Dear friends of »Matters of Activity«,

As usual, the current issue includes several reports on workshops held and achievements of our members, as well as previews of upcoming events! We are particularly pleased about the publication of the volume »Trazos. Edicion Biomateriales« by MoA Associated Member Heidi Jalkh, which is the first Spanish-language publication on biomaterials and to which several MoA members have contributed. We are excited to see what developments the resulting improved exchange between Spanish-speaking and English-speaking experts will trigger.
We are also very proud that some of our research results are being exhibited at the Futurium and that the previous workshops, in which MoA researchers and guests speculate on the future of materials, were fully booked. So, register quickly for the upcoming events and take a look at the exhibition, it's worth it!

Happy reading!
Antje Nestler, Carolin Ott & Franziska Wegener

Material Form Function | Temporality The workshop »Critical Times. Part II: Ecologies of Relation« brought together Post-Doc’s, PhD’s and advanced MA students from the humanities, social science, as well as arts and design to engage in a discussion about critical times and materialities, postcolonial and posthuman critique, non-European perspectives, and notions of »deep time« of materialities. »Critical Times. Part II: Ecologies of Relation« unfolded a critical conversation, contesting linear conceptions of time, reductionist notions of materiality, and teleological solutionism, by focusing on ecologies and relations. Either term, ecology and relation, has received much attention over the last decade, especially in the arts, design, and humanities. Both emphasize the intersection of different domains of knowledge, media and practice to understand and navigate the challenges of an increasingly complex present. With the workshop, we aimed to critically address and resituate the multi-faceted dimensions of both through in-depth and creative formats. → more

Material Form Function | Cellulose | Collactive Materials | Science Communication | Biodesign | Speculative Design | Climate | Forest | Prototype / Model | Tree Bark | Textiles | Fungi/Mycelium »Matters of Activity« und das Experimentallabor für Wissenschaftskommunikation »CollActive Materials« starteten im März eine neue Veranstaltungsreihe im Futurium Lab. Unter dem Titel »Materialzukünfte besuchen« fanden über vier Monate vier Workshops statt, die die Forschung des Clusters mit der Zivilgesellschaft zusammenbrachten und in denen gemeinsam über Materialzukünfte spekuliert wurde. Begleitet wurden die Veranstaltungen von einer temporären Ausstellung im Futurium Lab. → more

Teaching | Graphic Anthropology Cluster member Maxime Le Calvé was invited to teach a workshop on his graphic multimodal ethnographic practice at the historical and prestigious Anthropology department of the London School of Economics. He edited a radical open-access publication with the material generated by the students during the workshop. »Together that day, we spoke about the reverb effect of multimodal anthropology, about the possibility of what we describe to be only our projections, about atmospheres as a middle ground, about how much art we can put into our anthropology practice, about loops and attunements, about trying new things on the field, about what we bring with us from fieldwork to fieldwork, about chaos in drawing, about looking serious on the picture. The diversity of the outputs of such a simple exercise shows so much richness. Probing the room by drawing it brought a very pleasant congenial atmosphere.« Thank you to Andrea Pia from the Public Anthropology program for this wonderful invitation and to all the students for their witty engagement. The digital publication is available there: ↗ more

Material Form Function | Bacteria | Biofilm | Cellulose | Publications | Tree Bark | Fungi/Mycelium »Trazos« is a pioneering publication in Spanish in the interdisciplinary field of biomaterials developments. The book is divided into three sections which explore, interrogate, shape, and reflect on these scientific and creative advancements. This book encourages interaction between the Spanish-speaking community and provides access to a topic predominantly discussed in English. It seeks to stimulate dialogue and amplify the reach of the Latin American biomaterials field to a broader audience. Likewise, it aspires to foster collaborations that transcend language barriers, promoting enriching exchanges of ideas and knowledge. The book, edited by MoA Associated Member Heidi Jalkh and Gisela Pozzetti, and designed by Paula Rodríguez, includes contributions by MoA researchers Bastian Beyer, Johanna Hehemeyer-Cürten, Wolfgang Schäffner, Daniel Suárez, Charlett Wenig and by Rodrigo Martin Iglesias, Coordinator of the Master Open Design. → more

