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MoA Blog

The MoA Blog is where the researchers of the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material« write about their work. The Cluster contains more than 40 disciplines from Natural Sciences, Humanities and Design and aims to create a basis for a new culture of material. The central vision is to rediscover the analog in the activity of images, spaces and materials in the age of the digital. The interdisciplinary research is organized in six projects: Weaving, Filtering, Cutting, Material Form Function, Object Space Agency and Symbolic Material.

Hanna Wiesener
Hanna Wiesener
Events Public

OSTHAFEN Workshop: ecological realities of the river Spree

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Jakob Kukula

Interdisciplinary intro workshop 14.07.22 from 10am-7pm by Jakob Kukula (DesignfarmBerlin)  The Spree is home to a unique diversity of life. It is Berlin’s largest and also most threatened ecosystem. In the face of climate change and its resulting ecological, social and political consequences, the protection and revitalization of the Spree are essential for Berlin’s sustainable urban development. A healthy Spree benefits not only plants and animals but also human livelihoods and ensures a high quality of life in the city.  To bring about a social-ecological transformation, we need convincing design approaches for Berlin’s water bodies. The goal of the workshops is to create the technical and scientific basis for the regenerative development of the Osthafen.  What is the role of the Osthafen in a climate-resilient city?  What are the current socio-ecological challenges of the site?  What would be the maximum…

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Hanna Wiesener
Hanna Wiesener
News Public

Call for Application Designfarm Berlin: 27.5. 2022

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DesignFarmBerlin

The Designfarm Berlin is looking for new applications: The Farm is supporting design-in-tech products and material innovations for which initial probes and prototypes already exist. In addition to coaching and mentoring, founders receive €2000 per month to realise their projects. Designfarm Berlin is an initiative of weißensee kunsthochschule berlin and the Cluster Principal Investigators Prof. Carola Zwick and Prof. Christiane Sauer.

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Hanna Wiesener
Hanna Wiesener
News Public

Heliobolici – small solar self-suppliers | 11th May, 10am, interim presentation of studio project at khb

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Judith Glaser, MoA

Wednesday * 11.05.2022, 10 a.m. in the lecture hall of the KHB We would like to invite you warmly to the interim presentation of our semester studio project, “Heliobolici – small self-suppliers”. In this project, we investigate objects and application contexts in which solar energy can be used to achieve energy independence. We are exploring the question of the extent to which this product dimension can generate new rituals of use and new formal-aesthetic archetypes. Please find further information here. The studio projects is supervised by Prof. Carola Zwick and Prof. Judith Glaser Supported by eLab: Prof. Mika Satomi and Felix Groll We would be delighted to hear from you if you can make it: glaser[at]kh-berlin.de

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Clemens Winkler
Clemens Winkler
News Public

OPEN CALL: International Marianne Brandt Award, Extended Submission Deadline 21.03.22

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International Marianne Brandt Award 2022

8th International Marianne Brandt Award Connectedness — Experiments on a new relationship with nature The 8th International Marianne Brandt Award 2022 asks artists and designers how that which connects us with other living beings and habitats can be newly discovered and designed. We are looking for projects, images, and texts on cooperative, aesthetic, metaphorical, and poetic exchanging relationships with other organisms and natural existences. Could a perspective in which humans see themselves less as a counterpart to other living beings and habitats, but rather pay attention to similarities, familiarities, and mutual dependencies help establish new cooperative natural relations? How could we conceive and design connecting processes, objects, and atmospheres in this sense? How can we talk, write and tell about our existential connections in poetic and creative ways? What are the approaches to nature that are relevant for artists and designers…

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Antje Nestler
Antje Nestler
Events Public

On short notice: Lecture by Claudia Mareis »Gestaltung und Wissensgeschichte: Zur Designmethodologie der 1960er Jahre«

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Today at 4.15pm our Co-Director Claudia Mareis will give a lecture on »Gestaltung und Wissensgeschichte: Zur Designmethodologie der 1960er Jahre« (in German).  Please find alle revelant information here: https://v.hu-berlin.de/?stat=show&vk_id=8648 The German lecture series offers students of the Master’s program and interested parties an insight into the most important positions, research fields and methods of Berlin Cultural Studies. At the same time, it opens the possibility to deal intensively with selected questions and problems of human-animal-studies, border-studies, gender-, racism- and intersectionality-studies, the history of culture and knowledge, the history of cultural techniques and cultural theories, the transcultural history of Judaism as well as cultural studies aesthetics.  

