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Soft Colission, Anna Schäffner. Copyright: Matters of Activity
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Dear friends of Matters of Activity,
We hope you had a great start into 2025 and wish you a very healthy and happy new year! We're kicking off this year with lots of new publications by our members and, of course, some new events. Our Cluster members published in a variety of formats and very different topics, such as »West African Wild Silks Techniques: Preserving Marka-Dafing’s Heritage of Knowledge« by Laurence Douny and Salif Sawadogo, »Paper(s) as Carrier of Knowledge« by Michael Friedman, the »Growth of a Tesselation« by Peter Fratzl, Mason Dean, Binru Yang, and Jana Cicierska-Holmes, »Operate with Fungi«, edited by Vera Meyer and Wolfgang Schäffner and the »Architectures of Syntopia: An Interdisciplinary Speculative Model for Constructions with Insect-infested Wood« by Pelin Asa, Karin Krauthausen, Robert Stock and Karola Dierichs.
We are particularly excited about our upcoming interview series »Making« and the Open Space #4 event by Berlin University Alliance with Claudia Mareis, Anupama Kundoo, and Regula Lüscher about materials of the future and innovation for construction, architecture and urban development at the air traffic controller tower of the former Tempelhof airport on February 19th!
Happy reading
Antje Nestler & Carolin Ott
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A Look Back at Berlin Science Week 2024 |
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Workshop »In a Seashell«, Berlin Science Week, 2024. Photo: Anne Freitag
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Heidi Jalkh, Science Slam, Berlin Science Week, 2024. Photo: Kay Herschelmann
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1.11.2024–10.11.2024
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Science Communication Never before have members of Matters of Activity been involved in so many events and different formats during Berlin Science Week as in 2024 - have a look at some of the highlights.
The workshop → In a Seashell at the Natural History Museum with Heidi Jalkh, Angie Dub and Christiane Sauer, held in cooperation with Bauhaus Earth and Experimental, focused on the development and utilization potential of biomaterials made from seashell waste. Rasa Weber took part in a panel discussion on »Science and Design for Marine Ecosystem Restoration« at the French Embassy before her exhibition → The Whispering World: Words by a Silent Sea opened in the foyer. For two days, José Hernandez supervised the traveling exhibition → Bakteriopolis from the TU Dresden, which was placed in a shipping container in front of the Natural History Museum, and gave insights into his PhD research. Fardin and Siamak Gholami presented their co-filter project as finalists at the pitching event → The Future of Green Chemistry, which was organized by the scientific publisher Wiley and the Berlin-based chemical innovation association greenCHEM. Claudia Banz and John Nyakatura were among those involved in the ↗ roundtable on Robertina Šebjanič's »Lygophylia« exhibition at the Kunstgewerbemuseum. The crowning finale was the → Science Slam of the seven Berlin Clusters of Excellence, in which Heidi Jalkh took a fantastic 2nd place.
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Kiki Prototype by Rasa Weber, Exhibition Opening »The Whispering World: Words by a Silent Sea« at French Embassy, Berlin Science Week 2024. Photo: Matters of Activity
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Planetary Design: Reclaiming Futures |
Conference Contributions Now Online as Audio Series |
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Image: https://koozarch.com/interviews/planetary-design-reclaiming-futures
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23.10.2024–26.10.2024
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Material Form Function | Science Communication | Climate | More-Than-Human | Biodesign | Circular Economies | Speculative Design | Temporality The conference »Planetary Design: Reclaiming Futures« brought together critical thinking and doing around the role of design in making, unmaking and remaking worlds. Starting from the intersection of design, infrastructure, and the planetary environment, it offered a generative platform open to artists, academics, and activists for rethinking design’s role in producing the present and for developing alternative planetary futures. The conference gathered artists, academics, and activists to rethink design's role in producing our present and developing alternative planetary futures.