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. → more

Filtering | Teaching | Water | Prototype / Model In the »Shaping Water« project, starting in the summer semester of 2024, Prof. Carola Zwick, design researcher Dominic Eger Domingos, and design students want to examine and challenge civilizational standards, usage patterns, and experiences to rethink the medium of water and how we experience it. Through this exploration, we aspire to develop new interaction concepts and product ideas, brought to life in prototypes and exhibits that resonate with users on a tangible level. The project is part of the Design Research Studio within the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« (Filtering) and is constantly supported by eLAB (Laboratory for Interactive Technologies of KHB) throughout the project starting with a hands-on workshop delving into physical computing as expression of design. → more

Cutting | Graphic Anthropology | XR The first event of the »More-than-human Sketching« series was a great success. Not only were the workshops fully booked, but the SpecLab team also spent two days developing a new immersive performance for the museum's visitors using augmented reality glasses and spatial drawing software. The performance, »Drawing as Digestion: Spatial Knowing Processes,« was be presented to the public soon after. Short lectures and activities by Elaine Bonavia, Paulina Greta Stefanovic, and Maxime Le Calvé provided an unusual framework for participants to engage with the embodied and transformative power of tracing lines and being traced by them. → more

Material Form Function | Teaching | Biodesign | Textiles Rapidly increasing socio-ecological damage and the urgent need for care, repair, and recovery have led to renewed calls for regenerative design as a means of wayfinding towards new forms of just and sustainable life on earth, prompting critical questions concerning the reconfigured pasts they invoke to the possible futures they open up. Aiming to (re)design the way we live to support our interdependence on natural ecosystems, regenerative systems thinking is being applied to fundamental fields of human activity, from food production and agriculture to medicine, textiles, architecture, rural revival, and the urban built environment to other-worldly materialities. The lecture series organized by Lucy Norris, which started on May 2nd, will, among other things, explore how traces of former ways of being in the world and concepts such as ›indigenous knowledge‹ are referenced as ways to move forward and ask what futures are being imagined by whom and for whom, and how some forms of living are enabled while other possibilities are negated. → more

Call The Käte Hamburger Kolleg | Centre for Advanced Study »inherit. heritage in transformation«, based at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and led by Eva Ehninger and MoA member Sharon Macdonald, invites applications from experienced and early career post-doc researchers for fellowships to begin in October 2025. The application deadline is April 29th, 2024. Applications for scholarships for 2025–6 should address questions of inheritance – such as its legal, economic, material, and biological dimensions and implications; its articulation with generation(s) and related concepts and practices, as well as with certain conceptions of time and space; its mobilization for constructions of identity and, or justifications for exclusions; its visualization or other multimodal renderings; and alternative (›inheritance otherwise‹) or overlapping notions and practices. For more information about the call, see ↗ https://inherit.hu-berlin.de/open-call.

Moreover, you are kindly invited to join the Opening Lecture and Reception of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg on May 8th, 2024, 4.00–6.00 pm at the Tieranatomisches Theater. ↗ more

Material Form Function | Robotics | Cellulose | Water | Collactive Materials | Speculative Design | Science Communication In diesem Workshop ging es um flexible Materialien wie Cellulose, Bio-Plastik und Silikon als mögliche (neue) Materialien für Soft Robotics oder gar biologische Maschinen. Soft Robotics ist ein relativ junges Forschungsfeld, das sich mit alternativen Ansätzen zur Gestaltung der Maschinen von morgen beschäftigt. Wie können wir Maschinen bauen, damit sie sensibler und anpassbarer werden? Können wir dafür adaptive vielleicht sogar nachhaltige Materialien nutzen, statt immer mehr Metall, Plastik und Energie zu verbrauchen? Mit den Design-Forscherinnen Anna Schäffner und Eva Bullermann spekulieren wir darüber, wie die Maschinen der Zukunft gestaltet sein könnten. Wie sieht deine Magic Machine aus? → more