EXC 1027: Image Knowledge Gestaltung. An Interdisciplinary Laboratory

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Science is "Gestaltung", including all aspects of research and communication from laboratory arrangements to chemical formulae, from the organisation of a study up to theory building. Knowledge has always been shaped by architectures, tools, models and the information media and images used. In the past half century, the significance of Gestaltung in the production and perception of knowledge has achieved a new quality due to the development of digital imaging processes. As a means of rendering visible and summarisation, modelling and communication, proof and archiving, images have fundamentally transformed the sciences, humanities, technology and medicine. Now it is possible to grasp what were once inconceivably vast amounts of data and complexities. Since images not only operate on an immaterial level, but also interweave digital information with the material, images become a comprehensive reservoir and representation of various forms of knowledge. Images explode disciplinary and local boundaries, and they transport styles and aesthetic strategies. Gestaltung, a paradigm of modern design and production procedures, thus advances from the periphery to the core of research itself. This Cluster of Excellence proceeds from this central tenet. Images and knowledge are analysed as a process of Gestaltung. It constructs an interdisciplinary laboratory as a new virtual and real architecture of knowledge in which humanities, sciences and technology studies as well as the design disciplines participate equally. In this context, Gestaltung becomes a model concept of research. For the first time in the 200-year history of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, an integrative scholarly platform is established with the participation of 22 disciplines from numerous university and non-university research institutions and museums. This implementation may decisively transform the university.