Stretching Time/ Researching Collections – Temporal Morphologies and Transformation of Matter

This exhibition section is based on the assumption that different concepts of time, of activity and passivity of materials – questions about the relationship between time and matter – are embodied in collection objects. To become aware of them and discuss them, field studies have been conducted in various Humboldt Collections. In this process, the Geological-Geomorphological Collection proved particularly productive for questions about the relationship between time and matter. The design of the vitrine, its changes throughout the exhibition and the exploratory elements that actively involve the visitors' senses are the outcome of this research.

The research was done in close collaboration with the head of the collection, geologist Prof. Mohsen Makki. A central result of numerous visits and conversations with him was that stones must be understood as an extremely active material. Without stones there would be no life on earth. Plate tectonics must be understood as a life-sustaining force that keeps the cycle of stones going. Stones are in a constant process of formation and transformation. They are an active material, but the millions of years they need to take shape, decay and regenerate are beyond human scale.

Some of the questions that were asked during the research: How does matter store time? How quickly or slowly does matter visibly change and what role does this play in collections? How does this relate to practices of activation, passivation, and conservation of objects? In which way can stones be considered as active or passive? How does the infinite cycle of stones relate to the changes of matter triggered by man in the Anthropocene? In which way are stones related to the politics of time? Can weathered stones be understood as embodying the concepts of remembering and collecting in museums?

Implementation

»Stretching Time« offered four different levels of experience: first, the geological objects in the vitrine, based on the research in the Humboldt collections and on the conversations with Prof. Makki; second, evolving contributions by exhibition visitors, confirming the idea of an ›exhibition-in-progress‹; third, experimental stations to experience the haptic dimension of the relationship between time and matter in stones; and forth, the virtual level for the sensory experience of stones as active matter.

1) How does time transform matter? The vitrine showed aspects of the cycle of the natural activity of stones up to the role the intervention of man plays in the life of stones. The dynamics of weather and atmospheric forces are essential actors for the changing cycle of stones and their transformations over time – a process called ‘weathering.’ Morphologies of time emerge. The exhibition displayed such morphologies created by rain, wind, snow, and plant roots.

Depending on the climatic zone and mineral composition, weathering processes produce not only a great variety of shapes but also an amazing diversity of colors. Time paints its colors into the soils through weathering processes. Weathering is so important to geology that it even functions as a collection strategy (i.e., it drives acquisition decisions in the Humboldt Collections).

Geologists know that stones are always in motion. As they slowly weather, new stones form – in rock cavities or deep underground in crevices like the crystal desert rose or calcite. In the world of stones, there is no decay without growth. Time marks stones with cracks, caused by geological movements or climate change. On these stones we see them as fine lines painted on their surfaces. But those cracks can close again through geochemical or mechanical processes over millions of years. This can be called a self-healing power of stones that unfolds beyond human time. ​​

Yet the time of stones and the time of mankind are increasingly intertwined since we have significantly altered the earth’s surface. Man has created anthropogenic soils and rocks from production waste and industrial ruins, some of them highly toxic. The soils in Berlin and in cities in general serve as archives of urban development and human activity.

Through the overlaying of the natural soil with substrate of anthropogenic or technogenic origin, new soils are created. These soils have new properties and are classified differently than natural soils. (The samples of Berlin soils on display are part of an ongoing research project of Prof. Makki, see here: https://www.berlin.de/sen/uvk/umwelt/bodenschutz-und-altlasten/vorsorgender-bodenschutz/informationsgrundlagen-fuer-den-bodenschutz/kartieranleitung/.)

A historical perspective on anthropogenic rocks is provided by a selection of different slags from the Middle Ages.

Since the Bronze Age, 6000 years ago, people have begun to produce new materials, e.g. ceramics. In these and other processes, people have accidentally created new types of solid rocks, which were the waste products of metal, iron or glass production. However, these man-made rocks can be dangerous, as they can also contain heavy metals. Especially in contact with water, dangerous metals dissolve from them, e.g. arsenic or cadmium. Among the slags in this shelf there is also a volcanic rock from Iceland, which is of purely natural origin – visually indistinguishable, it consists of almost the same chemical components, but without the toxic ones.

2) Through conversations with visitors, the exhibition evolved over time and was expanded to include two contributions that addressed the question of the boundaries between living and dead matter. The Scanning electron micrographs of geological processes by Prof. Rochus Blaschke (1930-2019) were one of the first magnifications of weathering stones produced in Europe in the 1980s.

Blaschke was a professor for mineralogy at the Institute for Medical Physics at the University of Münster and his main research subject was the aging of stones and concretes. The blow-ups of the surfaces locate stones in the intermediate realm between the organic and the inorganic, thus extending the question of the activity of stones from the realm of scientific visualization. The second addition came from Berlin-based artist Lena Dues

The installation »Auturgy of Carbamide« consisted of two glass cylinders and a petri dish filled with a urea solution. During the exhibition, crystals formed through evaporation: the material urea built crystalline sculptures without any further human intervention, thus referring to the self-activity of materials thematized in the exhibition. Organic urea occupies a special place in chemistry, as its artificial synthesis from inorganic raw materials in the laboratory in 1828 disproved the principle of vitalism, the idea that organic substances could only be produced by living things through so-called ›vital force‹. Following on from this, Dues' intervention questions the concept of a rigid separation between inanimate and animate nature and offers a fluid transition in opposition to it.

