Unfolding Material Dramaturgy
Mara Trübenbach Gives Talk in Prague
Object Space Agency | Performance Mara Trübenbach will give a talk at the symposium »Between Presence and Meaning« in Prague. In her talk »Unfolding Material Dramaturgy: Sensory Approaches in the Education of Architecture and Contemporary Performance«, Trübenbach connects the disciplines of architecture and performing arts by investigating how sensory knowledge can be employed in education to explore materials as performative entities – and thus dramaturgies. Building upon a performance lecture, Trübenbach moves beyond words and includes gestures, relational situations, and physical expressions. The talk is part of the panel »Dramaturgy in Scenography«. The symposium sheds light on contemporary performance as a space between presence and meaning, where dramaturgies emerge as intensities, energies, processes, and gestures rather than traditional narratives.
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Battle of the Brains
The Science Slam of the Berlin Clusters of Excellence
Material Form Function | Biodesign | Science Communication | Performance Slammin’ like there’s no tomorrow – at the Science Slam of the Berlin Clusters of Excellence, researchers try everything to entertain their audience, regardless of whether the subject is e.g. mathematics, neuroscience, or active material. For Matters of Activity, Associated Member Heidi Jalkh will present her latest research under the title »From Awe to Wonder - Designing Nature Inspired Materials«. Join us on November 7th at Roadrunner's Paradise Club, it will be a great evening! The event is part of Berlin Science Week 2024.
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»Dissect« Event at Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin, 04.11.2022. Foto: Samuel Bianchini. Copyright: Matters of Activity
Dissect
Films of Performances Online Now!
Cutting | Performance | More-Than-Human | Science Communication The two »Dissect« events held as part of Berlin Science Week 2022 on November 2nd and 4th were a great success and unique experience. In the sold-out Tieranatomisches Theater (TA T) at Humboldt-Universität Berlin, researchers from different disciplines discussed contemporary artworks, including Marco Donnarumma's »Amygdala« and Tomas Saraceno's »Spiders«. Konstantin Mitrokhov’s three films allow you to re-experience these fascinating events.
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Anna Schaeffner, Soft Collision at Ars Electronica 2024. Copyright: vog.photo / Ars Electronica Flickr
Ars Electronica 2024
Projects by Anna Schäffner and Clemens Winkler Exhibited in the 45th edition of the Festival
Filtering | Object Space Agency | Achievements | Haptics | Performance | Robotics | Teaching This year's Ars Electronica Festival in Linz featured projects by Cluster Members. Anna Schäffner's project »Soft Collision« (2024) was shown as part of the S+T+ARTs Prize. Meet the Artist sessions provided inspiring moments of exchange and debate with a diverse audience. Clemens Winkler's students of the MA Studio »Spiel&Objekt« at the Ernst Busch University of Theatre Arts Berlin were nominated for this year's Ars Electronica Campus Award. Congratulations on this honor!
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Visual No Risko, no Disko. Participatory Theatre Graduate Show 2024. Copyright: Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch
No Risko, No Disco
Last Tickets Available for Graduate Show at Ernst Busch University of Theatre Arts
Object Space Agency | Performance | Teaching | XR What can bioplastics, kinetic sand, and virtual reality offer as actors on the theatre stage, confronting participants with impulses to act on current socio-ecological crises? The students of the Master's program »Spiel und Objekt« at Ernst Busch University of Theatre Arts, taught by visiting professor for new media in theater practice and MoA member Clemens Winkler, invite you to answer this question on June 7th and 8th. Over these two days, students showcase the results of their process-oriented research spanning participative theater, sociology, speculative dramaturgy, technologies, and new media.
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Non-trivial music instrument at Boch Digital Vorspiel, 2 February 2024. Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé
Absolute Relativity
Workshop and Participatory Concert
Cutting | Brain | Graphic Anthropology | Haptics | Performance The NTMI (NonTrivial Musical Instrument) embodies the idea of making complex sound worlds playable by intuition. It enables children and laypersons to explore many sound synthesis processes playfully and allows expert musicians to realize their sonic imagination by adapting/expanding its open-source architecture. In the workshop on April 18th, organized by MoA member Maxime Le Calvé and conducted together with Alberto de Campo, Professor for Generative Art / Computational Art (Berlin University of the Arts), sound researcher Nico Daleman, and the Speculative Realities Lab, the team explained and demonstrated the central concepts, then dedicated time to hands-on playing, experimenting, and improvising, first on individual setups, and finally as multiple sources of influence on a single NTMI environment.
