The Future of Construction features two symposiums: Computational Design for Sustainable Construction and Construction Robotics. The symposiums brings together experts from a diversity of fields– architecture, robotics, engineering, computer science, circular construction and computer vision– to discuss challenges for the future of construction. Daniela Mitterberger will host a workshop on AR-Aided Architecture and Engineering Design, that explores how tools such as augmented reality can support humans in the design of future buildings.

Playing Models is at the vanguard of artificial intelligence and design and aims to produce reliable and valid data about implementing new technologies in architectural design practice. The conference invites researchers, practitioners, philosophers, and theorists across multiple disciplines to discuss new paradigms of architectural thinking and production. Daniela Mitterberger will host a discussion on the workmanship of synthesis: digital devices, synthesizers and the human body. The conference is supported by the University of Florida School of Architecture, City-Lab Orlando, Center of Euorpean Studies, ETH Zurich Chair of Digital Architectonics.

The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). CHI – pronounced 'kai' – annually brings together researchers and practitioners from all over the world and from diverse cultures, backgrounds, and positionalities, who have as an overarching goal to make the world a better place with interactive digital technologies.

Daniela Mitterberger (ETH Zürich) MRAC Workshop for the upcoming MRAC term 3 in IAAC Barcelona. In collaboration with: Lidia Atanasova (TU München), Kathrin Dörfler (TU München)

Degrees of Life is an experiment approached at an architectural scale. The exhibition investigates non-verbal communication scenarios between humans and bacteria, in order to navigate towards a shared space of sensing and coexistence.

The experiment is driven by the question "how can we speak with a living entity of a completely different nature?” As this someone, “the other,” does not speak within our framework of vocabulary, the exhibition investigates different modes of non-verbal communication to bridge the gap. Different sensory modes and reactions are initiated in the space to explore how else communication can take place between humans and bacteria. The look at the "other", whether it is curious, scared, or investigative, builds the foundation for an emotional connection. We use an eye-tracking device to register the human gaze. This sensor device can track the user's gaze, attention span, and emotional level and is linked within the exhibition to a machinic environment in which different species of bacteria live. The human gaze activates the machinic environment to direct and stimulate the growth of the bacteria. For this, we are using bacteria-specific triggers such as chemical reactions, changes in their environmental conditions through light, and the addition of nutrients.

Two-day online conference with global frontiers with live presentations, collaborative workshops, interactive sessions, live mentorship and panel discussions in which MÄID speculates automation and the construction industry. The conference questions how we experience and express live and the sense of aliveness today.

"Sylva" represents an autonomous, immersive landscape built to honour the relationship between women, education, and technology. The constructed landscape is understood as synchronization of different parts of the ecosystem: the growth of plants, the movement of two robots, and a real-time soundscape and visualization.Being an event open to the public, safety is one of the key aspects of the installation, which is why the innovative Inxpect safety radars were used: people and machines, together, safely in the same area. The project follows the topicality of Magic Queen, an autonomous garden that is currently presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 in collaboration with ABB Robotics and Inxpect and is part of the Artificial Ecologies series.

A project by MAEID (Büro für Architektur und transmediale Kunst) in collaboration with the Princess of Asturias Foundation on the occasion of the 2021 Princess of Asturias Awards.

The effort to question fundamentals, to reframe assumptions and to develop perspectives openly: to what extent does the radical in art and the explicit of research in this respect play a role in the context of architecture? Can architecture as a per se inter-, trans- and cross-disciplinary practice be a trend-setting offer for a responsible role model of artistic research and can artistic research with its speculatively open mind set fundamentally challenge architecture? To what extent can artistic research be a research practice that allows established practices in architecture to be held in the dynamic between concept and work, to be rethought? To what extent can work in the field of architecture be considered a best practice of artistic research?

It is always about assumptions and change, and thus about the change of understanding and the understanding of change. In an open conversation, the experiences of the panel participants are taken as a starting point to discover what has always been there and can now perhaps be understood in a new way. Responsibly asking how to work together with art, research and architecture in the future, building on experiences and desires, applying the future without submitting to conditions and all their contingencies: because the future is to be applied, artistic research and architecture both a possible offer!

