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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.

Robert Stock
Robert Stock
News Public

ANN: Access and Tinkering: Designing Assistive Technologies as Political Practice (16-17 September 2021)

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Network Dis/Abilities and Digital Media

This event hosted by the network Dis/Abilities and Digital Media aims to think critically through a theoretical framework in the context of dis/abilities that recognizes assistive technologies as political as well as situated interconnections. On this basis, we endorse to reflect on infrastructures of design for questions of inclusion and participation – cross-cultural, inter- and transdisciplinary. Reflecting on open source practices in medical and assistive technologies (e.g. 3D printing) will allow us to question the effects of heterogeneous interests, economic implications and everyday affordances of socio-material assemblages produced within the frameworks of participatory design research. Keynotes by Aimi Hamraie (Vanderbilt University), Anne Waldschmidt (University of Cologne) and a presentation by Tomás Sánchez Criado (Humboldt University). Come and join us: For details about the programme, registration and accessibility, click here.

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Maxime Le Calve
Maxime Le Calve
Design Research Public

Public Bricolage Session on Wed 7th July 2021 :“The Labyrinth of Multimodality: World-making with WorkAdventure, a virtual environment for low-tech digital encounters”

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Joanna Khandjieva

Object Space Agency (Cluster of Excellence “Matters of Activity”) & Stadtlabor for multimodal anthropology (IfEE) proudly invite you to a student project presentation from the “Multimodal Ethnography. Anthropology beyond text” seminar (coord. by Maxime Le Calvé & Tomás Criado) Wednesday 7th July 2021 14:00-15:00 The Labyrinth of Multimodality is an online world made out of heterogeneous digital materials which breaks with the linear, single-sited, single-ended epistemology. It’s a thought-provoker simulating a gamified approach for the ethnographic and for other knowing endeavors. As a learning project, it aims at making palpable and experienceable the challenges and opportunities of multimodal anthropological practice. Using open-source software, we have created a low-tech and playful 2D virtual environment conducive to encounters and conversations. This space is structured through the topics of the projects which were conducted during the seminar — fermentation practices, modern witchcraft, and…

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Carolin Ott
Carolin Ott
Research Public

Assisted Writing and Writing Assistants

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Poster Workshop Assistive Media
Leuphana University at Lüneburg

I invite you to take a look at the following event where Cluster Professor Robert Stock is contributing a talk on »Assisted Writing and Writing Assistants« (03 July 2021, 5 pm) The online-workshop »Assistance, Assistants and Assistive Media. Barriers and Interfaces of Digital Cultures« (01–03 July 2021) organized by the DFG funded project Assistive Media at Leuphana University Lüneburg will discuss assistive technologies, programming assistive environments and (technological) assistance in general by looking at human-machine interactions that are nowadays mediated through a growing number and variety of interfaces. It is an interdisciplinary event bringing together perspectives from media and cultural studies, neurosciences, architecture and game studies.

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Hanna Wiesener
Hanna Wiesener
Events Public

Design Research Studio Project ‘measuring/counting/weighing’: Presentation on July 7 from 4-6pm online

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messen/zählen/wiegen
“m/z/w”, Prof. Carola Zwick

We would like to invite you to the final presentation of this years Design Studio Project ‘measuring/counting/weighing’ supervised by Cluster member Prof. Carola Zwick. The presentation will be streamed on July the 7th from 4-6pm: https://youtu.be/miE5B4OBsO0 The measurement of the world forms the basis for many processes of cognition and evaluation. Alongside science and economics, which are based almost exclusively on quantitative methods, measuring, counting and weighing have crept into almost all areas of life. Digital technologies support this process by enabling sensors to make even more precise measurements, chips to store series of measurements and algorithms to interpret these data. Data series can be overwhelming in their quantity and misleading in their apparent precision. Moreover, many measurements depict processes that are imperceptible to the human sensorium, making it correspondingly difficult to communicate the insights gained from these measurements. Long-used units…

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Anne Delle
Anne Delle
Design Research Public

Ferment-activity Club #3: Jumpstart Drinks: Water Kefir, Kvass and Dandelions

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Maxime Le Calvé

The third session of the Ferment-Activity Club engaged with fermented drinks, especially with the art of making Water Kefir. Kefir is a drink that cannot be bought commercially. Antje Nestler broadcasted live from her kitchen how to take care of the kefir grains. Antje’s personal journey with fermenting water kefir started at a Yoga retreat, where grains were passed on to her from a fellow yogi. Since then different cultures keep growing in her kitchen and are passed on from her likewise to other people. Water kefir is not only the finished drink, but also the term for the clear, crystalline grains. The grains themselves have probiotic superpowers — so strong that they might upset your stomach, if you’re not used to them. But fermentation regulars like to put them in smoothies. Health benefits of fermented drinks are widely agreed…