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Poster with Abstract Visual Associations. Copyright: Rüdiger Wenk
Cybernetic Auditive Associations
Lecture Performance Organized by »Object Space Agency« During Berlin Science Week 2023
Object Space Agency | Science Communication | Sound | Performance 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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Hybride Formen. Copyright: Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch
Hybrid Forms
A Participative, Artistic-Research Theater Piece of the Master's Program »Spiel und Objekt«, Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts, Taught by Clemens Winkler
Object Space Agency | Air | Collactive Materials | Science Communication | Teaching | Performance The participatory, artistic-research theater piece by the students of the Master's Program »Spiel und Objekt« at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts is divided into »Three Perspectives« and »Playing Emissions«. In »Playing Emissions« you enter the theme park of air futures! Experience the production of steam, body heat, sweat, feelings, breathing exercises in various eventful dramaturgies. How do we transform strong personal emotions from moments of crisis into new forms of collaborative play? The piece was created in collaboration with the experimental lab »CollActive Materials«, the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material« and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
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Film Poster. Copyright: Carly Lave
»PAAR« Movie Demo at Mercedes Benz Kino
VR Dance Film »Paar« Directed by Carly Lave, Supported by MoA
Object Space Agency | XR | Performance »Paar« is a VR dance film split between a physical world and a virtual world, using 360° video together with motion capture technology, to dance the theater to life in VR. The virtual environment of the Tieranatomisches Theater is created from the 3D photorealistic rendering of the theater, making for 180° of the virtual world and 180° of the physical world. In »Paar«, the dancers’ movements are tracked via motion capture technology. This recorded movement data was mapped into the virtual environment of the TA T through avatars. On February 24th at Mercedes Benz Kino in Berlin, »Paar« was in a movie demo from a Hamburg-based VR startup.
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Poster: Scoring Perspectives for Speculative Ethnography
Scoring Perspectives for Speculative Ethnography
Workshops and Interactive Performance with Dorte Bjerre Jensen
Object Space Agency | Cutting | Material Legacies | Speculative Design | Performance Cluster Members Maxime le Calvé and Yoonha Kim were delighted to invite to two days of stretching senses school workshops on 24th & 25th of November with Dorte Bjerre Jensen at the Cluster and in the Kunstgewerbemuseum at the »Design Lab #13: Material Legacies« exhibition. The two workshops helped pushing forward collective experiments in speculative ethnography and research-as-exhibition. They brought together bodies and spaces into motion, and evaluated the potentials of an interdisciplinary practice of »scoring« to explore, describe and analyze in first-person the activity of images, spaces, and materials based on the micro-phenomenological method.
Paar. Copyright: Gamelab Berlin
Premiere of the VR Dance Film »Paar«
On June 9th in the Tieranatomisches Theater
Object Space Agency | XR | Performance On Thursday, June 9th, at 7 pm, the premiere of »Paar« took place in the Tieranatomisches Theater. »Paar« is a VR dance film split between a physical world and a virtual world, using 360° video together with motion capture technology, to dance the theater to life in VR. The virtual environment of the Veterinary Anatomy Theater (Tieranatomisches Theater, TA T) is created from the 3D photorealistic rendering of the theater, making for 180° of the virtual world and 180° of the physical world. In Paar, the dancers’ movements are tracked via motion capture technology. This recorded movement data was mapped into the virtual environment of the TA T through avatars.
