Editorial Dear Friends of »Matters of Activity«,

Summer is finally here and with that many interesting events. In this issue, we would like to make you aware of the international conference »Landwirtschaft und Literatur« as well as the workshop »Aerial Witness/ing«, next to lectures by Thomas Oehl, Natalija Miodragović, Dimitra Almpani-Lekka and other exciting news, of course!

Happy reading
Antje Nestler, Carolin Ott & Franziska Wegener

News | CollActive Materials | Air What role could air play in the future? At »CollActive Materials«, people from research and society gather to speculate on this question. A public exhibition is created with speculative prototypes from possible and impossible futures in a co-design process. Our experimental laboratory for science communication is now part of »Bürger schaffen Wissen«.

»Bürger schaffen Wissen« (citizens create knowledge) is the central platform for citizen science in Germany. The platform presents, connects and supports Citizen Science projects since November 2013. Its main purpose is to give an overview of citizen science projects to illustrate the concept of citizen science, to further develop the landscape of citizen science and so increasing its visibility within the German public and discourse.

The online plattform Bürger schaffen Wissen is a joint project by ↗ Wissenschaft im Dialog (gGmbH) and the ↗ Museum für Naturkunde Berlin - funded by the ↗ German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). ↗ 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 30 Tanja Börzel and Janika Spannagel from the Cluster of Excellence ↗ Contestations of the Liberal Script (SCRIPTS) at Freie Universität Berlin explain the relationship between science and democracy and how cultural change, economization, and alternative ways of getting knowledge threaten scientific freedom today.

»Exzellent Erklärt« is now on LinkedIn. Follow and share all news related to the podcast: ↗ https://www.linkedin.com/company/exzellent-erklaert/
Listen to the new episode ↗ here.

Material Form Function | Computational Design Karola Dierichs gives a talk on her research into designed granular materials at the Lorentz Center in Leiden in the Netherlands as part of the international workshop »Getting into Shape – Pushing for Exotic Particulate Media Mechanics« in the session »Overview of Recent Work on Non-convex Particle Systems« on June 22nd, 1.30 pm. The Workshop considers the spectrum of ›shape effects‹, ranging from intrinsically anisometric grains to easily deformable particles. The former is imbued by construction with a sense of direction; the latter obtains a non-trivial shape due to its local deformation environment. The workshop therefore aims to bring together a selection of upcoming and leading academic and private sector scientists from various fields that consider such particle shape effects to discuss the most fruitful experimental, numerical and theoretical directions for future work and application development in the field. → more

Object Space Agency | Cutting | Air | Haptics On Monday, June 26th, anthropologists of art and science Marina Peterson (University of Texas in Austin) & Maxime Le Calvé (MoA) invited to »Nervous Listening«, an experimental ethnography workshop, realized together with cloud designer Clemens Winkler (MoA). Entering the Central Laboratory that day, participants were greeted with balloons to inflate with their breath and a 285-hertz »Theta« sound bath, which they were invited to explore haptically through the red latex bubbles. Blown into tension, they made us subtly reactive to air vibration. Thus attuned, we started listening nervously to the atmosphere around and to each other’s vocal utterances. → more

Weaving | Filtering | Cutting | Material Form Function | Object Space Agency | Symbolic Material | Doctoral Program Under the title »matterscapes« the 2nd cohort of the MoA doctoral program gave insights into their dissertation projects.  By researching modes of activating and passivating matter in named contexts, this year’s progress presentation demonstrated and discussed the current research progress in one of the cohort’s ›natural habitats‹ — the studio on the 4th floor. All Cluster Members were invited to listen, share ideas, identify common grounds, offer suggestions, and exchange with one another. → more

