Workshop Organized by Cluster Professor Robert Stock and Magdalena Zdrodowska, Jagiellonian University
Recently, there has been growing scholarship in design, art, technology, and science regarding their relationships with disability, thus exploring issues of materiality as well as complex embodiment and cognitive difference. In opposition to previous narratives, these novel and critical accounts center on disability as a creative force, an embodied experience that fosters innovation and allows for new affordances of already known and circulating objects, practices and knowledges. This workshop, organized by Cluster member Robert Stock, Junior Professor for Cultures of Knowledge, and Magdalena Zdrodowska, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Audiovisual Arts of the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, aims to challenge and suggest to pluralise the established notions of the normal, normalcy or normativity in the history and theory of technology and design.
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Terminalia catappa in front of the compound of the lineage Delesolu. Drawings by Delphine and Elodie Chevalme, Ojé, October 2017, from Field/Works II, online exhibition 2024.
Online Exhibition Curated by Maxime Le Calvé and Jen Clarke
For anthropologists and artists »doing fieldwork« in contemporary worlds, art can be much more than an object of investigation. Curation and creation through visual, audio, and performing arts are integral to our practices and enrich writing as a medium of thought and knowledge sharing. This online exhibition curated by MoA member Maxime Le Calvé and Jen Clarke was funded by EASA as part of the EASA2024 conference in Barcelona. The selected works explore various modes of living with: with nature, infrastructures, family – through connections to fish, plants, water, land, and sound. From the Salish sea, to plant life in Africa, considering sound and water pollution in Barcelona, and food and seeds in New Zealand.
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Cover, Bild: Maxime Le Calvé, Gestaltung: Caroline Lei. Copyright: transcript
Maxime Le Calvés Buch über die Atmosphäre, Netzwerke und Reputation in einem Hamburger Nachtclub erschienen
Nach über dreißig Jahren ist der Golden Pudel Club noch immer ein wichtiger Treffpunkt im Hamburger Stadtteil St. Pauli. Cluster-Mitglied Maxime Le Calvé zeigt anhand dieser Institution, wie eine lebendige Nachtclubatmosphäre aus der Interaktion zwischen Personal und Publikum in einem musikalischen und materiellen Umfeld entsteht. Anhand von umfangreichem und bisweilen unterhaltsamem ethnografischem Material zeigt er, wie dieser spezielle Raum neue Netzwerke, Stile oder Reputationen hervorbringt und fördert. Dabei wird deutlich: Der Pudel schafft eine transformative Atmosphäre, die den beeindruckenden Einfluss des Clubs auf die lokale und internationale Musikszene erklären kann.
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Poster with Abstract Visual Associations. Copyright: Rüdiger Wenk
Lecture Performance Organized by »Object Space Agency« During Berlin Science Week 2023
In this lecture performance, Rüdiger Wenk presents his auditive associations of images in the plural based on his cybernetic algorithm as part of analog sound synthesis. Rüdiger Wenk first explains the basics of his cybernetic algorithm consisting of envelope follower (signal input), modal synthesis (body), and asynchronous granular synthesis (space) in the context of feedback within this current lecture performance.
The visual works, which will be shown in the course of the Berlin Science Week 2023 by the Institute of Art History of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in cooperation with »Object Space Agency« on November 7th, can be seen from 6:00 pm in the Medientheater. The lecture performance starts at 7:00 pm.
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Final Presentation »The Tone of Things«. Copyright: weißensee school of art and design berlin
Final Presentation of the Interdisciplinary Semester Project (eLAB)
In the interaction with our environment, all senses play together shaping this experience. In addition to visual and tactile qualities, physical things also have a sound inherent in their material and form, which can be experienced in the process of interacting with them. Objects of the technosphere often use sound only in a very primitive form to convey information. In this project, we explored the auditive space in order to enrich everyday objects and situations through consciously designed sound experiences. The goal of the studio project, finally presented on February 16th, 3.00 pm was to create an interaction or an object that exemplifies this new quality and thus establishes the »tone« as a dimension to be designed.
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Kanzi, a bonobo (Pan paniscus), performing a match-to-sample task at his home Ape Initiative
in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. Print-screen from: Margiotoudi K et al., Proc. R. Soc. B, February 2022 (https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.1717) [see online video materials].
MoA Member Friedemann Pulvermüller Involved in Significant International Study
Is the ability to perceive connections between words that »sound round« and things that »look round« specific to humans? Or can other animals, including our closest living relatives, the great apes, also infer that a meaningless speech sound is ›sharp‹ or ›round‹ and refers to a curved or spiky shape? An international and multidisciplinary team of researchers, including MoA member Friedemann Pulvermüller, has now been able to answer this question using a new experiment with a language-competent bonobo. The results of the collaborative study by multidisciplinary researchers in Europe and the United States, led by Konstantina Margiotoudi, was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B on February 2nd, 2022.
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Anna Kubelík, The Well-Tempered Hygrometer III, Object Lab of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Copyright: Matters of Activity.
Sound Performances Accompanying the Exhibition »Stretching Materialities«
The »Well-Tempered Hygrometer« by artist and architect Anna Kubelík was an installative and constructive sculpture from 2013. The title reveals the hybrid character of the work: on the one hand, the artist has conceived it as a geometric interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier by making very direct and precise references to this work which is fundamental for keyboard instruments. The sound performances accompany the exhibition »Stretching Materialities« by designers and researchers of the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity«, which could be visited in the adjacent building of the Tieranatomisches Theater.
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Well-Tempered Hygrometer. Stretching Materials as a Sound Installation. Copyright: Anna Kubelik and Oliver Schmid
The artist Anna Kubelik and the musician Oliver Schmid were invited by »Object Space Agency« to exhibit and perform the sculptural installation »Wohl-Temperiertes Hygrometer« in the Objekt Labor.
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