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Poster »Viral Theatres: Pandemic Past/Hybrid Futures«. Copyright: Francesca Sciarmella
Viral Theatres: Pandemic Past/Hybrid Futures
Exhibition Organized Together with ExC Temporal Communities
Object Space Agency | XR | Performance How hybrid is the future of theatre? In what ways has the pandemic changed how we work in theatre and gather in it as a public space? The opening symposium »Viral Theatres: Pandemic Past/Hybrid Futures« explored these questions. In three days of events, it took stock of how pandemic time has moved from a state of exception to new normality between viral outbreak and containment and what that means for theatrical production. You can visit the accompanying exhibition in the Tieranatomisches Theater (Veterinary Anatomy Theater) in Berlin until June 3rd.
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Anne Duk Hee Jordan, »Making Kin 3.0«, 2021, KIOSK, Ghent, Belgium. Site specific Installation, with works included »Atmospheres of Breathing«, 2020-2021, »Singing Saw«, 2018, »I am so ashamed«, 2020, »Staying with the trouble«, 2019. Curated by Simon Delobel. Photo: Paulius Sliaupa
About Clouds, Robots and the Sea – Thoughts on the Aesthetics of Metabolic Formations, Biodiversity and New Ecologies in Art and Design
Lecture and Artist Talk Now Online
Object Space Agency | Air | Stretching Materialities | Performance Are there aesthetic links between clouds, robots and the sea? The lecture by Babette Marie Werner, the performative talk with visual artist Anne Duk Hee Jordan and artistic and design researcher Clemens Winkler explored relations between visual interpretations of metabolic formations, biodiversity and new ecologies in art and design. This event was part of the exhibition »Stretching Materialities« by »Object Space Agency«. Follow the link to watch the full artist talk online.
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3D printed prototypes by B. Pekcagliyan, W. Rybakova, N. Vega, & P. Greta for »Subterranean Matters« Project, in »Stretching Senses School«, Matters of Activity.
How Can Dynamic Immersive Experiences Serve for Research and Educational Matters?
New Publications present Findings of Stretching Senses School at TA T Berlin
Object Space Agency | Publications | Stretching Materialities | XR | Performance Playful approaches can directly affect our sensory faculties beyond the realm of power and knowledge. The »stretching senses school« was an education-as-research project at the Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin (TA T) attached to the exhibition »Stretching Materialities«. This workshop-based contribution to the exhibition was framed as a collaboration between anthropology and immersive interaction art. Cluster members engaged with creative coders and digital artists in experimental curation work, with the intention to raise awareness of the public on the multiscale and embedded interconnections between humans and other earthly beings. Four new publications by MoA members and participants now introduce the method and implementation of the workshop which was carried out last fall in the Tieranatomisches Theater and discuss the experimental testing in three specific projects.
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Karin Krauthausen in conversation with Milo Rau. Copyright: Mosse Lectures, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Performance and Politics
MoA Member Karin Krauthausen in Conversation with Milo Rau at the Mosse Lectures
Weaving | Science Communication | Performance How does a Jesus film become a political campaign and a new distribution system for tomatoes and art? How do unlikely solidarities emerge between continents, between artists and activists, between genres and forms of production? What is a symbolic institution and how can we change the world through art? On Thursday, January 13th, 2022, director and author Milo Rau and MoA member Karin Krauthausen talked about »Performance and Politics«.
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Anna Kubelík, The Well-Tempered Hygrometer III, Object Lab of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Copyright: Matters of Activity.
The Well-Tempered Hygrometer
Sound Performances Accompanying the Exhibition »Stretching Materialities«
Object Space Agency | Performance | Stretching Materialities | Sound 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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MoA Exhibition »Stretching Materialities«. Copyright: Offshore Design
Exhibition »Stretching Materialities«
Hidden Activities in Objects and Spaces at Tieranatomisches Theater
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.
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Teaserpicture DRHR2021. Copyright: Ravi Kumar / Unsplash.
Digital Matters: Designing/Performing Agency for the Anthropocene
Registration Open Until 3 September 2021
Object Space Agency | Material Form Function | More-Than-Human | Science Communication | Performance From September 5th–7th, 2021, the 25th Annual DRHA Conference »Digital Matters: Designing/Performing Agency for the Anthropocene«, took place in Berlin. The event was hosted by the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and further supported by a partnership with the Cluster of Excellence »Temporal Communities - Doing Literature in a Global Perspective«.
