Fieldwork as stretching senses: "Stretching Materialities" opening at Tieranatomisches Theater
Last week came a big step into our experimental exhibition-as-research: the public opening, which unrolled as a final sprint, a hectic evening, and a sudden relief. Here on the picture our colleague Binru Yang is taking the VR elevator, a transporting epistemic device inspired by the novelist Roahl Dahl (1972) and by the iconic video “The powers of ten” (Charles and Ray Eames, 1977). Wearing our Haptic Hanbok, she is set to explore the “hidden activities of materials and spaces” which can be experienced interactively in a set of 6 different “levels.” The piece that Yoonha Kim and I have curated, researched and produced in collaboration with a fantastic team, is called “Virtual Sensing Knife and Haptic Hanbok.” They consist of a vitrine, a research-process image gallery, a VR experience, a garderobe of silky soft haptic wearables and a performative ceremonial to put them on.
The opening was the first event in presence of our research cluster in a very long time! We had a nice little crowd, quite mixed, of colleagues, friends, families, and members of the public.
Few days before: Christian Stein, architect of the VR elevator, is taking a first try into the Hapit Hanbook. The crew is prepping the prototype: Mohammad Fardin Gholami (macromolecular physicist & electrical engineer), and Yoonha Kim (anthropologist and fashion designer).
Two weeks before: Bringing together the haptic wearable and the VR experience, the sound designer Nico Espinoza developed with us a patch on Puredata which is translating the interaction of the atomic force microscope into a sensuous multimodal experience. What a ride! We will keep developing this piece in the next months, and expand this collaboration between anthropologists and immersive interaction artists in a workshop series, the “stretching senses school.” (Read more on “Virtual Sensing Knife and Haptic Hanbok” in this previous post). The exhibition is open until end of January, come visit us and join the fun at the Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin!