Materials Development as Transdisciplinary Research Process

Ab­s­tract:

This ar­ti­cle de­scribes the de­vel­op­ment of a light-re­flect­ing con­crete. Since 2009 the au­thors have head­ed the BlingCrete work­ing group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kas­sel, Ger­many. This group, which brings to­gether ex­perts from the fields of vi­su­al art, ar­chi­tec­ture, in­ter­ac­tion de­sign, in­dus­trial de­sign, ex­per­i­men­tal physics, and ma­te­rials re­search, is de­vot­ed to de­vel­op­ing new ma­te­rial con­cepts. The BlingCrete pro­ject be­gan as a se­ries of artis­tic ex­per­i­ments with light-re­flect­ing ma­te­rials and the pheno­menon of retrore­flec­tion. It is thus an exchange ini­ti­at­ed from the artist’s po­si­tion, in which ways of know­ing and work­ing that are spe­cif­ic to the sci­ences are har­nessed in or­der to po­si­tion and de­ploy them in artis­tic con­text­s—and vice ver­sa. At the thresh­old be­tween vis­i­bil­i­ty and in­vis­i­bil­i­ty BlingCrete re­veals the con­tra­dic­tions of ma­te­rial rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The re­search pro­ject picks up that thread us­ing such ob­ser­va­tions to gen­er­ate fur­ther lines of in­quiry and re­con­ceive boun­daries. With mag­net­ic po­si­tion­ing we ul­ti­mate­ly de­part the spec­trum of the vis­i­ble for the in­vis­i­ble realm of nanos­cale elec­tro­mag­net­ic fields.

Key­words: Sur­face de­sign, retrore­flec­tion, ma­te­rials re­search, mag­net­ic po­si­tion­ing, art and sci­ence