Dear friends of »Matters of Activity«,

With the end of the exhibition »Stretching Materialities« in sight, the makers have put together an extremely varied program of events for the closing week, from today's artist talk to recital evenings and a lecture to the finissage with performances next Friday. See the whole program → here and register early to attend there on-site! In addition, we are very pleased to bring to your attention the latest publications by our members.

Happy reading,
Antje, Carolin & Franziska

Material Form Function | Achievements On February 3rd, the virtual inauguration of the Max Planck Queensland Center for the Materials Science of Extracellular Matrices (MPQC) took place. Together with Distinguished Professor Dietmar Hutmacher (Queensland University of Technology), MoA Co-Director Peter Fratzl (Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces) leads the first Max Planck Center on the Australian continent. The MPQC will explore extracellular matrices and their importance for medicine, ecology, and technology. »With this, we are putting a new field on the research map, focusing not only on biomedical applications, but also on technical ones, such as in architecture,« says Peter Fratzl. → more

Symbolic Material | Publications | Achievements Our warmest congratulations to Cluster Co-Director Horst Bredekamp whose monumental biography of Michelangelo was nominated for the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair 2022 in the category »Non-Fiction/Essayistic«.  15 authors and their works have been nominated for the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair, therefore 5 in the category Non-Fiction/Essayistic. → more

Weaving | Symbolic Material | Achievements We congratulate Joseph Vogl on the honoring of his scientific and journalistic oeuvre. The philosopher, literary and cultural scholar holds a professorship at the Institute of German Literature at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and is Regular Visiting Professor at Princeton University. He was be awarded the Günther Anders Award for Critical Thinking 2022 (Günther Anders-Preis für kritisches Denken) on May 8th, 2022 at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Joseph Vogl is Principal Investigator at »Matters of Activity«.   → more

News | Exzellenz erklärt Why and how do we age? And what can we do to prevent diseases and age healthily? Answers and tips are provided by members of the Cluster of Excellence ↗ Cellular Stress Responses in Aging-Associated Diseases Cologne (CEDAD) in the new episode of »Exzellent erklärt – Spitzenforschung für alle«.

The German science podcast ↗ Exzellent erklärt (»Excellent Explained«) on current science topics reflects the research diversity of Germany’s leading research institutions and Clusters of Excellence: from Africa Studies to Quantum Physics. In each episode, listeners can expect insights into the interdisciplinary work of one research network. The researchers of the clusters of excellence, funded by ↗ DFG talk to podcaster Larissa Vassilian about how they want to find scientifically sound answers to relevant topics of our time – for the society of tomorrow. ↗ more

Object Space Agency | Science Communication Our society follows countless explicit and implicit rules. So do games. That's why scientists use classic board games and modern game apps to bring people into dialogue and renegotiate rules. So-called game techniques are interesting, for example, to bring experts and scientists from different disciplines to a common language - through gaming. In the latest episode of the HU podcast »Humboldt Hören«, MoA member and CoHead of the research and development platform gamelab.berlin Thomas Lilge and resource economist Klaus Eisenack (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) explain in conversation with radio journalist Cora Knoblauch which cultural techniques can be found in modern video games. → more

Cutting | Symbolic Material | Publications | Brain | Sound Is the ability to perceive connections between words that »sound round« and things that »look round« specific to humans? Or can other animals, including our closest living relatives, the great apes, also infer that a meaningless speech sound is ›sharp‹ or ›round‹ and refers to a curved or spiky shape? An international and multidisciplinary team of researchers, including MoA member Friedemann Pulvermüller, has now been able to answer this question using a new experiment with a language-competent bonobo. The results of the collaborative study by multidisciplinary researchers in Europe and the United States, led by Konstantina Margiotoudi, was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B on February 2nd, 2022. → more

Symbolic Material | Publications | Brain During conversations, speech prosody provides important clues about the speaker’s communicative intentions. In many languages, a rising vocal pitch at the end of a sentence typically expresses a question function, whereas a falling pitch suggests a statement. In their latest publication entitled »Instantaneous Neural Processing of Communicative Functions Conveyed by Speech Prosody«, Rosario Tomasello, Luigi Grisoni, Isabella Boux, Daniela Sammler, and Friedemann Pulvermüller investigated the neurophysiological basis of intonation and speech act understanding with high-density electroencephalography (EEG) to determine whether prosodic features are reflected at the neurophysiological level. → more

Filtering | Teaching | MoA Design Research Studio What is digital sovereignty, and how can it be enabled by design? Students from the Department of Computer Science at Freie Universität Berlin and the Department of Product Design at weißensee school of art and design berlin explored these questions as part of the interdisciplinary course »Coding IxD« by means of Neo-analogue artefacts, i.e., products that represent a synthesis of the virtual and the material in form and function. The results of this project has been showcased in an interactive exhibition at the Weizenbaum Institute Berlin in February. → more

Object Space Agency | Publications | Stretching Materialities | XR | Performance Playful approaches can directly affect our sensory faculties beyond the realm of power and knowledge. The »stretching senses school« was an education-as-research project at the Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin (TA T) attached to the exhibition »Stretching Materialities«. This workshop-based contribution to the exhibition was framed as a collaboration between anthropology and immersive interaction art. Cluster members engaged with creative coders and digital artists in experimental curation work, with the intention to raise awareness of the public on the multiscale and embedded interconnections between humans and other earthly beings. Four new publications by MoA members and participants now introduce the method and implementation of the workshop which was carried out last fall in the Tieranatomisches Theater and discuss the experimental testing in three specific projects. → more

Object Space Agency | Air | Stretching Materialities | Performance Are there aesthetic links between clouds, robots and the sea? The lecture by Babette Marie Werner, the performative talk with visual artist Anne Duk Hee Jordan and artistic and design researcher Clemens Winkler explored relations between visual interpretations of metabolic formations, biodiversity and new ecologies in art and design. This event was part of the exhibition »Stretching Materialities« by »Object Space Agency«. Follow the link to watch the full artist talk online. → more

Object Space Agency | Stretching Materialities | Performance | Haptics | More-Than-Human Where are the boundaries between living and dead matter? This evening of performance, artist-curator conversation, and lecture explored experiences and narratives between the organic and the inorganic associated with artifacts, natural objects, and the interior of our own bodies. This event was part of the exhibition by MoA project »Object Space Agency« at Tieranatomisches Theater »Stretching Materialities. Hidden Activities in Objects and Spaces«.  → more

Material Form Function | Bauhaus | Climate From 5-6 March 2022, the digital conference »Re: New European Bauhaus. For A Just Design of Climate Politics« took place. It navigated critical perspectives on the European Green Deal and the New European Bauhaus. The virtual program of talks, discussions, and workshops aimed to explore institutional, artistic, and designerly strategies to utilise the creative fields’ response-ability and agency for climate justice in European politics. MoA Co-Director Claudia Mareis will gave a lecture within the Panel »Art, Architecture, Design, and the Climate Crisis: Old Bauhaus Politics« on March 5th, 3-5 pm. → more

Jobs The Institute of Physics of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin is looking for a research associate in the field of Topological phononics at interfaces in close collaboration with the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity«. → more