Symbolic Material Am Mittwoch, den 28. Juni, und Donnerstag, den 29. Juni, begrüßte »Matters of Activity« Wissenschaftler*innen der Akademie für Europäische Kulturen der Tongji-Universität Shanghai, um den bereits seit 2016 bestehenden Austausch über gemeinsame Forschungsthemen fortzusetzen. In Ergänzung der philosophischen und kunsthistorischen Ausrichtung um naturwissenschaftliche und designtheoretische Perspektiven war neben übergreifenden Diskussionen zur Materialität ein thematischer Schwerpunkt die Beschäftigung mit Wasser als Active Matter, die auch Gegenstand der aktuellen Clusterforschung ist. Die Veranstaltung fand auf Deutsch und auf Englisch statt und stand einer Anzahl von zehn Interessierten offen. Die Planung und Durchführung der Veranstaltung lagen bei Cluster-Direktor Wolfgang Schäffner und Sabine Marienberg, Projektleiterin »von Symbolic Material«. → more

Symbolic Material Wir laden herzlich ein zum Gastvortrag von Dr. Thomas Oehl (LMU München) am 4. Juli 2023 um 18:15 Uhr im Zentrallabor des Exzellenzclusters in der Sophienstraße 22a in Berlin-Mitte. Thomas Oehl spricht auf Einladung der »Symbolic Material«-Gruppe aus philosophischer Sicht über die Aktivität von Materie, wobei er besonders auf das Verständnis bei Hegel und Adorno eingehen wird. Die Response wird Ivan Quartesan von der Università degli Studi di Torino geben. → more

Object Space Agency | Fungi/Mycelium MY-CO PLACE is now open! The TU Berlin transdisciplinary urban laboratory is a learning station, exhibition space and discussion platform that places mushrooms and mushroom materials at the center of the debate about a future way of building and living. In this place, people from science, art and urban society come together and discuss their ideas for a jointly built and sustainable future. In MY-CO PLACE, visitors can come into direct contact with the microscopically small but macroscopically tangible world of fungi. MY-CO PLACE is a transdisciplinary real laboratory by biotechnologist and molecular biologist Prof. Vera Meyer (TU Berlin) and Prof. Sven Pfeiffer (University of Bochum). Vera Meyer opened an accompanying lecture series about fungi as the future building material on May 15th. Natalija Miodragović and Dimitra Almpani-Lekka will give a talk on textile architecture associated with mushrooms on July 10th. → more

Event | CollActive Materials | Science Communication Dr. Kristin Werner and Antje Nestler will present the experimental laboratory for science communication ↗ CollActive Materials at Berlin University Alliance's »ExchangeLab:WissKomm« on July 11th, 9.00 am at the Lichthof (Ost) of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Featured in this session is also the science communication cooking show »Nerd's Kitchen« by Tom Lilge. If you want to participate, please contact samuel.monigatti@berlin-university-alliance.de.

Weaving Über ihr initiales Wirken für menschliche, tierische und pflanzliche Lebensformen hinaus bildet die Landwirtschaft nicht nur ein kontinuierliches Element in der Entwicklung vielfältigster Kulturtechniken, sondern beschäftigt als Topos über Jahrtausende hinweg die kollektive Imagination. Genres wie Georgik und Bukolik, aber auch unterschiedlichste Erzählmodelle zeugen bis heute von den Wechselverhältnissen zwischen Agrikultur und Textkultur. Die Tagung, organisiert von den Clustermitgliedern Stephan Kammer und Karin Krauthausen, geht dem Themenkomplex »Landwirtschaft und Literatur« aus literaturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive nach, aber bezieht dabei wesentlich auch medientheoretische und kulturhistorische Fragen und Wissensbestände ein. Adressiert wird das Feld in seiner ganzen historischen Breite: von Georgik und Bukolik und deren neuzeitlichen Nachwirkungen über erzählerische Kultivierungsunternehmungen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts bis zum Erzählen der Gegenwart. → more

Material Form Function | Object Space Agency | Air Air does not obey nor care about human-made territorial borders, yet it affects and activates various material thresholds! Cluster Members Léa Perraudin, Emilia Tikka, Martin Müller and Clemens Winkler come together at the interstices of critical humanities scholarship, speculative design and new material practices July 25th–29th during »The Future of Life Summer School«, an exploratory summer program organized by the Bio Design Lab, an incubator for collaboration within Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. → more

Event | Temporal Communities From Wednesday, July 5th to July 7th, 2023, the 3rd Annual Conference of the EXC 2020 »Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective«, will take place at Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.