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Maxime Le Calve
Maxime Le Calve
Design Research Public

Ferment-activity Club #3: Jumpstart drinks

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MoA, Wikimedia Commons

  Dear Ferment-activity Club,  A huge thank you for to Alex and Yoonha, as well as to all participants for the amazing Kimchi Session. Don’t be sad if you missed it – we are planning a Kimchi Party II. For our next session, we will explore  the shiny world of water kefir crystals. Antje Nestler will share her practice with us on the 16th of June, at 4pm. Save the date! Similar to Kombucha you will need a starter culture to begin your water kefir. We are currently growing them and we can hand them out to interested ferment-activists at the cluster. Please reach out to Anne Delle (dellanne@hu-berlin.de) to coordinate the grain transfer. As the kefir is quite easy to handle, all you need is sugar (and time, and care). For the kvass and for the dandelion drinks, we…

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Sara Yazdani
Sara Yazdani
Events Public

Parallel Ecologies: A Symposium on Art, Media and Environments

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Susanne M. Winterling, cosmo algae, 2019, photoprint.
Courtesy of the artist and Parrotta Contemporary Art
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021

    I cordially invite you to Parallel Ecologies: A Virtual Symposium on Art, Media and Environments, a one-day symposium taking place on June 24, hosted by Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo and Media Aesthetics at the University of Oslo. With Ina Blom, Synne Tollerud Bull, Jennifer Gabrys, Stefanie Hessler, Ursula Münster, and Susanne M. Winterling, convened by Sara R. Yazdani. Zoom link (Registration required). Abstracts and more information.  Exploring the life of beings both technical and natural in the 1950s and 60s, the philosopher Gilbert Simondon intimated that a being is nothing on its own but only becomes through dynamic interactions with other beings. Such becoming presumes the notion of an environment, the constitution of a “milieu” alongside the individuation and concretization of beings. To speak of individuation rather than singular individuals is to acknowledge the processual nature of “beings” – whether technical…

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Maxime Le Calve
Maxime Le Calve
News Public

Ferment-activity Club #2: Kimchi Party WED 26th 3pm

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MoA / Wikimedia Commons

  Dear friends of the ferment-activity club, After the success of our Kombucha Refresher (which was so refreshing!), we want to invite you to a new gathering. Our next session will be a “Kimchi Party”. In the second episode of our online workshops series we will cut vegetable, listen (to people, and to vegetable being cut), talk (mostly to people). Together we will feel and explore the depth of the Kimchi making process. The Workshop is taking place this Wednesday, 26th of May, 3pm and will last 90 minutes. Zoom-Meeting: https://hu-berlin.zoom.us/j/62843002640?pwd=eTlud2dXLzl1dnNvNDlWWEtLWU9RUT09 Meeting-ID: 628 4300 2640 Passwort: 561668 We will be guided through the practice by Alexander Trabert and Yoonha Kim. Please give us a heads up, if you’re interested and write to Anne Delle (dellanne@hu-berlin.de) to receive a list of ingredients. Many of you have received a bag of Korean…

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Mareike Stoll
Mareike Stoll
Uncategorized Public

Podcast contribution “Der Blick”

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Marie von Heyl

The wonderfully inspiring artist Marie von Heyl recently invited me to contribute to her podcast series “Eclectic Engineering”. The episode is now online. There, we talk about the aesthetics and politics of the gaze. Based on my research on photobooks of the Weimar Republic, we discuss to what extent the ambivalence of photography demanded and still demands a literacy of seeing. We talk about anti-muses and the gendered gaze, about the interplay of haptics and optics, and ask with McKenzie Wark and Rachel Aumiller whether an ethical space beyond binary divisions can be opened up from play, aesthetics, and eroticism. Marie describes herself as “Berlin based trans-disciplinary artist who works on subject-object-relations and the productive inadequacies of language.” Happy listening! Marie von Heyl: Eclectic Engineering Episode 14: Der Blick (mit Mareike Stoll)  Webplayer: https://eclecticengineering.podigee.io Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2O4TsA2 Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/2u0hVQf

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