The conference contributions, including those from → Claudia Mareis and → Anke Gruendel, have now been uploaded as an audio series by the independent publication platform Koozarch. ↗ more
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Paper(s) as Carrier of Knowledge |
Special Issue Edited by Michael Friedman and Daniela Zetti |
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A computer program listing from the 1970s. Before computers had screens, paper printouts were the only way to correct and adapt programs to new requirements. A program was developed in a series of iterations and printed on continuous form paper with green and white ›zebra‹ stripes. Copyright: ArnoldReinhold, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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27.11.2024
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Symbolic Material | Publications On February 22nd and 23rd, 2023, MoA member Michael Friedman and Daniela Zetti from the University of Lubeck organized a workshop at the Deutsches Museum entitled »Paper(s) as Epistemic Carrier of Knowledge, «and a special issue resulting from this workshop has recently been published. The special issue investigates and reflects on the possibilities and limitations that various historical actors saw in the development and use of paper. The contributions by Thomas Morel, Axel Hüntelmann, Lotte Schüßler, and Michael Zakim provide insights into historical fields in which technology, administration, and science existed side by side and were partly interrelated and partly independent of one another. The special issue aims to think about paper as an object of circulation of knowledge and practices that enable and transform collective memory. It is published in »Technikgeschichte« at »Nomos eLibrary«.
→ more
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Visualizing the Invisible |
Essay by MoA Member Babette Werner in Award-Winning Book about Marta Djourina |
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Cover »Firefox« by Marta Djourina, Distanz Verlag 2024.
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3.12.2024
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Object Space Agency | Publications The publication »Foxfire« by artist Marta Djourina with a contribution by Cluster member Babette Werner has been awarded Bronze in the »Conceptual-Artistic« category at the prestigious German Photobook Prize 2024. The book offers a comprehensive insight into the experimental work of the Berlin-based artist, celebrated for its innovative approach and aesthetic brilliance. In Foxfire, Marta Djourina explores the boundaries of analog photography, merging poetic gestures with performative experiments. Her work – characterized by luminous, color-intense compositions – delves into the nature of light and its interplay with sensory perception, natural phenomena, and the body. Employing unique techniques and light sources such as bioluminescent organisms, sunlight, and historical methods like Kirlian photography, she creates striking visual narratives. Babette Werner's essay provides a deep insight into Djourina's creative processes focusing on touch in analog and virtual space.
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Mahamadi Ilboudo Knight of the Order of Merit of Arts, Letters, and Communication |
MoA Associated Member Receives High Honor from the Government of Burkina Faso |
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13.12.2024–31.1.2025
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Weaving | Achievements On December 13th, 2024, Mahamadi Ilboudo, MoA Associated Member to Weaving, was made a Knight of the Order of Merit of Arts, Letters, and Communication, with an Arts clasp. The ceremony took place in the courtyard of the National Museum of Burkina Faso and was attended by a host of guests including members of the government, leading figures from the cultural sector, and the recipients’ friends and family. Ilboudo's contribution to the development of culture and the quality of his curatorial projects were recognized. Congratulations on this honorable award!
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Cutting in the Brain for Fun |
A Newly Published Peer-Review Research Article in Graphic Anthropology on an Experimental Neurosurgical Simulation by Maxime Le Calvé |
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Vanessa at work on the operating table, with her instruments plunged into her brain, seated at the binocular microscope. The giant screen shows what she is seeing, allowing the head surgeon to supervise her. Copyright: Drawing by Maxime Le Calvé, digital, 2019
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15.1.2025
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Cutting | Publications | Graphic Anthropology | Brain How to prepare those aspiring to make a profession of cutting into a living human brain? In this article, Maxime Le Calvé recounts, drawing on ›live‹ graphic field notes, the development of a neurosurgical simulation. This narrative is contextualized and theorized through a literature review on the anthropology of doing, the formation of habit, and the technologization of skill transmission in surgery. The peer-reviewed research article in graphic anthropology on an experimental neurosurgical simulation is published in French in »Revue d’anthropologie des connaissances (RAC)«.
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No Data Without Excellence |
A Coffee Lecture Series |
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14.1.2025–18.3.2025
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Join us for the Coffee Lecture Series, where we explore the essentials of research data management and its role in driving excellence in science. Under the theme »No Data Without... Excellence«, this series delves into key topics like research integrity, FAIR principles, persistent identifiers, electronic lab notebooks, and more. This series is proudly organized by MATH+, NeuroCure, Matters of Activity, and UniSysCat, bringing together expertise from leading Clusters of Excellence in Berlin. Starting mid-January 2025, join us every Tuesday at 2:00 PM (GMT) for a 10-minute presentation followed by questions and discussions, all held online via Zoom.
