The team behind the Digital Materialities KUV project.

About

Digital Materialities investigated the plural strands of how our everyday life unfolds in entanglement with digital and biological networks. The project conducted experimental lab work in theory, artistic research, and artistic practice. 

The project activities were organized around two main thematic cores:

Virtual Future Materials experimented with 3D-print in organic materials such as mycelia, hemp, and clay, as well as the translations of these prints into digital formats via cameras and scanners. Under a larger thematic umbrella of entanglement, the core explored the connections between material and process as well as biological existence and digital perception. 

Recirculate investigated what the project identified as a crisis of perception caused by the intense entanglement and tentative collapse of legal right, image making, and ecological sustainability under a predatory tech-capitalism whose continuous growth the project  could not have envisioned at the end of the project. Entangling theory formation and artistic research, the core engaged the theoretical fractions between artistic practice, materialist infrastructures, and digital perceptions.  The core produced symposia, a conference, a reading group and teaching formats.

Mission Statement

For your community of microbes—your “microbiome”—your body is a planet. Some prefer the temperate forest of your scalp, some the arid plains of your forearm, some the tropical forest of your crotch or armpit. Your gut (which if unfolded would occupy an area of thirty-two square meters), ears, toes, mouth, eyes, skin, and every surface, passage, and cavity you possess teem with bacteria and fungi. You carry around more microbes than your “own” cells. There are more bacteria in your gut than stars in our galaxy.

Merlin Sheldrake – “Entangled Life” 

People

Malene Bang is a visual artist and Associate Professor at POLY:LAB – the Laboratory for Plastic and Sustainable Materials. Bangs sculptural practice builds on a thorough insight into materials: aiming to reduce acrylic and plastic she has during recent years focused on how to develop more sustainable and environment friendly materials.

Karen Harsbo is a visual artist whose research practice combines a sustained knowledge of ceramic traditions and techniques with a desire for radically experimenting with the ways in which ceramic materials and techniques intersect with planetary economies, digital technologies, and careful pedagogies. For many years, she has led the Laboratory for Ceramics at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and has organized several teaching and research projects across the Nordic countries. 

Oskar Koliander is a visual artist whose work engages digital practices, sculptures, and programming, both in teaching, laboratory experiments, and the production of artworks and permanent installations. Koliander runs the Laboratory for 3D at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. 

Maibritt Borgen is associate professor of art theory and head of the Labotory for Arts Research at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Her work engages the political histories of cybernetics and art. She teaches workshops on academic creative writing and research in practice. 

Partners and Collaborators

We are indebted to our many friends and collaborators, among them Narsaq Research Station (KN), Rikke Luther (DK), Medicinsk Museion (DK) FLERE