Editorial Dear friends of »Matters of Activity«,

Summer is finally here! Besides the digital lab tour of the exhibition »Stretching Materialities«, we are looking forward to the final presentation of the »Ultratool« studio project and the start of the new MoA Colloquia at weißensee school of art and design berlin as well as the grand finale of Peter Fratzl's lecture with an ideas workshop, all happening (still virtually) in the upcoming weeks.

Happy reading!
Antje Nestler, Carolin Ott & Franziska Wegener

Material Form Function | Symbolic Material | Doctoral Program | Teaching | Computational Design During the summer semester 2021, the teaching format »Situated Digital Agencies« bridged institutions just as much as cultures of knowledge, research and teaching. Along transdisciplinary and dialogic encounter it followed how digital technologies are situated between discourses of arts and design, humanities, and sciences – and suggested how precisely in these moments, they are altered, appropriated and possibly augmented towards epistemological and ontological surplus. → more

Event | Lecture Series Join us for the ideas workshop of the lecture series on → Interdependence of Structure and Function in Biological Materials by → Peter Fratzl.

Every second Tuesday at 4:15–5:45 pm, Cluster Co-Director Peter Fratzl gives a digital lecture at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The lecture series started on April 13th, 2021 and addresses a pluridisciplinary audience, including sciences, design and cultural studies. All required basics from biophysics and biochemistry to mechanics are provided.

Biological materials adapt their structure to functional needs. The lectures introduce relevant structural features from molecular to macroscopic scales using examples for materials based on proteins or on polysaccharides, in particular cellulose and chitin. Some biological materials – like bone – are reinforced with minerals. The importance of hierarchical assemblies of building blocks, such as fibers and tessellations will be discussed.

All recordings of the lecture series can be found in the moodle course accompanying the series. Access to the moodle course can be granted via moa.public.relations@hu-berlin.de.

The ideas workshops on June 22nd and July 6th are part of the series and will summarize key geometric principles from biology which have been introduced in the sessions before. Participants are invited to translate these into concepts for their respective fields of research, such as design, mathematics, cultural history or art. These concepts should be presented in the last session on July 6th to the audience as a basis for interdisciplinary discourse. Participants who would like to receive credit points for this lecture need to participate in the ideas workshop.

Registration Date: 21 June 2021
Registration Contact: moa.public.relations@hu-berlin.de

Filtering | Teaching | MoA Design Research Studio The phone call has taken a back seat as an interaction and is replaced by the multitude of applications such as navigation, healthcare, Internet of Things or social media. Various filters and filtering technologies interact simultaneously to shape our access and exchange with our environment. The studio project »Ultratool« addresses this development and investigates conditioning cultural and social behaviors within the technology ecosystem we live in. The aim of the project is to develop new product ideas and concepts, based on various analyses and design methods on technical and cultural aspects. »Ultratool« is a collaborative studio project of MoA Design Research Studio with students from the Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London, and weißensee school of art and design berlin. The final presentation was held on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2021 at 10.00 am–12.30 pm (CET). → more

Object Space Agency | Science Communication | Stretching Materialities | Performance In June 2021, the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« invited to a special kind of lab tour: At Tieranatomisches Theater, the project »Object Space Agency« opened virtual gates on June 29th, 3.45 pm to let you experience the hidden activities of materials:  Enter a tangible atmosphere, let the wind blow in your face, feel crackling rattan braids under your feet, immerse yourself in virtual reality perspectives and travel with our glass elevator. And it doesn't stop there: wear haptically vibrating clothing that responds to its surroundings and experience weathering over millennia with selected stone samples. In »Stretching Materialities«, you can experience what no one else sees: The objects and structures around us are active and alive. And we interact with them whether we realize it or not. → more

Computational Design | MoA Design Research Studio | Teaching On July 1st 2021, the MoA Colloquia at weißensee school of art and design was inaugurated by Professor Dr.-Ing. Jan Knippers. Jan Knippers is a consulting structural engineer and has been head of the Institute for Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE) at the University of Stuttgart since 2000. His interest is in innovative and resource-efficient structures at the intersection of research and development and practice. The MoA Colloquia gave the opportunity for a small group of students to meet and exchange with leading experts of the field of computational design. The lectures were streamed and accesible to the wider public. → more

Weaving | Science Communication The event »Architectures of Weaving« took place on July 2nd and explored textile construction as an architectural design approach. Textiles can construct a useable space, while they are a spatial material structure in themselves. Discussing this relationship, the symposium will cross scales and disciplines. → more

With its first annual conference, »Worlds of Literature — Competing Notions of the Global«, the ↗ Cluster of Excellence EXC 2020: »Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective↗ « turns to the question of how competing notions of the global have affected and continue to affect debates about ›world literature‹ and processes of transnational literary canonisation. The Cluster assumes that literature becomes global through its temporal entanglements. Accordingly, this first annual conference seeks to reflect and expand upon established theories of world literature by investigating spatiotemporal literary networks, their practices of communality, and their interaction with other arts and media. The conference brings together international scholars from a broad range of disciplines to discuss different historical, theoretical, and methodological framings of world literature with special regard to their competing conceptions of cosmopolitanism and globality.

Extending over three days, the conference is organized into daily themes:

• 7 July: focuses on Competing Notions of the Global.
• 8 July: is dedicated to Constructing ›Worlds of Literature‹.
• 9 July: addresses Temporalities and Scales of the Global.

The conference is entirely digital this year. Through this site, participants can access our digital meeting space to participate in live presentation and discussion sessions, view video introductions to our presenters, explore daily themes and programs, as well as read up on presenter bios and abstracts.

Access to live presentations requires registration, which can easily be completed ↗ here. Please register by July 1st. ↗ more

Event | Talking Matters For the new Cluster lecture series »Talking Matters« launched in May, our six Cluster projects invite external speakers from various disciplines to provide insights into their research related to central issues of »Matters of Activity«. In addition to researchers and students from various disciplines, the lecture series is open to anyone interested in our research.

For the last talk before the summer break on July 13th, we are happy to welcome media theorist Marie-Pier Boucher from the University of Toronto. Boucher will introduce us to »Being Material«, a curated collection of essays and artifacts that resulted from a symposium held in 2017 by the Center for Art, Science and Technology at MIT, where she was invited as co-editor and author on the project – a journey that brought her to explore the legacy of this institution in a different light.

Register now by sending an email to moa.public.relations@hu-berlin.de. → more

job The Design Lab of the Cluster is currently looking for a student assistant. In the Design Lab, all Cluster members have the possibility to try their hand on the 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC mills, and CAD workstations under the guidance of the (Workshop) Team. Here, the independent development and revision of models and prototypes from conception to execution are made tangible for the researchers. From a hammer to a programmable microchip with sensors, the Design Lab provides a fertile ground for trials and experiments while mediating between the various disciplines and projects. → more