PEEK-Project at FWF

The University of Applied Arts Vienna will be hosting more projects to explore the field of artistic research. The PEEK-project (Program for Arts-based Research/FWF) "Liquid Things" is conducted by Roman Kirschner and is connected to the Art & Science department. It is one of three PEEK projects that will be hosted by the University of Applied Arts.

 

See also:

news

www.romankirschner.net

 

Abstract LIQUID THINGS

Roman Kirschner

 

Materials have always been transmitters of messages. Today they have acquired a new relevance as a result of the increasing flows of information that shape our societies. Consequently, many scientific fields are simultaneously developing ways of expanding the potential of matter to handle these flows. On the road to realizing concepts like “programmable matter" or "adaptive architecture", research groups on “mediated matter”, "transitive materials" and "metamaterials" have recently emerged. However, these young realms are characterized by a mechanistic way of thinking which leaves promising aspects of these novel, active and metamorphic materials unelaborated.
Considering Gaston Bachelard’s poetic essays on the influence of matter on imagination and that fact that our culture has been charged with ideas about transformations since the apparition of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” two thousands years ago, we propose a practical and critical approach to the genuine advances in this field made by computer and materials sciences, physics and chemistry to face questions regarding issues such as the physical resonance of materials becoming active or their potential to cause a renegotiation of our material reality.
We take both referential contexts, namely the scientific developments and the imagination applied to transformations of matter, and combine them to present new ideas, concepts and concrete actions with the intention of expanding artistic perspectives.

 

The project “Liquid Things” is organised in three modules: Material/Technology, Theory/Reflection and Art/Process, each including several international invitations for concentrated, time-limited cooperations ending in individual presentations. The first module focuses on experiments with novel materials; the second deepens the context and sets the theoretical framework for our research; and finally, the third, consists of the creation of artistic prototypes. The main outcomes are presented in: two workshops on the artistic manipulation of active materials, a symposium that reflects on the theoretical and practical field adressed in the project in relation to art-based research, an exhibition that places the prototypes in a public venue for open discussion and a final published book, which summarizes the processes, collaborations, activities and results of the project. The three modules are deeply intertwined and allow the development of a critical and simultaneously deep and original collaboration with matter.