The a.r.t.e.s. forum 2023 explores past, present, and utopian reactions to both physical and cultural forms of challenging surroundings. Bringing together diverse disciplines such as archaeology, cultural anthropology, history, architecture, musicology, philosophy, and sociology, this year's forum aims to find practices of resilience, perseverance, and engagement that can inform our lives in a world of rapid change.
The interdisciplinary conference approaches this thematic complex from four perspectives, each of which will be discussed in a panel. The panel "Resisting" will explore the possibilities and limits of resistance to social and "natural" crises. In the second panel, "Existing", the participants will discuss the relationship of human settlements to their environment, from small villages to sprawling urban centers. With the third panel, "Reflecting", the conference will address the necessity and role of self-reflection for change-efforts towards the social and physical environment, especially in literature on climate change. Lastly, the panel "Interacting" will discuss the creative relationship of humans to their environment: how do humans make their environment into things, and how do they shape their social environment through music and art? This fourth panel will prepare for the evening event, wherein the invited artists will bring the challenges of our environment to life through sound.
Opening
10:00 - 10:15 Welcoming Address Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Andreas Speer (Universität zu Köln)
Panel I Resisting (Chair: Philipp Battermann)
10:15 - 11:00 Atmosphären des Trostes Dr. Katrarina Opalka (Universität Bonn)
11:00 - 11:45 Continuity in Urban Form as A Means for Familiarisation and Resilience Daria Belova ( Sapienza Università di Roma/Universität zu Köln)
11:45 - 12:00 Coffee Break
Panel II Existing (Chair: Julia Becker)
12:00 - 12:45 Die Provokation des Lokalen. Soziale Orte als Infrastrukturen des Zusammenhalts (nicht nur) im ländlichen Raum (via Zoom) Prof. Dr. Berthold Vogel (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)
12:45 - 13:30 Jenseits der Akropolis: Annäherungen an Nachbarschaften und ihre Orte im klassischen Athen Prof. Dr. Patric-Alexander Kreuz (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel)
13:30 - 14:30 Lunch Break
Panel III Reflecting (Chair: Leonie Carell & Alex Miller-Noe)
14:30 - 15:15 tba Tanya Gautam (Universität zu Köln)
15:15 - 16:00 The Swerves of Ecopoet(h)ics Katharina Maria Kalinowski (Universität zu Köln)
16:00 - 16: 15 Coffee Break
Panel IV Interacting (Chair: Runa Ya)
16:15 - 17:00 Musicality of Nonverbal Communicative Interaction Prof. Dr. Jin Hyun Kim (University of the Arts Helsinki) & Marcello Lussana (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
17:00 - 17:45 Haptic Interaction with A Human and A Robot: What is Best for Performance and Learning?Dr. Ekaterina Ivanova (Imperial College London)
17:45 - 18:00 Closing Remarks Forum Organisation Team
Evening Event in Musiksaal: Sentire -Performance
19:00 - 20:00 Feeling While Moving, Touching and Hearing Artists: Prof. Dr. Jin Hyun Kim & Marcello Lussana
I Resisting
RESISTANCE IN URBAN FORM AS A MEANS OF CONTINUITY AND FAMILIARISATION
Daria Belova
How does resistance shape our life-world? Historical city is in a constant state of becoming, growing a palimpsest: in the process of formation of historical urban environments, local patterns often remain. For instance, historical Siberian cities adopted different concepts and models, which 'landed' differently, influenced by the persistence of vernacular tradition and geomorphology. The study presents the process of urban formation in these cities, which showed remarkable resistance of historical form. It was based on the hypothesis that the identity of local places is the product of an intertwinement of resisting local historical form and external, dominant cultural influences, resulting in a strong continuity. Finally, since the familiar, liveable and readable city is a pattern of high continuity, where new sensory impacts appear without disrupting the basic image of the familiar observer, this resistance is one of the keys to the resilience of intangible forms and familiarisation.
II Existing
Jenseits der Akropolis: Annäherungen an Nachbarschaften und ihre Orte im klassischen Athen
Prof. Dr. Patric-Alexander Kreuz
Die städtischen Quartiere des klassischen Athen stehen in der archäologischen Forschung deutlich im Schatten der öffentlichen und religiösen Orte der Stadt. Dies auch, weil nur wenige Stadtgebiete des klassischen Athen zusammenhängend bekannt sind. Ein solcher Ausschnitt eines ehemals dicht bebauten Stadtviertels wurde bereits im ausgehenden 19. Jh. zwischen Pnyx, Akropolis und Areopag ausgegraben und wird im Zentrum der Überlegungen stehen. Seine überwiegend in das 5./4. Jh. v. Chr. datierten Bauten sollen auf Modi lokalisierten Sozialverhaltens und nachbarschaftlicher Interaktion sowie ihren Beitrag zum ehemaligen Ortscharakter des Areals hin befragt werden. Ausgehend von einem Verständnis von Nachbarschaften, das im Kontext räumlicher Nähe die vielfältigen und sich räumlich überlappenden Formen formaler und informaler sozialer Interaktion ihrer Bewohner in den Vordergrund stellt, sollen so soziale Dimensionen gebauter städtischer Realitäten im klassischen Athen erkundet werden.
Segregation und sozialen Folgen - Challenging Surroundings im Ruhrgebiet
Sören Petermann
Das Ruhrgebiet hat einen Strukturwandel hinter sich, der in sozialer Hinsicht tiefgreifende Spuren hinterlassen hat. Die Spuren der Vergangenheit sind nicht nur als soziale, in den Raum eingeschriebene Strukturen der Gegenwart sichtbar, sondern wirken sich auf die Entwicklung der Lebenschancen zukünftiger Generationen aus.