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How to Design for Cells Rather than for Humans? |
Visual Essay by Emile De Visscher Published on .able |
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Emile de Visscher, Vascularizations, still of video article released on 15 January 2025 at .able journal.
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15.1.2025
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Material Form Function | Biodesign | Publications »How can we design for cells rather than for humans?« is the question that drives MoA member Emile De Visscher's latest video article for .able, »Vascularization«. Inspired by vascular networks (vessel-like structures that enable fluid flow and are widely found in nature) and fulgurites (formations created when lightning strikes sand), this research investigates how lightning-like processes can create microvascular networks for potential medical applications. By bridging biology, experimental surgery, design, and physics, this research proposes a unique approach to addressing organ donation scarcity while moving towards more resilience in materials science. .able is an image-based journal at the intersection of art, design, and sciences responding to the complexities of today’s society.
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On Care, Repair and Breakdown in Contemporary Arts |
Cluster Member Rahel Kesselring Gives a Talk at the 3rd International Care Ethics Research Consortium Conference |
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24.1.2025
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Material Form Function | Forest | Temporality Rahel Kesselring will give a talk at the 3rd International Care Ethics Research Consortium Conference in Utrecht. In her talk entitled »›If we do not seek to fix what has been broken, then what?‹: On Procedures of Care, Repair, and Breakdown in Contemporary Arts«, Rahel will give insights into her recent field research. The talk is part of the panel »Care Beyond Repair«. The conference brings together care ethicists and scholars, artists, designers, and makers, artistic researchers, performers and philosophers, educators, policymakers, and others to explore a fundamental question: What does it mean to care?
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PAPER:DRIVE – Coding IXD Studio Project for Coeducation in Computer Science and Design |
Project Exhibition 12–15 February 2025 at Modulor Aufbauhaus |
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Akhil Amer, Claudia Plascencia: Experiments within Coding IxD studio project »Paper:Drive«, 2024. Copyright: Matters of Activity
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12.2.2025–15.2.2025
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Filtering | MoA Design Research Studio | Teaching In this year's Coding IxD research-oriented studio project, students from Computer Science at the Freie Universität Berlin and product design at weißensee school of art and design berlin will explore paper as a medium to store and interact with digital data. We will investigate how to design physical machines and digital processes to output, transfer, interact with, store, and read information within a novel explicit use case. The seminar is supervised by Cluster members Prof. Thomas Ness, Peter Sörries and Hanna Wiesener. The project exhibition will take place from February 12th– 15th, starting with the opening at 6.00pm, at Modulor.
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Remixing Analog and Digital |
Call for Papers for XXII. Conference Culture and Computer Science |
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25.4.2025
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In its defining form, remix is about the reuse of existing material to create something new. Rooting back into the artistic avant-garde of the 1920s with its montage and collage techniques and having sprout flowers in the context of music production, remix today is a wide cultural practice that is performed by folks and professionals using, transforming and drawing upon the spectrum of our analog world, its references and extensions in the digital sphere.
Without sources form the past, a remix couldn’t exist. Archives and museums can use the participatory power of remixes by giving access to their digitalized cultural heritage to creators of a new spectrum of applications, cultural education formats, and artworks.
At the same time, a remix of existing material has always meant the originators’ loss of control over the new outcome and goes hand in hand with questions of creativity, originality and copyright. In this sense, the concept of remix gains new relevance and can be discussed in view of the rapid development of AI technologies, the intention of machine-made remixes, their influence and long-term impact on our contemporary culture.
The »XXII. International Conference on Culture and Computer Science« will take place on September 25th–26th, 2025, in Berlin. The conference is chaired by Cluster members Johann Habakuk Israel, Christian Kassung, and Jürgen Sieck together with Dagmar Schürrer and Maja Stark, both HTW – University of Applied Sciences Berlin.
The submission deadline will be Friday, April 25th, 2025. Articles must be in English and will be double-blind peer-reviewed.
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