Editorial Dear friends of »Matters of Activity«,

We are very happy to send you the first CZ# issue in 2021 with event announcements, news and digital exhibitions. We hope you all had a peaceful turn of the year, as far as that was possible, and we are looking forward to sharing exciting new projects and content with you.

Stay healthy and happy reading,
Antje Nestler, Eva Schmidt and Franziska Wegener

Cutting | Achievements | Brain The field of connectomics aims to comprehensively describe the physical and functional coupling among the neural elements of the brain. Creating personalized models of the brain of tumor patients helps to better understand the impact of a brain tumor on the cerebral network and plasticity and functional reserve capacity. Similarly, it helps to improve effects of neurosurgery on the connectome and identify key nodes and edges, i.e., potential high-risk areas for surgery, reveal the network basis of language function in relation to tumors, and predict the course of recovery. → more

Symbolic Material | Publications Siri, Big Data, affective computing, interconnected bodies—the plethora of heterogeneous fragments that our present is split up into is unimaginably vast. Their composition is a question of milieu. The concept of determining how living beings relate to each other and to their natural environments was originally associated with the life sciences. While this concept was valid, if we are to bring the milieu concept up to date, we need to give particular consideration to current technological and aesthetic conditions. → more

Equal Opportunity Diversity includes, but is not limited to aspects such as education, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, work experience, regional culture, social background, mental and physical abilities, ethnic background and language. However, these aspects or characteristics do not act in isolation but overlap and reinforce each other. The attribution of values to differences and similarities and their hierarchization leads to inequalities that produce disadvantages and advantages in social structures. In dealing with equal opportunities and diversity at the Cluster, it is important to ask what conditions can be created and what strategies can be implemented to promote diversity and individual potential in the best possible way, to improve accessibility and participation of disadvantaged groups and to contribute to the reduction of inequality structures.

»Matters of Activity« addresses equal opportunity and diversity on three levels: human resources, support measures, and research and teaching. → more

Object Space Agency | XR | Graphic Anthropology UCL's Multimedia Anthropology Lab (UCL MAL) presented »Multimedia Encounters«, the latest exhibition created to coincide with UCL MAL’s first academic conference took place January 12th - 15th, 2021. Multimedia Encounters attended to the relationship between anthropological thought and virtual intelligence. Our Cluster Members Maxime Le Calvé and Yoonha Kim had ethnographic artworks shown in a virtual group exhibition called »Multimedia Encounters: Experimental Approaches to Ethnographic Research« using the digital platform Mozilla Hubs. → more

Weaving | Material Form Function | MoA Design Research Studio | Teaching The MoA Design Research Studio »Designing Matter 1« investigated designed filaments and fabrics as architectural material systems. »Designing Matter« denotes the definition of the form and the materiality for the component elements of a material in order to achieve a specific functionality. This process allows to utilize and enhance the inherent properties of a given material and ultimately to generate novel ones. Codes – either analog or digital – are used to implement the design of the material by means of a systematization of this form-function interrelationship. In this context the MoA Design Research Studio made contributions with respect to the development of designed filaments and the close adherence of the architectural designed fabrics to the production sequences and patterns observed in silk-cocoons. Take a look at the projects! → more

Object Space Agency | Graphic Anthropology | Performance For anthropologists and artists »doing fieldwork« in contemporary worlds, art can be much more than an object of investigation. Curation and creation through visual, audio, or performing arts are at the heart of their work, extending the established anthropological interest in writing as a medium of thought and knowledge sharing. The exhibition »Field/Works« presented works by anthropologists and artists who broke disciplinary boundaries, and whose practice foregrounded experimental, and open approaches to the theme »field/works«. This series was curated by Jen Clarke and Cluster Member Maxime Le Calvé. → more

Event Design is deeply engaged with materials. Yet the attempt to make sense of the properties, composition and behavior of matter, artifacts and built infrastructures is accompanied by a pressing question: »Who is in fact designing?«. The 17th Annual Conference 2021 of the DGTF (German Society for Design Theory and Research), that takes place from May 6th to 8th in cooperation with »Matters of Activity« and the weißensee school of art and design berlin intends to make this and other questions graspable and to discuss the contribution of design through four interlaced strands: Sympoiesis of Making, Performative Surfaces, Living Matter, Designing Resilience. The conference will most likely be held in virtual form. → more

Please note: The main conference language is English. German project presentations will be considered if possible.

job We are looking for an employee for supporting activities in the technical support of virtual events and green screen recordings as well as help with virtual conferences and everything digital. → more