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.

Design Research Public

Ferment-activity Club #3: Jumpstart drinks

Maxime Le Calve04.06.2021, 12:19 PMLeave a Comment

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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Events Public

Parallel Ecologies: A Symposium on Art, Media and Environments

Sara Yazdani04.06.2021, 1:00 PMLeave a Comment

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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News Public

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

Maxime Le Calve25.05.2021, 12:34 PMLeave a Comment

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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Uncategorized Public

Podcast contribution “Der Blick”

Mareike Stoll19.05.2021, 2:40 PMLeave a Comment

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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Events Public

Lecture series ON GESTALTUNG

Patricia Ribault10.05.2021, 1:19 PMLeave a Comment

On Tuesday 11th May starts ON GESTALTUNG, a new online lecture series initiated by Jörg Petruschat and Patricia Ribault at weißensee academy of arts. This lecture series is conceived in two parts : “Theories”, which complements Jörg Petruschat’s seminar “Theories of Gestaltung”, and “Actions”, which is an extension of Ben Lignel’s seminar « Performing Research: Being with / Learning with / Speaking with an Object ». Chapter: theories – Tuesdays 3pm – 5pm 11-05-21 Annika Frye, professor for design research and design studies, Muthesius University of Arts and Design, Kiel, Design Academy, Eindhoven 18-05-21 Daniel Wahl, consultant and educator in regenerative development, whole system design and transformative innovation * 2pm – 4pm * 25-05-21 Emanuele Quinz, curator and associate professor for art and design history, Paris 8 University, École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris 08-06-21 Glenn Adamson, curator and…

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News Public

Theory of Filtering

Alwin Cubasch03.05.2021, 10:12 AMLeave a Comment

Christian, Vanessa and I have finished our work on our “Theory of Filtering” and uploaded it on CERN’s Zenodo Preprint Server. We’re looking forward to comments, replies, and ripostes. We’ve also created a Filtering-Community that’s managed by Christian where you can upload preprints too. Check out the Matters of Activity – Community as well. Kerstin has set up that one for all of us! Abstract http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4731045 Filters are at the very center of many current processes of our transformational age. But what common concepts underlie this multitude of filtering phenomena? We understand filtering as a scalable environing technique that differentiates and maintains symbolic and material environments alike. Because of its scalability, human as well as non-human actors can employ filtering techniques to engage their environs. Filtering is an activity that matters in a twofold way: It is a material…

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Research Public

Cutting 2D Polyglycerols from 2D graphitic templates for Inhibition of virals such as SARS‐CoV‐2

Mohammad Fardin Gholami26.03.2021, 6:38 PMLeave a Comment

2D nanomaterials have garnered widespread attention in biomedicine and bioengineering due to their unique physicochemical properties. However, poor functionality, low solubility, intrinsic toxicity, and nonspecific interactions at biointerfaces have hampered their application in vivo. Here, biocompatible polyglycerol units are crosslinked in two dimensions using a graphene‐assisted strategy leading to highly functional and water‐soluble polyglycerols nanosheets with 263 ± 53 nm and 2.7 ± 0.2 nm average lateral size and thickness. The polyglycerol nanosheets are cut from the surface of graphene by slight acidification and centrifugation and is sulfated to mimic heparin sulfate proteoglycans. Their efficiency with respect to herpes simplex virus type 1 and severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 inhibition is compared to their 3D nanogel analogs. Four times stronger in virus inhibition suggests that 2D polyglycerols are superior to their current 3D counterparts.

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News Public

Activities at NMI 2021 “Computing and Worldmaking”

Frank Bauer22.03.2021, 9:57 AMLeave a Comment

During the coming four days, the New Materialist Informatics Conference 2021 “Computing and Worldmaking” will bridge disciplinary boundaries between informatics, humanities and social sciences through innovative, material-driven perspectives. Maxie Schneider (working group of Cluster PI C. Sauer at Textile and Surface Design/KH Weißensee) and myself are giving a workshop titled “Constraints as Chance”, looking at data formats, French potential literatures and design-driving SMA wires, hopefully learning something about how to see the bottlenecks of our work as something positive, after all. As a contribution to the panel “Transdisciplinary Methodologies and Interventions”, I will also talk on the ontologies of material versus manufacturing data. And especially for anyone interested in the entanglements of technology, material and gender, there are many other fascinating talks from Felicity Colman to Safiya Umoja Noble to explore, so please feel invited.

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Events Public

Design as Common Good: Framing Design through Pluralism and Social Values

Claudia Mareis04.03.2021, 3:50 PMLeave a Comment

Registration is now open for the 2021 Online Swiss Design Network Conference: Design as Common Good: Framing Design through Pluralism and Social Values. In light of social, economic, technological and environmental challenges, design researchers, practitioners as well as communities constantly and critically address and question the contribution of design to the common good. The common good as conceptualized by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Zalta et al., 2018) “benefits society as a whole – in contrast to the private good of individuals and sections of society.” Design as a discipline has long been positioned from the context of developing and catering to the private good, focusing on individual and smaller sections of society – largely leaving its contributions to the common good underexplored. With our conference Design as Common Good, the conference will reflect upon what constitutes a common good…

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Events Public

“Need-Based Clothing Design” meets “Tessellated Material Systems”

Khashayar Razghandi23.02.2021, 9:06 PMLeave a Comment

^{Magic Circle Symposium, Weissensee School of Art & Design}
^{Image credits: Kristin Dolz “Erosive Modelling”}

This Thursday, within the »Magic Circle« Interdisciplinary Symposium, Elaine Igoe & I will be joining Silke Hofmann & Felix Rasehorn panel, where after they present their respective works on Need-based Clothing Design females affected by breast cancer & Tessellated Materials Systems, the four of us will explore & discuss a broad range of topics around their work on Tessellation and Participation; the respective Research & Design Tools, Practices & Methodologies; the entangled concepts of tensions & relations; Space & Absence; Growth, Boundary Conditions, Diversification, Fits & Norms; and Co-working Materialities amongst others… if you are interested in these topic, drop a line at hello@forschungskreis.com & join us online on Feb. 25th 15:30, – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –…

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