event
A workshop following the material traces of the academy's digital networks combined with a guided tour through server rooms and a visit to the antenna mast on the top of the Rietveld building.
The second edition of Material Assemblies looks at the material infrastructures that underlie the virtual presence and digital affordances of the academy. We will trace the instruments, servers, cabling, receivers and emitters that form a connected tissue of hardware, and the software that routes and mediates the data flowing through it. IT staff and facilities team members, who maintain this infrastructure, will grant us access to the buildings' often‑overlooked zones: the inlets and outlets, processing units, and storage modules that support the networked organism of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
The workshop is situated against the backdrop of the growing concentration of storage and processing capacity in a handful of big-tech firms, increasing ecological concerns about data and hardware, and the pervasive opacity of digital ownership and access. While exploring the poetics, aesthetics, and technical reality of the academy’s virtual infrastructure, the workshop asks the question: what kind of kinship might we imagine with a vital network of things hidden in walls, beneath the floor, or behind locked server‑room doors?
The workshop also connects to the research project “Connecting Otherwise: Developing artistic/design research methodologies and workshop formats for regenerative digital practices.” The project was awarded a two‑year subsidy through a joint grant from the Dutch research agency SIA and the Creative Industries Fund and is led by Anja Groten together with project partner The Hmm.
Mylan Hoezen and Nico Hoogerbrugge are co-hosting the tour segment of the workshop.
Date: Wednesday 22 April
Time: 10:00–15:00
Location: Room 323, 3rd floor BC, end of the corridor
Registration (max 15): weeztix.shop
For: Rietveld/Sandberg students and staff
Introduction: 10:00–11:00
Guided tour: 11:00–13:00
Break: 13:00–13:30
Collective mapping: 13:30–15:00
Material Library
The Material Library is an initiative that foregrounds the interconnected material processes underlying the life of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie as a place of education, a building with diverse facilities, and a socio-material community. It seeks to bring the academy’s complex material domain into a visible and graspable realm through a digital, visual database, while also creating publics around and with the materials of the academy.
The library expands through intensive workshops called Material Assemblies that are held throughout the year. Open for students and staff, these workshops identify opportunistic entry points into the material chains of the academy and explore the links that connect them. The library grows by tracing materials that are consumed, produced, condensed, and transformed within the academy.
The Material Library was initiated by Márk Redele and co-hosted by Rietveld Sandberg Research and Urgent Ecologies.
The workshop is situated against the backdrop of the growing concentration of storage and processing capacity in a handful of big-tech firms, increasing ecological concerns about data and hardware, and the pervasive opacity of digital ownership and access. While exploring the poetics, aesthetics, and technical reality of the academy’s virtual infrastructure, the workshop asks the question: what kind of kinship might we imagine with a vital network of things hidden in walls, beneath the floor, or behind locked server‑room doors?
The workshop also connects to the research project “Connecting Otherwise: Developing artistic/design research methodologies and workshop formats for regenerative digital practices.” The project was awarded a two‑year subsidy through a joint grant from the Dutch research agency SIA and the Creative Industries Fund and is led by Anja Groten together with project partner The Hmm.
Mylan Hoezen and Nico Hoogerbrugge are co-hosting the tour segment of the workshop.
Date: Wednesday 22 April
Time: 10:00–15:00
Location: Room 323, 3rd floor BC, end of the corridor
Registration (max 15): weeztix.shop
For: Rietveld/Sandberg students and staff
Introduction: 10:00–11:00
Guided tour: 11:00–13:00
Break: 13:00–13:30
Collective mapping: 13:30–15:00
Material Library
The Material Library is an initiative that foregrounds the interconnected material processes underlying the life of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie as a place of education, a building with diverse facilities, and a socio-material community. It seeks to bring the academy’s complex material domain into a visible and graspable realm through a digital, visual database, while also creating publics around and with the materials of the academy.
The library expands through intensive workshops called Material Assemblies that are held throughout the year. Open for students and staff, these workshops identify opportunistic entry points into the material chains of the academy and explore the links that connect them. The library grows by tracing materials that are consumed, produced, condensed, and transformed within the academy.
The Material Library was initiated by Márk Redele and co-hosted by Rietveld Sandberg Research and Urgent Ecologies.
research group
Materiality
Materiality
project
Material Library
Material Library