Panel discussion with:

Anderwald + Grond, Alex Arteaga, Tiziano Derme and Daniela Mitterberger, Barbara Imhof, Clemens Preisinger; moderated by Alexander Damianisch

“Re-mediated Zone” is a project that investigates the paradoxes between the synthetic and the natural through new transformative processes of low-grade organic material. Looking at the future of public spaces and the relationship with nature as an archaeological process, the project delves into the role of innovative technologies of additive manufacturing and microbiology applied to new materials. The more traditional notion of city planning separates nature and the city with a clear cut. In contrast, this project focuses on the design of a “blurred zone”, where building materials and nature cannot be recognized as such and natural and artificial elements hybridized with each other. The Prater was and is a symbol of the overlay of technology, amusement and nature. “Re-mediated Zone” overlaps both programs. Technically, the project showcases an innovative technique of material transformation: Inoculation techniques applied to natural fibers. This is a technique developed for enhancing mechanical properties of natural fibers. This involves the inoculation of the natural fibers with mycelia. The mycelia will grow around those fibers and then be treated at high temperature avoiding the presence of any residual organic activity. This process allows the creation of a material that fabricated in cooperation with fungi and enables the formation of intricate spatial structures.

Credits: MORPHtopia (Gonzalo Vaillo)

Maeid presents their latest installation at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Architecture Biennale the 17th International Architecture Biennale Exhibition, titled Magic Queen. MAGIC QUEEN [from the series Artificial Ecologies] is an autonomous techno-organic environment of 3D printed soil and lime organic material. The environment will have the capacity to "learn", “sense”, and “gather” data on ecological patterns and will provide a fertile ground for a new set of relationships among humans, nature and technology - a “new wildness.

MAEID exhibits the work "The Eye of the Other" at Werkleitz Festival 2021. The work explores non-verbal communication between humans and bats, through the study and translation of the bat’s sensorial systems. While humans distinguish fruit from foliage visually, via their ability to discriminate red and green acquired through biological evolution, bats do not rely on the primacy of the visual sense. Nectar feeding bats find flowers by sorting the environment using visual and sonar information. The Eye of the Other translates these fingerprints into audible frequencies and visual, sensual patterns comprehensible to human senses. This work was realized as part of the European Media Art Platforms ( EMAP ) program at Antre Peaux (ex Bandits Mages) ( FR ) with the support of the Creative Europe culture program of the European Union.

Open to the public from Saturday 22 May through Sunday 21 November 2021 at the Giardini, the Arsenale, and Forte Marghera, the 17th International Architecture Exhibition titled How will we live together? is curated by Hashim Sarkis and organized by La Biennale di Venezia.

MAEID exhibits the work titled Magic Queen: a hybrid environment incorporating and fusing biological systems with organic materials and machines, creating an ecosystem of empathy and coexistence. It explores the relationship among natural elements, technology, and living systems favoring the creation of an ecology of non-human subjects. It is a built habitat that can restore and nurture itself, redefining the role of living systems in architecture. It is a performative 3D-printed soil robotic garden. Sensors respond and machine learning creates continuous feedback among sensing, virtualizing, and induced change. Its inhabitable space combines visual, auditory, olfactory, and haptic features to capture the sensual experience of this new, mediated form of nature. Nothing in it could exist without the presence of the other: interconnectivity in biological entities. Fungal flora and soil structure depend on the robot to nurture them; the robot relies on their existence to move. The interconnectivity and performativity of all elements generates ambient sound and a visual interface uncovers the otherwise invisible stream of impact and growth.

Credits:

Bundeskanzleramt Wien / Federal Chancellery Republic of Austria

ABB

Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien

Stadt Graz, Land Steiermark

Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck – Institut für experimentelle Architektur and Department of Microbiology

Andrea Reni

Martin Gasser and Lukas Lauermann

Francesco D'Abbraccio

Luca Pagan

TOUCH ME Festival deals with interconnections between art and science through themes that engage and inspire contemporary artists and scientists in the field of biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics. This thematic programme reflects on biotechnological and other possibilities of hybrid, symbiotic and chimeric intertwining of living and non-living beings, exploring what happens when we truly get rid of nature – culture, living – non-living, human – non-human oppositions.

The works within the Quarantine exhibition are based on natural sciences and cybernetics. Profusely detailed and vastly imaginative, these works conceptualize the frail balance of cohabitation of living beings on Earth. Inspired, on the one hand, by latest scientific research, and the imaginings of posthuman subjectivity, as well as political and ethical assessments about the future, on the other, these works frequently venture into exciting and experimental theories. By addressing issues such as pollution, interspecies communication, climate change, the posthuman body and the Anthropocene, the works underscore the need for new values and ethical principles. The selected artists are far from being indifferent to life, rather, they create their own visions and narratives, thus integrating the long-disconnected notions of nature and the human.

