Editorial Dear friends of »Matters of Activity«,

We hope you enjoyed a bit of holiday or free time during the Easter Break. This very rich new issue of our CZ# will keep you updated on what's happening in the new semester. We are happy to invite you to lecture series, such as »Dis/Entangling Material Futures« and »On Gestaltung«, organized by our Cluster Members Claudia Mareis and Patricia Ribault as well as other interesting events at Mall Anders or Tieranatomisches Theater. Please don't miss the conversation and workshop »Materials Matter« this week – our first public event at Humboldt Lab!

Happy reading,
Antje Nestler, Carolin Ott & Franziska Wegener

Material Form Function | Publications A team at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) has discovered new properties of collagen: During the intercalation of minerals in collagen fibers, a contraction tension is generated that is hundreds of times stronger than muscle strength. »This universal mechanism of mineralization of organic fiber tissues could be transferred to technical hybrid materials, for example, to achieve high breaking strength there,« says Prof. Dr. Peter Fratzl, Director at the institute and Co-Director of »Matters of Activity«. → more

CollActive Materials In the experimental laboratory → CollActive Materials, society and science are speculating together about the materials of tomorrow: What might they look like or feel like? Could they be more active or more intelligent than the materials of today? By trying things out together, the speculators develop new future scenarios, stories and objects and invite discussion of various conceivable futures.

In workshops and events, participants are invited to think about new material futures. Therein, current debates about ecological and geopolitical challenges play just as much a role as new developments in robotics and collective intelligence.

The experimental lab is a joint project of the Berlin Clusters of Excellence »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material» and ↗ Science of Intelligence and is funded under the Excellence Strategy of the Federal Government and the Länder by the Berlin University Alliance.

Project Leader
→ Léa Perraudin
→ Martin Müller

Coordination
→ Kristin Werner
→ Eva Bullermann

Principal Investigators
→ Claudia Mareis
→ Wolfgang Schäffner
↗ Oliver Brock
→ Antje Nestler
↗ Solveig Steinhardt

Find our first event, happening at Mall Anders, below!

Cutting | Publications | Brain How do tumors in the motor system affect the structural connectome? Tumors and their location distinctly alter both local and global brain connectivity within the ipsilesional hemisphere of glioma patients. This study, led by Cluster Member Lucius Fekonja, links the complex relationships between function and the underlying matter, the brain's white matter, and demonstrates how tumor activity affects the cerebral network using graph analysis and network-based statistics. The work was done in the framework of »Cutting«/»Adaptive Digital Twin« and initiates its new Cluster phase by enriching our understanding of structural characteristics of active materials, their functional and scientific implications in clinical and translational medicine and neuroscience. The publication in »Communications Biology« further highlights the interdisciplinary aspect of the study. → more

Object Space Agency | Publications In his new book »Sensing Machines«, Chris Salter, Associated Member to the »Object Space Agency« project, examines how we are tracked, surveilled, tantalized, and seduced by machines ranging from smart watches and mood trackers to massive immersive art installations. There are more of these electronic devices in the world than there are people — in 2020, thirty to fifty billion of them (versus 7.8 billion people), with more than a trillion expected in the next decade. Sensing technology turns our experience into data; but the book’s story isn't just about what these machines want from us, but what we want from them — new sensations, the thrill of the uncanny, and magic that will transport us from our daily grind. → more

Teaching | Weaving The workshop at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs Paris with students of the course »matérialités futures« led by Aurélie Mossé aimed to further explore intersections of biology and textiles. The course centred around the topic of biocalcification, a biochemical process very common in nature where calcite is formed through an enzymatic process involving specific strains of bacteria. Previous research done by cluster member Bastian Beyer and Daniel Suarez provided the conceptual and material framework for the workshop. → more

News | Exzellent erklärt Microbial balance is the basis for healthy life - whether in humans, animals or plants. Even waters and soils, and thus entire ecosystems, depend on it. If this dynamic equilibrium of bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms becomes unstable, this can have serious consequences. Research into the microverse is all about the communication and interaction of the tiny creatures with each other and with their environment. After all, they have often been living together for millions of years and are rarely found in isolation. Axel Brakhage, Director of the ↗ Microverse-Cluster at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena tells us that the next antibiotic agent may be waiting to be discovered in our front garden.

57 Clusters of Excellence, 1 podcast. ↗ Exzellent erklärt reports regularly from one of the research networks that are funded within the framework of the Excellence Strategy of the Federal Government and the Länder. The journey goes right across the country, and the topics are just as diverse as the locations: From A for African studies to Z for the future of medicine.

You can also vote for »Exzellent erklaert« for the Audience Award of the German Podcast Award until May 8th with just ↗ one click.

