Connoisseurship and the Investigation of Materiality: Four “Rembrandt” Drawings in Weimar*

The aim of this paper is to present the productive interplay of connoisseurship and material analysis when dealing with drawings by Rembrandt – or previously attributed to him – in the collection of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar. This concerns the more precise determination of the drawing materials used and the reconstruction of the genesis of the drawings discussed. The material analysis allows us to decide whether and how Rembrandt’s inks can be used to determine authorship at all. The “material turn” in drawing studies thus intervenes in the discussion about authorship and opens up a broader production aesthetic perspective. No longer the “style” but rather the handeling becomes the decisive criterion for answering the question “Rembrandt, or not?”

Material Agency

<p>The ‘material turn’ of the twentieth century focuses on the vibrancy of matter and non-human agency, providing an engaging platform from which to re-assess, and also promote, the role of materiality in design. The material turn draws away from a ‘representational’ paradigm towards a focus on materials as being non-objective, performative and responsive, where materials operate as authoritative matter. This design research thesis investigates the agential capacity of materials to amplify atmospheric experience in architecture. Through this research proposition, the thesis harnesses contemporary material perspectives to drive a series of enquiries that explore material agency in design. Within this framework, the design research seeks to strengthen relationships between user, matter and site. This method engages and evaluates materials on a tactile and emotional level, reflected in its atmospheric outputs. Ultimately, the design research employs materiality as an agent in the production of a 1:1 scale installation and two speculative building designs at the domestic and public scale. A historic site in East London has been selected to provide the contextual and material foundations for the design research. This thesis concludes that materials have an ability to exert force on the design process when they are engaged in a responsive feedback loop which acknowledges the transformative capacity of both ‘human’ and ‘nonhuman’ elements. The dynamic nature of scaling as a design method supported these findings by encouraging progressive dialogue between matter and design process.</p>

Material Agency

<p>The ‘material turn’ of the twentieth century focuses on the vibrancy of matter and non-human agency, providing an engaging platform from which to re-assess, and also promote, the role of materiality in design. The material turn draws away from a ‘representational’ paradigm towards a focus on materials as being non-objective, performative and responsive, where materials operate as authoritative matter. This design research thesis investigates the agential capacity of materials to amplify atmospheric experience in architecture. Through this research proposition, the thesis harnesses contemporary material perspectives to drive a series of enquiries that explore material agency in design. Within this framework, the design research seeks to strengthen relationships between user, matter and site. This method engages and evaluates materials on a tactile and emotional level, reflected in its atmospheric outputs. Ultimately, the design research employs materiality as an agent in the production of a 1:1 scale installation and two speculative building designs at the domestic and public scale. A historic site in East London has been selected to provide the contextual and material foundations for the design research. This thesis concludes that materials have an ability to exert force on the design process when they are engaged in a responsive feedback loop which acknowledges the transformative capacity of both ‘human’ and ‘nonhuman’ elements. The dynamic nature of scaling as a design method supported these findings by encouraging progressive dialogue between matter and design process.</p>

Chemistry, Society and Uncertainty

In recent years, besides the increased interest in philosophy of chemistry, we have witnessed a "material turn" in philosophy and the history of sciences with an interest in putting instruments, objects, materials and practices at the core of historical reports. Since its alchemic past, chemistry has worked with and on materials, so that its history is also a "material history". Thus, in the wake of this "material turn", it is up to philosophy and the history of chemistry to perceive the chemical substances, the chemists that create them and the industries that produce them as part of culture, society and politics. This overlap between chemical reasoning and materiality as well as the artificial character of its products makes chemistry an eminently technoscientific science. In this context, we will analyze the most general aspect that led us to identify it as "technoscientific", the hybrid that exists between chemistry and society. With that, we intend to argue in favor of considering the modern societal necessities (material, environmental, and human) with chemistry, in an effort to build a more harmonious relationship, being that it will be long and, maybe, indissoluble. Following that, our aim is to develop a concept that cannot be separated from the capillarity of chemistry in societies and the environment, the imprevisibility and essential uncertainty of the behavior of chemical entities in multiple contexts. Finally, we will highlight some reflections concerning chemical ethics associated with the production and creation of new substances that may become a part of the lifeworld.

The Material Turn in the Study of Form: From Bio-Inspired Robots to Robotics-Inspired Morphology

This paper investigates the mechanisms of knowledge production of twenty-first century robotics-inspired morphology. How robotics influences investigations into the structure, development, and change of organic forms? Which definition of form is presupposed by this new approach to the study of form? I answer these questions by investigating how robots are used to understand and generate new questions about the locomotion of extinct animals in the first case study and in high-performance fishes in the second case study. After having illustrated the landscape of twentieth-century morphology, I will reflect on the definition of form adopted in twenty-first century robotics-inspired morphology as well as on the differences between this approach to the study of form and the so-called nature-inspired disciplines, such as bionics or biomimetics. In the conclusion, I suggest that we are now in a material turn in morphology, characterized by the coexistence of the robotic, the virtual, and the real, which enables an understanding of how the structures and dynamics of shapes change over time.