The conference was co-organized by Cluster member Christian Stein and several MoA members were involved by contributing to the conference. MoA Director Claudia Mareis delivered a keynote lecture entitled »Designing resilience: on a third culture with many transitions« on Monday, September 6th.
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Banner Lab Tour »Stretching Materialities«. Copyright: Offshore Design
Lab Tour »Stretching Materialities«
Getting a Glimpse of the Exhibition
Object Space Agency | Science Communication | Stretching Materialities | Performance In June 2021, the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« invited to a special kind of lab tour: At Tieranatomisches Theater, the project
»Object Space Agency« opened virtual gates on June 29th, 3.45 pm to let you experience the hidden activities of materials:
Enter a tangible atmosphere, let the wind blow in your face, feel crackling rattan braids under your feet, immerse yourself in virtual reality perspectives and travel with our glass elevator. And it doesn't stop there: wear haptically vibrating clothing that responds to its surroundings and experience weathering over millennia with selected stone samples. In »Stretching Materialities«, you can experience what no one else sees: The objects and structures around us are active and alive. And we interact with them whether we realize it or not.
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Website DRHA Digital Matters. Copyright: Lucius Fekonja
Digital Matters: Designing/Performing Agency for the Anthropocene
Call for Participation for the 25th Digital Research in Humanities and Arts Conference
Material Form Function | Object Space Agency | Science Communication | More-Than-Human | Performance The 25th Digital Research in Humanities and Arts conference invited contributions and interventions that focused on transfers and interactions between digital and natural environments.
»Digital Matters
« took on the challenge of exploring new material and multi-species agencies, forms of embodiment, and interactions between the Performing Arts, the Humanities and the Natural Sciences that engage the sense of relationality and expanded scale the Anthropocene affords. The conference was organized by Cluster member Christian Stein (Project Object Space Agency) in cooperation with the Cluster of Excellence »Temporal Communities« and took place on September 5th–7th, 2021.
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Antart Field/Works Talk #6 Natalija Miodragović in Conversation with Ivana Franke. Copyright: Antart
Antart Field/Works Talk #6
Natalija Miodragović in Conversation with Ivana Franke
Object Space Agency | Performance »Softicity« is an online video performance which was streamed on March 25th. It featured soft fungi environments collected during fieldwork and is a study for possible symbiotic cohabitation with new urban materiality. A set of instructions engaged the remotely attending audience to question the sensory modalities, the materiality and the intra-climate of personal habitat. The online collages and videos will served as the imaginary of a different, softer city. This exhibit was part of a larger speculative research in atmospheres of fiber architectures. Natalija Miodragović takes art and space as vehicles for anticipating social change. The focus of her work is the perception and understanding of space, lightweight, flexible, unfoldable and textile structures.
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Field/Works. Copyright: Antart
Field/Works: Anthropology & Art Talks
Series Curated by Cluster Member Maxime Le Calvé
Object Space Agency | Graphic Anthropology | Performance 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, or performing arts are at the heart of their work, extending the established anthropological interest in writing as a medium of thought and knowledge sharing. The exhibition »Field/Works« presented works by anthropologists and artists who broke disciplinary boundaries, and whose practice foregrounded experimental, and open approaches to the theme »field/works«. This series was curated by Jen Clarke and Cluster Member Maxime Le Calvé.
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Golem Labor Performance. Copyright: Carly Lave, Gamelab Berlin
Golem Labor Conference
Gothe-Institut Prague and Gamelab host Conference on XR on 15 October 2020
Object Space Agency | XR | Performance The international workshop series Golem-Labor by the Goethe-Institut in cooperation with the Gamelab brought together contemporary dance and mixed reality technologies. In an online conference, XR experts and artists addressed the question of how the (performative) arts and (XR) technologies can interact.
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Enveloping atmospheres - experiment with structural textiles (knitted willow column). Copyright: Matters of Activity, Clemens Winkler, Natalija Miodragović. Photo Credit: Michelle Mantel
Stretching Practices
Clemens Winkler
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.
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