Im Vortrag wird der Wandel als Veränderungen der Siedlungsmuster präsentiert, die mit sozialer, demographischer und ethnischer Segregation einhergehen und damit sozialräumliche Ungleichheit in verschiedenen Parametern anzeigt. Dieser anhand von Statistiken nachweisbare Wandel hat Auswirkungen auf das soziale Leben, auf Aspirationen und Lebenschancen der Menschen des Ruhrgebiets.
Anhand ausgewählter Beispiele aus dem Bereich Bildungs- und Entwicklungschancen von Kindern und Jugendlichen und der Wohnsituation von Erwachsenen sollen die Lebensbedingungen und -chancen im Ruhrgebiet nachgezeichnet werden. Es wird aufgezeigt, in welchem Maße sich Segregationstendenzen und das Aufwachsen und Leben an einem Ruhrgebietsort auf Wohlbefinden und stärkende Faktoren von Kindern und Jugendlichen auswirkt oder welche Präferenzen, Wünsche und Erwartungen an die Bedingungen des Wohnumfeldes einhergehen. Dabei werden Ergebnisse verschiedener Forschungsarbeiten und studentischer Lehrforschungsprojekte einbezogen.
III Reflecting
The Swerves of Ecopoet(h)ics
Dr. Katharina Maria Kalinowski
This talk explores and enacts ecopoet(h)ics as a radical interest, artistic mode, and literary experiment that generates creative-critical spaces for reflecting,recomposing, and re-imagining relations between the human and the more-than-human world. Charging poiesis with an eco-orientation, ecopoetics is concerned with “an array of practices converging on the oikos, the planet earth” (Skinner 2011). As it challenges conventions and expectations surrounding language and poetry in particular, ecopoetics turns into a challenging surrounding itself, pressing against linear form, fixed categories, and rigid thought patterns with “the courage of the swerve” (Retallack 2003). Embracing Retallack’s “poethics”, an emerging ecopoethics emphasises the entanglement between language and everyday life, situated in an indeterminate ecological continuum. Ecopoethical swerves by poets such as Rita Wong and Jody Gladding can thus be envisioned as “wagers” on the possibilities of language to create connections and ethical attention to the physical-material realm, intervene in our interconnected lives, and invite interventions in turn.
The Resilient Other in Contemporary Ecopoetry
Tanya Gautam
Some recent ecocritical scholarship condemns lyricism as self-concerned and argues that this tradition and its conventions are unable to accommodate the complexities of growing environmental crises and problematize an engagement with the more-than-human world (Griffiths 2017). In this talk, as in my ongoing doctoral research, I argue against the ecocritical demands of turning away from lyric poetry and instead explore the different ways in which contemporary ecopoetry, especially that in the lyric tradition, is engaging with more-than-human others.
Focusing especially on contemporary ecopoetry’s engagement with the vulnerabilities and resilience of non-human others, this talk also offers a brief reflection on how lyric poetry is adapting to its challenging surroundings, its resilience as a discipline as well as its importance in shaping socio-ecological change and development.
IV Interacting
Musicality of nonverbal communicative interaction
Prof. Dr. Jin Hyun Kim & Marcello Lussana
Our recent research project „Social interaction through sound feedback – Sentire“ explored whether musically guided nonverbal communicative interaction using the interactive music system called Sentire could facilitate basic forms of social behavior, which not only underlie complex forms of social behavior, but rather serve as a primary mode of socially meaningful interaction. In the lecture, we will present the results of our interaction studies and elaborate upon the extent to which such basic forms of interindividual behavior that are considered meaningful could be described as “musical.” A broad concept of music and musicality (Kim 2023) refers to the practices of affiliative communicative interaction consisting of sounds and/or body movements that shape coordinated non-representational forms of vitality and structure shared experiences; these practices, although they do not bear any representational semantics, are considered meaningful in that act of understanding occurring in terms of interactive participation and embodied re-enactment.
Haptic Interaction with A Human and A Robot: What is Best for Performance and Learning?
Dr. Ekaterina Ivanova
To move a table or dance together, people do not need to communicate verbally, instead, they understand how to move with the partner(s) through exchanging force and touch information. It was shown previously that such haptic communication can improve the performance of each team member so that even the best can benefit from the interaction with less-skilled. The mechanism of haptic communication was further deciphered by creating a reactive controller that induces interaction benefits similar to those of a human partner. We recently tested the effect of the interaction with this robotic partner on performance and learning, and whether humans can differentiate it from a human partner.
The interaction with the robot and human partners was not perceived differently; i.e. our robotic partner passed haptic Turing test, though some of the attributes were different with the robot. Moreover, training with robotic and human partners showed similar learning effect, resulting in slightly superior performance over solo training. In contrast, the interaction with haptic guidance typical of current physical training robots modified and deteriorated the tracking behaviour. Overall, these results suggest that haptic interaction is crucial for joint physical actions and can be used to design intuitive robots for physical interaction.
In this talk, I will present the recent findings and ongoing research in haptic communication and discuss its application to medical applications.
evening-event of the a.r.t.e.s. forum 2023 | time: 19:00 — 20:00 Uhr, 6. Juli 2023 | location: Musiksaal
* University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland ** Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
The performance will begin with a short demonstration of Sentire, which is an interactive music system using a body-machine interface (BMI) that allows users/clients in daily and therapeutic contexts to explore auditive, proprioceptive and tactile encounters with another interactant. Then a few persons of the audience will have the chance to use Sentire and explore a specific issue of their choice, interacting with a micro-phenomenologist and getting in touch with their feelings. The interactive sound will shape the experiential interaction and promote a deeper first-person experience. After every usage, the participants will have the chance to talk about how they got in touch with their specific issue and how Sentire supported such experience.
