2012 Interstices Under Construction Symposium

immaterial materialities:
materiality and interactivity in art and architecture

keynote speakers:
Jonathan Hill, The Bartlett - University College London
Professor Philip Ursprung, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich

Materiality has recently claimed centre stage in architectural discourse and practice, yet its critical meaning is ever receding. Tropes like material honesty, digital materiality and dematerialisation mark out an interdisciplinary field where scientific fact and artistic experimentation interact.
As a reaction to developments in science, materiality came under scrutiny in nineteenth century German aesthetics (Vischer, Schmarsow) and in the early avant-garde projects (Lissitzky, van Doesburg). These works pointed to the connection between the material properties of objects and spaces and their interaction with the inhabitant through psycho-perceptual effects - ideas that re-emerged transformed in the Neo-avant-garde of the 1960s and 70s.
More recent approaches deploy materials as mediators or activating agents that probe the relationship between audience/user and physical environment: Eliasson’s spatial investigations with phenomena-producing materials; Spuybroek’s use of responsive high-tech materials; and Diller and Scofidio’s technological re-creation of nature have been theorized under headings such as weather architecture (Hill), or atmo architecture (Sloterdijk).
Materials can give rise to seemingly incompatible connotations: Zumthor’s atmospheric concrete spaces reveal unexpected links with the post-industrial spaces of power plants (Ursprung).
All these approaches probe boundaries - between material and immaterial, art and science, practice and theory, representation and experience, tradition and innovation, and producer/object/user, giving rise to the following concerns:
What is the validity of different approaches to materiality in relation to the vital problems of our time?
Can materials be deployed to create environments which predict user behaviour and control social relations and experiences?
What trans-historical correspondences can be detected in contemporary approaches to materiality, and how do these challenge, imitate and expand on previous thinking?

Please send a 500-word abstract and a short cv to Sandra Karina Löschke (sandra.loschkeuts.edu.au) by 25 June 2012. Notifications will be sent out by 23 July, 2012. Double-blind refereed abstracts, if accepted, will be published on the Interstices website (www.interstices.auckland.ac.nz). The symposium is followed by a call for papers for the Issue 13 of Interstices: A Journal of Architecture and Related Arts on the same topic. The symposium takes place at the University of Technology Sydney on 28 -30 November 2012.

http://interstices.ac.nz/call-for-papers-3/