The Experience

One of our main research questions of the exhibition was how to make the activity of matter experienceable and tangible in space.

An important experiential level of the exhibition was undoubtedly the vitrine itself, which encouraged visitors to talk and ask questions, and gave rise to a variety of conversations: For example, about the perspective of human time given the time spans of geology, but also about issues of memory. Narrations and memories are saved in stones in a similar way: either by collecting stories of their holders or by the specificity of their formation. Some were transformed by weathering processes, some by the influence of human beings. Whereas one might consider stones as dead matter, the exhibition research suggests stones as a changeable and transformative matter.

But how can you physically touch time and translate the fine surface structure and the dense mass of stones into an experience in the exhibition space? The exhibition gave two tentative answers to that question: First, through an invitation to hands-on experimentation and second, through breaking down the boundaries between the physical and the virtual world.

In two hands-on stations, the exhibition offered haptic experiments to sense the relationship between time and matter and explore the temporality of objects from the Humboldt University’s Geological-Geomorphological Collection

The massive metal vitrines in the TA T were the conceptual starting point for the first station. They date back to the 19th century when they originated to protect exhibition objects from visitors and their physicality: from their exhalations, their touch, their body heat. To this day, the quarantined object is our museum standard. In this exhibition, however, we stretch the notion of the vitrine by turning it into an experimental research apparatus, inviting visitors to experiment with temporal changes of materiality and a different kind of knowledge – a knowledge of the hand, of the sense of touch.

In geological research, sensory knowledge is of central importance. It is profoundly multisensory and closely related to haptic and olfactory and sometimes even gustatory impressions. The story of the formation and composition of earth types and weathered rocks is often revealed to geologists through the knowledge that comes from touch, smell and taste.

In the Haptic Box, visitors were encouraged to touch time: to sense decay and transformation of rocks by touching sediments of different grain sizes with their fingers. At the Hands-On Table, they could experience weathering by applying 10-percent hydrochloric acid to dolomite and limestone, simulating in seconds the effects of rainfall that would otherwise take centuries.

The VR Level of the Exhibition

The second answer to the question of how to make the temporality of stones tangible in the exhibition space resulted from a close collaboration with the artist Studio Above & Below. In several intensive conversations we exchanged information about the research in the Geological-Geomorphological Collection and about the discussions with Prof. Makki. Based on this dialogue, Studio Above & Below developed the VR experience »Geological Performers«. Visitors could enter an alternative time capsule that allows them to perceive the dynamic changes of weathering – a process so slow that is usually impossible to detect by the naked human eye. Inspired by Berlin’s weather, visitors experienced different atmosphere pockets, which represent different types of weathering, impacting the generative forms and digital materials of the virtual stones.

External real-time weather data entered the virtual indoor space, transforming into parameters such as movement, speed, forms of computer graphics, cracks – tangible to the visitors through the fantastical time capsule. To activate the animations in the VR, visitors had to pick up a 3-D-printed stone with a tracker, triggering the virtual weathering of the stones.

The experience created a sensibility for the active change of matter, which is constantly happening around us, shaping the past, present and the next million years: stones around us are active and alive.

The second virtual level to experience the materiality of stones led us back to the Hands-On Table and to a small white pumice stone in a box, which visitors were invited to touch (Fig. 8). Through the virtual elevator, they could enter its inner structure as VR experience and explore how it feels to move inside a rock.

How does the project relate to the exhibition as a whole?

The research on collections related on different levels to the sensual and temporal aspects of the exhibition and the other projects and asks how we can enter into a dialogue with the temporality of the stones. This becomes particularly evident in connection with Clemens Winkler’s cloud that floats in the central rotunda. Moisture is one of the key factors in weathering processes. Temperature and the chemical composition of rainfall also play a crucial role. In our exhibition, the physical presence of visitors is imprinted directly onto the micro level of the cloud’s chemistry. As more visitors pass through the rotunda of the TA T, more human particles become part of the cloud. If the moisture in the cloud triggers a weathering process in a stone, does the visitor also become part of this weathering – or of the stone itself? How can we conceptualize the short period in which the physicality of the visitor and the stone come together – and how does this process relate to the time of the Anthropocene and to human-generated rocks? The goal of this exhibition segment – as for the entire exhibition – was to enable new questions and not to provide definite answers.

Outlook

The basic question of the exhibition as a research method is one of the central concerns of the Object Space Agency research group, which will also be the focus of the second work phase (2023-25). In particular, exploring the activity and passivity of collection objects - with a focus on conservation methods - will be further addressed in Nina Samuel's sub-project. A workshop on water as a unique element in conservation is planned as a continuation of the exhibition's discourses in 2023.