Dear friends of »Matters of Activity«,

We are happy to send you our latest and this year's last issue of the CZ#. We would like to invite you to Claudia Mareis' Lecture Series and of course our last »Talking Matters« event this year with Timo Torsten Schmidt. We will end this issue with season's greeting and hope you all stay safe during this winter break.

Happy reading
Antje, Carolin & Franziska

News | Exzellent erklärt How fair is our education system? Members of the Cluster of Excellence ↗ Econtribute are tackling this question in the latest episode of the new science podcast »Exzellent erklärt – Spitzenforschung für alle«.

↗ Exzellent erklärt (»Excellent Explained«) regularly reports from one of the 57 German Clusters of Excellence that are funded as part of the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments. The journey goes right across the country and the topics are just as diverse as the locations: from African studies to the future of medicine. All Clusters of Excellence share a common motivation: they address important issues of our time, work on unusual questions and conduct research for the society of tomorrow. ↗ more

Event | Lecture Series Materials such as water, sand, coal or crude oil are essential resources for industrial production, technological and infrastructural development. Although they are omnipresent in everyday life, their genealogies, epistemologies and ontologies are rarely called into question.

The successful lecture series, organized by → Prof. Dr. Claudia Mareis in cooperation with the Department of Cultural History and Theory at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, focuses on the ecological, sociopolitical and symbolic interrelations that unfold around the industrial utilization and commodification of materials.

The upcoming lecture today at 4.15 pm (CET) by environmental anthropologist and cultural geographer ↗ Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa (Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research, Bremen) will tackle the topic »Sanded: Sedimented Pasts and Shored Futures«.

Please find the registration, the current schedule as well as all abstracts for the talks and bios of the speakers here:
↗ matters-of-activity.de/dis-entangling_perspectives_in_material_research ↗ more

Event | Talking Matters At this year's last talk of our lecture series → Talking Matters tomorrow, December 7th, 4.15 pm (CET), we are happy to have neuroscientist ↗ Timo Torsten Schmidt from Freie Universität as our guest. In his talk, he will provide exciting insights into current research on tactile mental representations.

The human ability to mentally represent and manipulate information in the absence of sensory stimulation is key for any higher cognitive functions. It is a central question in cognitive neuroscience how mental representations are realized by our brains. This question is addressed in empirical research on mental imagery and working memory. Timo Torsten Schmidt will present studies on the nature of tactile mental representations and will present current models on the neuronal mechanisms of information integration across sensory modalities. The neuroscientist will present current ideas on the hierarchical processing within the human cortex, and how this contributes to the realization of mental representations with different degrees of abstractness.

To access the lecture, please contact moa.public.relations@hu-berlin.de. We are very much looking forward to your attendance and the lecture! → more

Weaving | Symbolic Material | Publications What are active materials? This book aims to introduce and redefine conceptions of matter by considering materials as entities that ›sense‹ and respond to their environment. By examining the modeling of, the experiments on, and the construction of these materials, and by developing a theory of their structure, their collective activity, and their functionality, this volume identifies and develops a novel scientific approach to active materials. Moreover, essays on the history and philosophy of metallurgy, chemistry, biology, and materials science provide these various approaches to active materials with a historical and cultural context. The Open Access anthology was published on December 20th, 2021. → more

News | Members The Digital Fellows was a funding format of the Cluster, which was intended to give projects the opportunity to obtain additional expertise and experience. Funding was provided for measures, programs, and activities that support the individual academic and professional qualifications and goals of the applicants and ideally also strengthen a culture of equal opportunity and diversity within the Cluster. The Fellows were scientists from around the world whose backgrounds, research experiences, and trainings contributed to the Cluster's research projects and activities and related to the core research topics of the Cluster.   → more

News | Members The Department of Performing Arts and Film is pleased to welcome → Christopher Lloyd Salter as the new Professor of Immersive Arts and Director of the Immersive Arts Space on May 1st, 2022. Salter is an artist, professor of computer arts at Concordia University in Montreal, co-director of the Hexagram Network for Research-Creation in Arts, Culture and Technology, and a Member at the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity«. He studied philosophy and economics and received his PhD in theater from Stanford University, where he also taught and conducted research at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.

He is the author of »Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance« (MIT Press, 2010), »Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making« (MIT Press, 2015) and »Sensing Machines: How Sensors Shape our Everyday Lives« (MIT Press, 2022).

The Cluster is excited to be working closely together on technology-enabled artistic engagement with digital immersion, mixed realities, and the convergence of media and performative practices. Congratulations, Chris Salter! → more

job The project »Object Space Agency« is currently looking for a student assistant for collaboration in the project »Object Space Agency«, literature research and procurement, preparation and participation in lectures and participation in publications, image research, image editing. Apply now! → more

We want to end this last CZ# of this year with season's greetings and a picture of ›our kind of Christmas tree‹, an image of bacterial cellulose. We are wishing you all a very healthy and happy end of this exhausting, but also very exciting year. We are proud of what we achieved as a Cluster in collaboration with all our cooperation partners and friends regardless of all obstacles! We are looking forward to continuing the great work with you in the upcoming year. Stay healthy!

Kind regards
Your Cluster Directors
Wolfgang Schäffner, Peter Fratzl, Claudia Mareis and Horst Bredekamp as well as 

Your Science Communication Team
Antje Nestler, Carolin Ott & Franziska Wegener