MAEID exhibits the work “The Eye of the Other” at Exhibition “Quarantine”. The work explores non-verbal communication between humans and bats, through the study and translation of the bat’s sensorial systems. While humans distinguish fruit from foliage visually, via their ability to discriminate red and green acquired through biological evolution, bats do not rely on the primacy of the visual sense. Nectar feeding bats find flowers by sorting the environment using visual and sonar information. The Eye of the Other translates these fingerprints into audible frequencies and visual, sensual patterns comprehensible to human senses.

The studio “Psychotropic topologies” displaces our traditional understanding of the body as an isolated and physically delimited site of perception and experience. The aim of the studio is to develop novel strategies for cyber-physical transfers, merging the digital realm of data with the realm of the body and matter.

A global pandemic such as COVID19, shows us the urgency to develop new tools for digital embodiment, remoteness and digital communities. Until now physical spaces and digital spaces remained ontologically and spatially separated. However, current technologies allow a broader range of possible transmissions that can expand our presence and experience. Embodiment is the body’s ability to sense, feel and interact with the environment.

This studio uses digital embodiment as a mode to expand beyond the purely physical body to the digital one. This digital embodiment connects us to our digital avatar and enables the creation of a personalized digital environment. This space has the ability to feel, perceive and act while being limited, created and expanded by the physical body.

TUTORS:

Daniela Mitterberger, Tiziano Derme with Andrea Reni

STUDENTS:

Madeline Bosaid, Hongrun Che, Daniel Fielding, Joyce Huang, Shijin Liu, Gaby Miegeville-Little, Mason Mo, Yaonan Xiong, Luyao Zhang, Xuan Lin Li

Alien Life investigates novel approaches and practices that will lead to a new understanding of the relationships between people, machines, and living matter. All matter is part of the same world and forms an inseparable whole. Viewed from different perspectives, ideas about communication between people, their technologized environment, and living matter are discussed and linked to discourses about seemingly unrelated worlds.

Daniela Mitterberger, Tiziano Derme, Jens Hauser, Lucie Strecker, Margarete Jahrmann, Ray LC, Joanne Ting-Yu Hsu, Barbara Imhof

The aim of this project is to develop a responsive environment for interactions between humans and living material. This biological “performative architecture” reacts to human presence and behaviour through movements, growth, and decay. A first prototype will be showcased, which creates a space for humans and micro-organisms to interact. With webcams and artificial intelligence, visitors can use human emotions to communicate with bacteria non-verbally.

if you are in Vienna join us for the Prequel on the 04.12 to our workshop [Human:Computer] Interfaces at Die Angewandte. It is an evening with presentations and discussions about Biomediality, Human-machine communication, AI and Cybernetics. The prequel is followed by a 2 day workshop tutored by Martin Gasser, Daniela Mitterberger, Tiziano Derme! Looking forward!

Communicating with plants, updating their relationship with and knowledge of witchcraft, inventing eco-technical systems where humans become superfluous, dancing with phytoplankton, planting herbicide-resistant gardens or planting virtual trees to offset the CO2 footprint of our digital life, performing the sick body with organ or molecular transplants, or synthesizing hyper-toxic green pigments, far from the images of the idealised pastoral nature... The OU\ /ERT artists open up debates around the pervasive greenness trope, get physically involved and bring plants and other symbiotic creatures into the limelight. Trans-species alliances that challenge anthropocentric claims in the age of ubiquitous greenwashing. Distrustful of green and superficial metaphors, they insist on the importance of situated knowledges related to our chlorophyllous fellow organisms, essential for all other forms of life.

Gilberto Esparza (Mexico)

Špela Petrič (Slovenia)

Quimera Rosa (France/Argentina)

Adam Brown (United States)

Agnes Meyer-Brandis (Germany)

Eva-Maria Lopez (Germany)

Joana Moll (Spain)

Francisco López (Spain)

Baggenstos & Rudolf (Switzerland)

Karine Bonneval (France)

Magali Daniaux & Cédric Pigot (France)

Jean Marc Chomaz, with Giancarlo Rizza & Vincenzo Giannini (France)

José Le Piez & Patricia Chatelain (France)

La Bruja de Texcoco (Mexico)

Lechedevirgen Trimegisto (Mexico)

Dance for Plants (France, Germany, Denmark, Belgium)

Tina Tarpgaard (Denmark)

Roger Rabbitch (Spain)

Pedro Soler (Ecuador)

Tiziano Derme & Daniela Mitterberger (Italy/Austria)

MAEID exhibits the work "The eye of the Other" at Ars Electronica Postcity.

