Editorial Dear Friends of »Matters of Activity«,

With today's issue, we cordially invite you to the closing event of the exhibition »Design #13: Material Legacies« on February 23rd, a Round Table »On Fibers and Mixtures« at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin. We would also like to draw attention to the fact that the results of students from the interdisciplinary seminar »Coding IxD«, which completed its 7th edition this semester on the topic of personal tracking, are on display until this Thursday at CityLab Berlin.

As always, we would like to highlight new publications of our Members as well as upcoming events by »Matters of Activities« and its partners. We are especially looking forward to a new talk series by »Object Space Agency«  in the BBK printing workshops beginning in March 2023.

Happy reading,
Antje Nestler, Carolin Ott & Franziska Wegener

Object Space Agency | Publications 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. → more

Symbolic Material | Publications 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. → more

Material Form Function | Weaving | Tree Bark Charlett Wenig and her interdisciplinary team of researchers from »Matters of Activity« and the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) has investigated how the natural properties of native tree bark can be used to create a standardized product for long-term use without the addition of adhesives. In doing so, they have created bark panels by peeling and drying via hot pressing, which could be used in interior design or furniture and packaging, for example, through industrial production. → more

News | Exzellent erklärt The German science podcast ↗ Exzellent erklärt (»Excellence Explained«) on current scientific topics reflects the research diversity of Germany’s leading research institutions and Clusters of Excellence, from Africa Studies to Quantum Physics. In each episode, listeners can expect insights into the interdisciplinary work of one research network. The researchers of the Clusters of Excellence, funded by ↗ DFG, talk to podcaster Larissa Vassilian about how they want to find scientifically sound answers to relevant topics of our time – for the society of tomorrow. In Episode 26 you can learn more about the vision of the Cluster of Excellence ↗ PhenoRob - Robotics and Phenotyping for Sustainable Crop Production at the University of Bonn together with the Research Centre Jülich to enable more productive, resource-efficient and sustainable crop production by optimizing breeding and agricultural management through the development and use of new technologies.

»Exzellent Erklärt« is now on LinkedIn. Follow and share for all news related to the podcast: ↗ https://www.linkedin.com/company/exzellent-erklaert/
Listen to the new episode here: ↗ https://exzellent-erklaert.podigee.io/26-phenorob-autonome-systeme-in-der-nutzpflanzenproduktion

Symbolic Material | Publications 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. → more

Symbolic Material | Publications | Climate 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. → more

Filtering | Teaching | MoA Design Research Studio Unconsciously or consciously, we record our routines, for example by using a pedometer, marking our favorite places in the city, or monitoring our electricity and water consumption. How can this personal data be made tangible? This is the question that students from the Department of Computer Science at Freie Universität Berlin and the Department of Product Design at the weißensee school of art and design have been exploring together as part of the interdisciplinary course »Coding IxD.« The results of the project are presented in an interactive exhibition at CityLAB Berlin from February 16th-23rd, 2023, between 11 am and 5 pm. → more

Weaving On February, 21st, 2023, an online panel with international researchers, among them MoA Member Karin Krauthausen, investigates the interventions of German ethnologist Hubert Fichte, who has spent considerable time in West African countries in the 1970s and 1980s. The event organized by the University of Ghana is taking place virtually at 4 pm CET. → more

Symbolic Material On February 22nd-23rd, 2023, MoA Member Michael Friedman and Daniela Zetti of TU Munich will organize a workshop at the Deutsches Museum entitled »Paper(s) as Epistemic Carrier of Knowledge. A history of provoking thought and memory«. The event aims to think on paper as an object of circulations of knowledge and of practices of enabling and transforming collective memory. Paper here should be however considered in plural, not only due to the various functions it had and has, but also since its characterization as an epistemic object. From MoA, Stefan Zieme will contribute to the workshop with the talk »The Transmission of the Almagest in Manuscript Culture«. → more

Material Form Function | Yarns/Fibers | Material Legacies | Science Communication The Round Table »On Fibers and Mixtures« was part of the format series accompanying the exhibition »Design Lab #13: Material Legacies« at Kunstgewerbemuseum and at the same time its closing event. The Round Tables represented each of the exhibiting projects and the involved researchers and artists in a moderated dialogue with guests from different disciplines. The format brought a variety of perspectives to the exhibited works, its material legacies, and entangled discourses and invites the public to engage. On February 23rd, Professor for material design and Cluster Member Christiane Sauer discussed their work with Emanuele Coccia, Peter Fratzl, and Beatriz Morales, moderated by architect and Cluster Member Iva Rešetar. → more

Event | News | Gamelab »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 will be mapped into the virtual environment of the TA T through avatars. On February 24th at Mercedes Benz Kino in Berlin, »Paar« will be in a movie demo from a Hamburg-based VR startup.

Please contact Carly Lave, if you want to join!

»Paar« has also been accepted into more film festivals: Mammoth Film Festival from March 2nd-6th in California and New Media Film Festival in Los Angeles from June 7th-9th. Congratulations!

News | Event | Object Space Agency In March, OSA Talks, a new series of events organized by members of the project »Object Space Agency« kicks off with talks by Jenny Graser, Curator for Contemporary Arts at Berlin's Kupferstichkabinett, and Fabian Goppelsröder, from Philosophische Hochschule Braunschweig. Following on from the exhibition project → Stretching Materialities, the series of events aims to bring together experts from the fields of collection and exhibition practice, design practice, the sciences, and theory to discuss the »stretching« of materials and their agency in relation to objects and spaces. The talks are held in German and take place at the BBK printing workshops. → more

job The Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« is looking to assist in content creation for science communication and digital media and for (technical) support in analog and digital events. Applications from students are explicitly encouraged. The position is compatible with your studies. Apply now! → more

Event | UniSysCat The Cluster of Excellence UniSysCat is happy to invite you to this inspiring special event. The joint event with the philosopher and chemist PD Dr. Jens Soentgen (Universtät Augsburg) and the artist Julius von Bismarck (Berlin) will take place on Thursday, March 2nd, 2023, at 05:15 pm in form of an on-site event in room C 264, Chemiegebäude, Straße des 17. Juni 115, TU Berlin. To participate, please register with Congeno using the link below:
↗ https://events.tu-berlin.de/de/events/01861684-8886-79a4-ac1d-a2513b060f92
 

Abstract
The wildfires on the Mediterranean coasts, in Australia, and elsewhere around the world have brought the fire into the media. At the same time, the most important guiding principle of European policy is ›zero emissions‹, an emission-free society that is to be realized in a socially just way by 2050. In essence, this goal means a farewell to fire. A pact that has existed for about a million years, that was the condition for all human culture, science, and history is to be dissolved. That pact, its past, and its future will be analyzed from a philosophical perspective.

The evening will combine reflections from philosophy, chemistry, cultural history, and art. By this, we contribute to discussing one of the major tasks and challenges of the energy transformation and in particular catalysis research: the necessary, yet highly complex replacement of fire in many branches of industry, technology, and culture by low-energy chemical processes, driven by catalysis.