Arts – be they texts, books, images, films, or performances – travel through time with their materialities constantly changing. While the spatial dynamics of travelling materialities have already been conceptualized in a variety of ways, the conference will shift attention primarily to material mobilities in time: Materials move through time, they are transferred and transformed, they decay and are restored, repaired, conserved, revalued.  Even where works of art appear stable and durable in their material structure, their appearances are based on material processes into which change is inscribed. What role does the mutability of the material play in the practice of the arts? What opportunities lie in this material mutability and what unpredictability? How do material transformations effect the perception of artistic works, but also the production and experience of time? How are the relations between materials and times negotiated in theories and discourses of the arts? How does the professional stance towards materials change over time – for example from the perspective of artists, writers, performers, curators and conservators?

Based on these discussions, the conference will also provide contributions to the Cluster’s ongoing research on temporal communities. Communities need material resources, need infrastructures, and throughout history and the present the arts have provided forms and models for such material ways of community building. How do collectives and communities in the arts materialize today? How can communities sustainably and fairly manage the material resources that are indispensable for (never exclusively) their existence and for (never exclusively) their future continuity? What do the arts contribute today by, on the one hand, pointing to the indispensable material foundations of any form of sociality and communality, and, on the other hand, by critically reflecting on the pressing ethical, political, ecological, and economic problems that result from material (co)dependencies?

Please register by June 23rd, 2023. See the detailed program with all speakers ↗ here.

job The project »Weaving« is currently looking for a student assistant in the field of History. Apply now! → more

job The Chair of Art and Visual History is currently looking for a student assistant in the field of History. Take your chance! → more

Job Material databases in the context of material genome initiatives are expected to accelerate engineering of future materials aimed at alleviating societal challenges (NPJ Comp. Mat. 5, 41, 2019). To leverage material genome efforts into technology, the FAIR data infrastructure was proposed for findable (F), accessible (A), interoperable (l), and reusable (R) material metadata initiatives (Sci. Data 3, 160018, 2016; Nature 604, 635, 2022). Metadata contextualizes the preparation, characterization, figure of merits, and related parameters of a material in the
application of choice. Visualizing metadata and exploring their quality, design, and societal impact criteria are future challenges in the field.

Description
Here, you will contribute to the OpenSemanticWorld GraphTool developed in collaboration with Fraunhofer ISC (Javascript, Python) to visualize and explore data structured in schematized formats (JSON-like). You will study filtering and clustering algorithms that may run over schematized formats (schemas) or work with the GraphTool Javascript GUI to call data processing algorithms in real-time. To visualize metadata, you will build graphs representing schemas. A schema can be considered a network of definitions and classes of material properties,
with the ultimate goal to describe a material's genealogy: The past, present, and future of a material.

Team
You will work with programmers, data scientists, and experimental physicists, employing GraphTool Dr. M. A. Popp, Fraunhofer ISC) to hierarchically and interactively visualize metadata from the NOMAD database (Dr. L. Ghiringhelli),
NeXus formats (Dr. S. Brockhauser) in a time-dependent manner (Dr. M. Kühbach). Prof. C.-A. Palma, Prof. C. Draxl, Prof. W. Schäffner and Prof. C. Mareis (Matters of Activity) will help measure model material datasets by means of simulations, low-temperature spectroscopies, or provide historical data aimed at material design and discovery.

Application
A BSc in Physics, Math, Computer Science, or related is required. Please send your application (containing a cover letter, CV, copy of BSc certificate, and two contact persons) electronically as a single PDF file to:
palma@physik.hu-berlin.de
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
IRIS Adlershof