The Eye of the Other beschreibt audiovisuell die nonverbale Kommunikation zwischen Menschen und Fledermäusen, durch die Untersuchung, Übersetzung und Manipulation des Blickes der Fledermaus – der Echoortung. Das multimodale und immersive Werk beschreibt eine Realität in der die Grenzen unserer Lebenserfahrung durch die Erfoschung der tieferen Bedeutung der wechselseitigen Beziehung und der Kommunikation zwischen Mensch und Tier überwunden werden. Der menschliche Blick trifft auf den gleichwertigen, jedoch grundlegend anders zu verstehenden tierischen Blick. The Eye of the Other reflektiert, wie digitale Livestreaming-Technologien und Machine Learning verwendet werden können, um die menschlichen Sinne zu erweitern und neue Kommunikations- und Autorenformate, Empathie und Koexistenz zu fördern. Das Kunstwerk lässt das Menschliche und das Nichtmenschliche, das Lokale und das Ferne kollidieren und schafft dadurch neue kulturelle Räume, die durch die Metadomäne einer neuen Sprache gebildet werden. Diese topologische Wende weist auf eine mögliche Zukunft hin, in der die klaren Grenzen zwischen Mensch und dem Anderen verschwimmen könnten, um einer neuen Viel-Arten-Gesellschaft Platz zu machen. In diesem Sinne soll der Blick nicht als etwas verstanden werden, das man hat oder anwendet, sondern als Beschreibung einer Beziehung, in die man eintritt.

We had such a great time presenting our paper on 𝗦𝗼𝗶𝗹 𝟯𝗗-𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴. The research combined robotic binder-jetting processes with organic composites for biodegradable soil structures. The research explicates a relational style of thinking (counter current trends of digital reductionism) forming architecture as a plurality of “Um-Welten”, - a plurality of environments.  

If you are interested in reading it please find the full version here:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337062713_Soil_3D_-_Printing_Combining_Robotic_Binder-Jetting_Processes_with_Organic_Composites_For_Biodegradable_Soil_Structures

The Dutch Design week is an unique event with over 2,600 (inter)national designers, showcasing their work spread over 120 locations throughout the city of Eindhoven, there was more to see at DDW19 than ever before. 

MAEID teamed up with CONCR3DE to showcase a structure using generative algorithms inspired by natural structures, the project would help to create new habitats and restore fragile environments. 

Augment and Disrupt is a 3-day mini-festival that will explore various urgent topics surrounding the interactions between art, society and technology; from the contested territories of new digital platforms to the future of the interface.

At what point does an error become a mistake, a fail, and what makes it the celebrated source of unprecedented ideas and inventions? When is an error an oversight and when is it intentional deception, a fake?

An error is a discrepancy from what we expect, a deviation from the norm … but what is the norm and who establishes it? An error doesn’t have to be a mistake; it can be an opportunity!

Marking the centennial anniversary of independent Latvia and Baltic countries, this year's festival takes up the call by becoming a space for artistic interventions and hot-button conversations addressing the complexity and future of digital society, especially with regards to ubiquitous surveillance and data privacy.

The anniversary festival conference titled GLOBAL CONTROL, investigates issues from three main perspectives:

Hybrid Wars and Post-Truth ,Surveillance and Immersion ,The Next Big Privacy

Voices is a digital editorial project and part of NGV Triennial.

The name of the project refers to the billions of voices that make up our global community. We wanted to see how the five Triennial themes, of time, virtual, change, movement and body, manifest in the real world, through the voices and practices of people working in fields like medicine, literature, creative arts and critical theory. 

The ACADIA 2016 Conference will foster design work and research from the worlds of practice and academia that lie at the intersection between procedural design, designed environments and autonomous machines. More specifically, this conference will seek to explore recent work within the current trend in computational design to develop and apply quasi-cognitive machines; the integration of software, information, fabrication and sensing to generate mechanisms for interfacing with the physical realm.