through images. Free of charge and distributed on numerous platforms, media, and devices, Created at the initiative of La Chaire Arts & Sciences of the École Polytechnique, the École des Arts Décoratifs – PSL, and the Fondation Daniel et Nina Carasso, the journal is published by Actar Publishers and supported by some thirty international academic partners. »Matters of Activity« is proud to tell you that the Cluster is connected to this great project by several members: Editor-in-chief of .able is Samuel Bianchini, Associated Member to MoA, part of the board are MoA Co-Director Claudia Mareis and Cluster Professor Patricia Ribault. Among the first researchers to use the new publication format to present their research is MoA member Emile de Visscher.
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Cover Museale Reste, ed. by Nina Samuel and Felix Sattler, De Gruyter 2023. Copyright: De Gruyter
New Anthology Edited by Nina Samuel and Felix Sattler Focuses Museum Remnants
In December 2022, volume 18 of Bildwelten des Wissens, edited by MoA members Nina Samuel and Felix Sattler, was published with the title »Museale Reste« (Museum Remnants). Remnants are a challenge for the museum as an institution. They are ambiguous figures, and their attributions open up and thus contribute to transcending the taxonomic, disciplinary, architectural, and institutional boundaries of museums. They can be found everywhere—in exhibition spaces as well as storage depots, and in laboratories just as in the administration. In each of these contexts, there are respectively different forms of professional self-conception, knowledge, and practical handling that determine the status of remnants.
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Brain-constrained Neural Modeling Explains Fast Mapping of Words to Meaning
New Publication by Cluster Members Rosario Tomasello and Friedemann Pulvermüller
Although teaching animals a few meaningful signs is usually time-consuming, children acquire words easily after only a few exposures, a phenomenon termed »fast mapping«. Meanwhile, most neural network learning algorithms fail to achieve reliable information storage quickly, raising the question of whether a mechanistic explanation of fast mapping is possible. Here, we applied brain-constrained neural models mimicking fronto-temporal-occipital regions to simulate key features of semantic associative learning.
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Screenshot: https://revuecaptures.org; Cornelius E. Klots, A Spicebush Swallowtail Caterpillar (Papilio Troilus) in Intimidating Mode (s.d.). Copyright: Cornelius E. Klots
Article Published by Horst Bredekamp and Kolja Turner
The essay tries to plea for incorporating concepts of evolutionary and animal imagery into an open theory of the image, that extends beyond the realm of human artifice and must no longer be viewed with an anthropocentric focus. Turning to images that are not human-made, we try to explore different image phenomena and connect them to non-human concepts of ›Beauty‹ as historically developed by Charles Darwin’s underappreciated theory of ›Sexual Selection‹ and, before him, trailblazed by William Hogarth.
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Chapter 13 »On the arcs between the equator and the ecliptic« from the first book of the Almagest from Gerard of Cremona’s Latin translation from Arabic (A-family). The chapter includes the table of solar declinations newly recalculated for Gerard’s translation. The parchment manuscript shown here (Paris, BnF, lat 16200, fol. 13v-14r) is an early witness, copied in December 1213. Copyright: gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France
Stefan Zieme Publishes New Findings on the History of Astronomy
In its latest February issue, the Journal for the History of Astronomy has published the article »Gerard of Cremona’s Latin translation of the ›Almagest‹ and the revision of tables« by Cluster member Stefan Zieme. In his article, Stefan shows that upon translating Ptolemy's »Almagest« from Arabic into Latin in the second half of the twelfth century, Gerard of Cremona intervened into the mathematical structure of the »Almagest« and adjusted the tables of mathematical astronomy according to the textual elements. The article offers a novel approach to the history of astronomy by focusing on analog practices instead of their modern mathematical representations.
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Article »Kein Zurück zu Natur«. Copyright: FAZ
Cluster Member Martin Müller Writes a Critique of Geoengineering and Neoromantic Ecology in Times of Escalating Climate Crisis
The year 2022 was the year of »climate extremes«, concludes the report of the European Climate Observatory. The concentration of CO2 and methane in the earth's atmosphere is the highest it has been for millennia. Mitigation measures such as emissions reduction or reforestation remain disappointingly ineffective. It seems almost impossible to keep the global temperature rise below the critical two-degree mark. The habitability of the earth is at stake.
It is time for an ideological critique of today's predominant imperatives of climate rescue: neo-romantic ecology on the one hand and geoengineering on the other. Both approaches want to return to a nature that does not exist anymore – and perhaps never did. A critical comment by Martin Müller in the FAZ.
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Stone Web. Copyright: weißensee school of art and design berlin/ Natascha Unger & Idalene Rapp
Roundtable Discussion with Editors and Contributors of the Multidisciplinary Anthology
On Wednesday, January 25th, 2023, the publication »Architectures of Weaving« was launched with a transdisciplinary roundtable discussion at the Architecture Gallery Aedes in Berlin-Mitte. The editors Christiane Sauer, Mareike Stoll, Ebba Fransén Waldhör, and Maxie Schneider invited the public to exchange on the idea of »Architectures of Weaving« with book-contributors and members of the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« Peter Fratzl, Lorenzo Guiducci, Regine Hengge, Heike Illing-Günther and Karin Krauthausen.
