ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG! first meeting on Wednesday the 18th of October at 13h (not 10h) in room 2.11.080

First assignment Please write a short essay. Explain why you are interested in material processes and the physicality of media and technology. Name at least one material or structure that you are particularly interested in (approx. 150 words). Send it by email to r.baecker@hfk-bremen.de by Monday (22nd of October).

The digital procedure, introduced in the 1940s, was intended to eliminate not only the noise in the channel and its surroundings but matter itself. This course looks at the origin of the digital and how artists and designers nowadays are trying to reclaim matter and raw material processes into their artistic practice. To radically advocate matter and its quality we might need a new way of thinking that offers hybrids between the discrete and the continuous.

This course focuses on an experimental practice in the area of art, science and technology. Each participant of the course should conduct a series of material experiments to explore new materials, skills and technologies for their design/art practice.

Possible materials/technologies:

• minerals, crystals, earth, sand and dust
• chemicals
• fluids
• soft robotics
• nanomaterials, e.g. nitinol (muscle wires), ferrofluids
• light
• sound
• other physical processes
• organisms (e.g. algae, bacteria)

References (still growing)

• Books / Texts / Theory
  • Good old Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is The Massage
  • Georg Trogemann - Code und Material
  • Michel Serres - Hermes I / Communication
  • Michel Serres - Parasite
  • Morehshin Allahyari & Daniel Rourke - The 3D Additivist Cookbook
  • Morehshin Allahyari & Daniel Rourke - The 3D Additivist Manifesto
  • Various - The Politics of The Impure
  • Experiencing the Unconventional. Science in Art
  • Mitchell Whitelaw - Accretor: Generative materiality in the work of Driessens and Verstappen
  • Mitchell Whitelaw - Sheer Hardware: Material Computing in the Work of Martin Howse and Ralf Baecker
  • Ilya Prigogine & Isabelle Stengers - Order out of Chaos Man’s New Dialogue with Nature
  • Jussi Parikka - A Geology of Media (Electronic Mediations)
  • Friedrich Kittler - Lightning and Series – Event and Thunder
  • Claus Pias - Analog, Digital and the Cybernetic Illusion
  • John Frazer - An Evolutionary Architecture
• Artists
  • Martin Howse
  • Roman Kirschner
  • Yunchul Kim
  • Agnes Meyer Brandis
  • Driessens & Verstappen
  • Henrik Menné
  • David Bowen
  • Antony Hall
  • Herwig Weiser: zgodlocator
  • Julien Maire: man at work, Open Core performance, Model for the Apocalypse, Relief
  • Verena Friedrich
• Films
  • Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky)
  • Out of the Present (Andrei Ujică) link
  • Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog) link
• Interesting Technologies + Experiments
  • Geneva Drive
  • Reversible Fluid
  • YouTube is your friend

First Meeting: 18.10.2017 13h (room 2.11.080)

Slack Channel slack/matter-matters

Meetings:

• 18.10.2017 (first meeting, starts at 13h)
• 25.10.2017
• 30.10.2017 14h Prof. Georg Trogemann - Computability / Introduction to DM
• 01.11.2017
• 08.11.2017 – cancelled –
• 15.11.2017 – cancelled –
• 22.11.2017
• 29.11.2017
• 29.11.2017 18h Martin Howse at Salon Digital (performance/lecture) link
• 06.12.2017
• 13.12.2017
• 13.12.2017 18h Daniel Rourke at Salon Digital (lecture) link
• 20.12.2017
• 27.12.2017 – vacations –
• 03.01.2018 – vacations –
• 10.01.2018
• 17.01.2018
• 24.01.2018
• 31.01.2018
• 07.02.2018

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* General Information for attending my courses