Object Space Agency | Willow | Achievements Our warmest congratulations to Cluster Guest Researcher Nelli Singer who has been awarded two prestigious prices at once for her Master Thesis »Living Beings«. The Materialica Award 2021 of Munich Expo and the ein&zwanzig Design Newcomer Award of the German Design Council. »Living Beings« explores the performative properties of wood through textile techniques and enviromental humidity and was supervised by Cluster Member Christiane Sauer. → more

Object Space Agency | XR | Performance How hybrid is the future of theatre? In what ways has the pandemic changed how we work in theatre and gather in it as a public space? The opening symposium »Viral Theatres: Pandemic Past/Hybrid Futures« explored these questions. In three days of events, it took stock of how pandemic time has moved from a state of exception to new normality between viral outbreak and containment and what that means for theatrical production. You can visit the accompanying exhibition in the Tieranatomisches Theater (Veterinary Anatomy Theater) in Berlin until June 3rd.  → more

Material Form Function | Air | Circular Economies | Climate | More-Than-Human | Teaching | Sand The lecture series takes up the ambiguous role of materials in future-making practices along with the possible geo and bio-political precarity they may generate. Different materials from sand, water, or air to living cells and whole ecosystems are the objects and interface of a range of technologies that generate images of the future. Their probabilistic methods prepare the ideational and physical ground for large and small-scale design interventions (e.g., climate-resilient infrastructures). Register now and take part in the lecture series that continues until July 18th, every Monday 4.15 pm. → more

Material Form Function | Symbolic Material | Object Space Agency | Teaching Our modes of giving form evolve and hybridize more and more, but they are also inhabited by common and timeless questionings that have to do with our demiurgic tendencies. This lecture series, initiated in 2021 by Patricia Ribault and Jörg Petruschat, questioned the processes of formation and transformation of the material world we live in through various concepts: constraint, function and dysfunction, formativity and performativity, visualization and representation, activity, bricology..., all of which constitute the inseparably mental and material set of operations that lead to the genesis of a thing. → more

Weaving | Symbolic Material | Publications | Science Communication We are very pleased to present the audio broadcast of the public panel discussion that took place on May 4, 2022, at the Humboldt Lab. In the interdisciplinary discussion, central theses of the Central Cluster Anthology »Active Materials« were presented. The cross-disciplinary conversation with Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Michaela Eder, Peter Fratzl, and Richard Weinkamer aimed to address one of the burning questions of our epoch: the possibility of engineering smart, active, or bio-inspired materials and the meaning these enhanced materials might have for solving the contemporary and future challenges of these tumultuous times. The event was moderated by MoA members Michael Friedman and Karin Krauthausen, who were also co-authors of the anthology. Be sure to listen in! → more

Cutting | Science Communication | Robotics What does the work of scientists actually consist of? At the casual »Meet the Scientist« event in the »Mall Anders« in the WILMA Shopping Center, a broad public had the opportunity to meet researchers from the Berlin Clusters of Excellence. For »Matters of Activity«, Dominic Eger Domingos gave insights into his research work on digital cutting in robot-assisted surgery. → more

Science Communication | Collactive Materials With the experimental laboratory »CollActive Materials« just starting, its first ever event just took place: On Friday and Saturday, May 20th and 21st, the science communication lab hosted two days for science and public to get together and (re-)negotiate the futures of materials. Under the headline »What is your future made of?«, »CollActive Materials« started its conversation about material presents and futures: Which personal routines and values play a role when we interact with materials in our everyday lives today? Which materials are yet to be created, discovered, or rethought? What role could active and intelligent materials play in possible futures, and how could these look like? → more

Object Space Agency | Publications On May 29, 11:30 am–01:30 pm, Cluster member Nina Samuel and co-editor of »Museums, Transculturality, and the Nation-State. Case Studies from a Global Context« presented, together with colleagues and guests, the recently published anthology in the Hamburger Bahnhof. The multiauthor book examines the contradictions and tensions that arise when contemporary demands for transculturality and decoloniality meet the institutions of the nation-state. → more

Object Space Agency | XR | Performance On Thursday, June 9th, at 7 pm, the premiere of »Paar« took place in the Tieranatomisches Theater. »Paar« is a VR dance film split between a physical world and a virtual world, using 360° video together with motion capture technology, to dance the theater to life in VR. The virtual environment of the Veterinary Anatomy Theater (Tieranatomisches Theater, TA T) is created from the 3D photorealistic rendering of the theater, making for 180° of the virtual world and 180° of the physical world. In Paar, the dancers’ movements are tracked via motion capture technology. This recorded movement data was mapped into the virtual environment of the TA T through avatars. → more

Object Space Agency | Stretching Materialities | XR Feeling limestone grow from the inside and seeing its dispersion as urban landscape; experiencing an amphitheater through vibrations of willow branches; reaching out to the hidden electrical energies of things around us; touch the surface of cellular tissues. The »stretching senses school festival« exhibits site-specific virtual reality artworks from ongoing research at the Cluster at TA T, in the continuation of the »Stretching Materialities« exhibition. → more

Weaving | Material Form Function | Object Space Agency | Tangling This week–long conference from 12-16 September 2022 brought together scientists from various backgrounds who spend a reasonable amount of time thinking about tangles, tubes, knots, filaments, fibers and other entangled structures, from the perspective of physics, material science, mathematics, chemistry or biology. Tangling is a key structural motif of a multitude of natural systems, from molecules to polymers, and has a distinctive relationship to functionality. Understanding tangling itself and the role that it plays in material properties is a complicated web of different disciplines and perspectives, and we hope to create a deep scientific exchange on this topic. → more