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Exemplary visualization of the arcuate fasciculus. Copyright: Reisch, Böttcher, Tuncer, Schneider, Vajkoczy, Picht and Fekonja
Results of the Study Now Published on Pubmed
In this study, to which MoA Members Lucius Fekonja and Thomas Picht contributed to, the authors looked at a new way to use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS, a brain stimulation method) to map language in the brain. The new method uses information about the brain's white matter pathways to target specific areas of the brain that are important for language. The study compared this new method to a more general method that targets a wider area of the brain. We found that the new method was more effective in disrupting language abilities and provided more specific information about the brain regions involved in language. This new method could be useful in future studies of the brain's language network.
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Towards a Better Representation of Research Objects in Interdisciplinary Research
Publication About MoA's Current Research Information System now Published
Cluster researchers from humanities, design, natural and social sciences, and medicine work together, producing diverse outcomes which are all relevant for reporting to the funding agencies and society. Here, the authors Anna Arbuzova, Anne Hattwich, Alexander Struck and Martin Wagner describe the development of a researcher-oriented CRIS (Current Research Information System) embracing not only text publications but also other research outcomes on equal footing. They illustrate the flexibility of the system by introducing a new output category ›Research Prototypes‹. They discuss the challenges and benefits of a local CRIS solution for a small, non-permanent organization, in which researchers from several organizations are working on specific research topics.
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Cover »Engange with Fungi«, Berlin Universities Publishing (BerlinUP)
New Open Access Publication by Vera Meyer and Colleagues
The recently founded Open Access publishing house Berlin Universities Publishing (BerlinUP) has published its first book: »Engage with Fungi«. How do we want to live in the future? How do we take responsibility for the future of the Earth, for our environment, for our society? Fusing the creativity engines of science, art, and society enables us to develop visions for a sustainable future and viable paths towards it. The publication exemplifies such a transdisciplinary endeavor and focuses on collaborative research on and learning from fungi.
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Leben im Schleim. Copyright: FASZ
Read about MoA in the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung, the Purpose Magazine, The Praxis Journal and Tagesspiegel
We are very happy that »Matters of Activity« has been highlighted by many different (international) news outlets lately. Next to beautiful biofilm pictures and information from Regine Hengge, Cluster Members Wolfgang Schäffner and Maxime Le Calvé have been interviewed by Purpose Magazine and The Praxis Journal from Argentina. Wolfgang Schäffner has also been interviewed in connection to the BUA initiative »BUA Calling« by Tagesspiegel Berlin. With our involvement in the Berlin Science Week news about MoA will also travel fast in the upcoming weeks.
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Ramification point of 2. order on a Riemann surface (model: 258). © Göttinger Sammlung mathematischer Modelle und Instrumente.
New Publication by MoA Member Michael Friedman on Branch Curves and Algebraic Geometry in the 20th Century
The latest book of MoA member Michael Friedman was published in September 2022 within the series »Frontiers in the History of Science« at Birkhäuser Cham. »Ramified Surfaces« offers an extensive study on the convoluted history of the research of algebraic surfaces, focusing for the first time on one of its characterizing curves: the branch curve. Starting with separate beginnings during the 19th century with descriptive geometry as well as knot theory, the book focuses on the 20th century and will be of special interest for both historians of science and mathematicians.
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Cover: Museums, Transculturality, and the Nationstate. Copyright:transcript
New Publication by Cluster Member Nina Samuel
While the nation-state gave rise to the advent of museums, its influence in times of transculturality and post-/decolonial studies appears to have vanished. But is this really the case? With case studies from various geo- and sociopolitical contexts from around the globe, the contributors investigate which roles the nation-state continues to play in museums, collections, and heritage. They answer the question to which degree the nation-state still determines practices of collection and circulation and its amount of power to shape contemporary narratives. The volume thus examines the contradictions at play when the necessary claim for transculturality meets the institutions of the nation-state. With contributions by Stanislas Spero Adotevi, Sebastián Eduardo Dávila, Natasha Ginwala, Monica Hanna, Rajkamal Kahlon, Suzana Milevska, Mirjam Shatanawi, Kavita Singh, Ruth Stamm, Andrea Witcomb.
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Cover of the publication »Atem/Breath. Gestalterische, ökologische und soziale Dimensionen/ Morphological, Ecological and Social Dimensions«, edited by Linn Burchert and Iva Rešetar.
New Anthology Co-edited by Cluster Member Iva Rešetar
In the course of breathing – in the process of constant exchange and crossing of boundaries between the organism and its environment – air as an »immaterial» material becomes active. For the first time, this anthology, edited by Linn Burchert and Iva Rešetar, brings together studies on breath from the perspective of the arts and humanities, as well as experimental scientific and design practices. Focusing on the period from 1900 to the present day, the publication covers an era during which air has become a precarious medium: whether in the context of climate change or global pandemic, space technology or gas warfare, air is now co-created and manipulated by humans. Against this backdrop, breath appears as an elusive yet vital substance that reveals the interconnections between the physical, symbolic, technological and social realms.
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Advanced Materials Design Based on Waste Wood and Bark
New Paper by Members of »Weaving« published in »Philosophical Transactions A«
Cluster members Charlett Wenig, Friedrich J. Reppe, Karin Krauthausen, Peter Fratzl and Michaela Eder together with colleagues published a paper in the journal »Philosophical Transactions A« by »The Royal Society«. Trees belong to the largest living organisms on Earth and plants in general are one of our main renewable resources. Wood as a material has been used since the beginning of humankind. Today, forestry still provides raw materials for a variety of applications, for example in the building industry, in paper manufacturing and for various wood products.
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