Wunderkammer 2

tales of nature — material cultures

Students of the Class of Spatial Design and Exhibition Design, Institute for Transmedia Design, Department of Visual Visual Communication at Berlin University of the Arts have explored the question of how interrelated networks and relationships between humans, animals, plants and the material environment can emerge.

Based on an expanded understanding and investigation of matter, e.g. rocks and minerals, students visualised hidden stories and phenomena that were translated into fictional and narrative spatial scenarios in interaction with hybrid materialities. Visualisations, animations, experimental collages, 3D scans and sculptural material experiments open up digital spaces and unknown imaginary worlds that tell of undiscovered materialities, bodies and places.

With projects by: Florentin Aisslinger, Fiona Belousz, Maria Capello, Vincent Carter, Mattia Friso, Ernst August Graefe, Lukas Graf, Hannah Greifenstein, Valentin Jauch, Shinae Kim, Livia Kirchner, Jason Kittner, Maria Kobylenko, Stefanie Messner, Boohri Park, Jil Schuberth, Klara Troost, Pauline Luca Wunderlich
Artistic collaborator, until 2024: Ruven Wiegert
Head: Prof. Gabi Schillig

The Class for Spatial Design and Exhibition Design (Raumklasse) at Berlin University of the Arts explores and develops experimental artistic methods for designing communication in space in different scales and contexts. Spatial structures are understood in their multidimensionality and (im)materiality as specific systems of spatial communication. Artistic research, the experimental development and testing of analogue and digital design methods and their transfer into conceptual design processes lead to the design and realisation of multisensory spatial structures, exhibitions, physical and digital objects and communication devices, furniture objects, spatial installations and scenographic spaces or transmedia environments.

more-than-human sketching

»More-than-human sketching« exhibits the results of a participative design anthropology research process, which centers around the repurposing of an emerging digital design tool, 3D drawing, to delve into the collections of the Kunstgewerbemuseum through collective acts of spatial sketching. Building upon the ongoing experiments in digital anatomical training currently under development at the Speculative Realities Lab (Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« / Department for Neurosurgery, Charité), researchers and workshop participants engaged in co-designing interactive augmented performances. Together, they created new scores to immerse themselves in the more-than-human crafting processes embedded within the collection objects.

Sketching has long been the mark of the designerly knowing. At the core of the modern forming process, there is a mysterious act which evades partly the intentions of the maker: when hand, paper and idea meet, an intuitive digestion of spatial knowledge happens through quasi-conscious gestures. Like the motile fingers of mycelium networks growing through their environment, these lines embrace forms, making sense of their relations.

What if design and humanities could ally to imagine new visual and performative arguments to counteract the anthropocentrist views on material cultures and biomedical visual knowledge?
In the four vitrines of the Wunderkammer, colorful graphic ethnographic field notes display how groups of visitors sketched in 3D following these performative scores, while embracing a new perspective on the activity of materials. Along with the images, 3D prints of the objects in various materials (resin, clay) stand in the place of the museum objects that were sketched and digitally »digested« by the participants.