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Hanna Wiesener
Hanna Wiesener
Events Public

“Digital:Sovereignty” – Interactive exhibition of the project “Coding IxD”

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“Digital:Sovereignty” – Coding IxD – credits: Judith Glaser

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 the Weißensee School of Art and Design explore these questions interdisciplinary 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 will be showcased in an interactive exhibition at the Weizenbaum Institute Berlin starting in February. The semester project was supervised under the direction of Prof. Dr. Claudia Müller-Birn, Freie Universität Berlin, Prof. Thomas Ness, Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, Prof. Judith Glaser, Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin and Peter Sörries, Freie Universität Berlin and is part of »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material«. The exhibition is supported by…

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Felix Rasehorn
Felix Rasehorn
Design Research Public

Mastering Digital Cutting

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Dominic Eger

We would like to kindly invite you to this presentation (with open discussion) by Dominic Eger on his MA Thesis project (Supervised by Prof. Carola Zwick and Prof. Dr. Lucy Norris @KHB). Mastering Digital Cutting When: Tue. 18.01.22. 11:30 – 12:30 am Where: https://hu-berlin.zoom.us/j/62348816853?pwd=c1JlTmVUbnRRWVZUYkdRNjNSR1RLZz09 Abstract: For the transfer of surgical cutting processes into a digital environment, it is crucial to investigate whether the transmission of traditional action patterns and the associated imitation of analogue tools for input into digital systems is still effective. Ultimately, interaction with surgical robots requires interfaces that can speak all cutting languages. For the development of input and output devices for cutting interactions, modalities of interaction were compiled from the perspective of interaction design, making possible futures of haptics tangible and usable on concrete models.

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Claudia Mareis
Claudia Mareis
Uncategorized Public

CfP: Design × Sustainability / 18th Annual Meeting of the DGTF

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Call for Papers and Projects 18th Annual Meeting of the DGTF 02.06. and 03.06.2022 Venue: Muthesius Academy of Arts, Kiel, Germany and online Design × Sustainability Materiality, Systems, Shared Prosperity Format: hybrid / Language: German and English Since the UN Climate Conference COP26 in Glasgow 2021, we can say: It can’t continue like this. The history of design is full of ideas and practices on designing for sustainability, from the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau to Victor Papanek to the Circular Design Guide. Designers are seen as experts in developing holistic solutions to complex problems. The ability to deal with uncertainty holds potential to provide valuable solutions to environmental, social and economic challenges. But in view of the upheavals of society in the Anthropocene, the question arises as to what design is really capable of achieving. Design faces considerable challenges as a…

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Khashayar Razghandi
Khashayar Razghandi
Research Public

MotorSkins: a bio-inspired design approach to interactive soft robotics

Khashayar RazghandiLeave a Comment on MotorSkins: a bio-inspired design approach to interactive soft robotics
A graphical representation of the design process.
© IOP Publishing

MotorSkins is OUT! “…On the more general scheme, the work presents an interdisciplinary design-science approach to bio-inspiration and showcases how biological material solutions can be looked at from a design/designer perspective to bridge the bottom–up and top–down approach to bio-inspiration…” MotorSkins–a bio-inspired design approach toward an interactive soft-robotic exosuit., Gutierrez, F. and Razghandi, K., Bioinspiration & Biomimetics. 2021. otorSkins–a bio-inspired design approach toward an interactive soft-robotic exosuit., Gutierrez, F. and Razghandi, K., Bioinspiration & Biomimetics. 2021.   To know more about the start-up that grew out of this project: -> https://www.linkedin.com/company/motorskins/ -> http://www.motorskins.com  

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Khashayar Razghandi
Khashayar Razghandi
Events Public

Alternative Monsters and the Probability of the Impossible

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WFSF World Conference - The Openness of Futures
WFSF World Conference

“…the key is the paradigm shift, from seeing the monsters of biology not as autonomous closed systems (subjects), with individuated characteristics (properties), influencing and shaping their habitats and artefacts (objects), but to see them as open, entangled dynamisms and performative structures within a larger meshwork of ontological relevances…” “Rethinking Growth: A Bio-inspired Take on Monsters” – K.Razghandi This Friday 29.10.2021 four of us will be giving a team talk at 24th WFSF World Conference “The Openness of Futures”: “Alternative Monsters and the Probability of the Impossible” „…the monstrous (etymologically from “moneo”, to warn in Latin), can be thought of as a warning about biological and political life marked by a displacement outside of normativity. Once this monstrous perspective is recognized and organized, we take into account the process of staging monstrosities in order to warn, to point out, some biopolitical relations that…

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