The SmartS Club

Whoever has been there knows it: every day you try harder to understand what a malignant narcissist is doing to you. And then you try all night, too. You warp your brain, wrench your soul. You fail.  Why? Because you can't. There is no way to understand morally corrupt people which have the whole universe centered around their defective ego. This trying to do so at some point consumes all of your brain-power and it hurts, it starts consuming you. But once you got rid of them there is an enormous freedom and a new love for the good that is in most people. The windows swing open, fresh air comes in, you see the sun or smell the warm rain. The whole world appears to smile. One malignant narcissist will start to lose his grip on us. Tomorrow.

The air is clear and warm. No artificial lights anywhere. The moon is lingering lazily in the trees lining the river. Some fireflies are having a good time, switching their glow on and off rather randomly - in one group they seem to synchronize but then it is random again. It reappears: a few bugs are flashing simultaneously at first, then more of them join in, and then even more until a huge cloud of insects is flashing in tune. Are they doing this on purpose? Do they even know that they are glowing? Do they have a will to turn their light on and off?  Obviously they do communicate. But why? How do they do it?  Or don’t they? 

On a wonderful summer night you lie in the grass - gaze into the dark sky, and let your thoughts wander - that shiny thing over there is an airplane, this a distant star, ISS disappears in the earth’s shadow - what a tiny box to be in! - where are the planets, how far can I see? You observe falling stars that are whizzing through the atmosphere at a delightfully high rate.  Why are there so many of them that night? Why do comets return? When? What is this strange thing called infinity. And why does infinity only go one way - infinitely into the future, but not infinitely into the past; infinitely far away, but not infinitely close, infinitely hot, but not infinitely cold, infinitely loud, but not infinitely silent? Why do things never end but did start at a certain point?  Why? The air is clear and warm. No artificial lights anywhere. The moon is lingering lazily in the trees lining the river. Some fireflies are having a good time, switching their glow on and off rather ra

Have you ever been at the construction-site of a high-rise and experienced the sound-cocktail of machines, colliding materials, the blasting boom-boxes, shouting workers? And have you then returned to the same place years later; when the building is finished? Where are the echoes of these past sounds while you wait at the reception? What do you experience during an awkward elevator-ride? People with blank stares, no talking, maybe some music... but nothing, absolutely nothing audible from the past. Now have a closer look. See the scratches at the wall, maybe a sneaky footprint in the concrete behind an emergency-exit, a chipped wooden frame? Static traces from the past. Petrified life. And now imagine a new construction-technique being introduced. Let some walls be written by massive 3D-printers, 'writing' threads of concrete layer by layer in quick scanning motion with preprogrammed perfection. All neat, all nice. And then modify the 3D-printer. You pick up the sound of the

Science-festivals are booming, open house events are packed and it looks like every science-institution of class has to have an artist in residence program.  At the same time ‚alternative facts‘ are part of a populist surge that globally shakes societies. What are we doing wrong? Conventional communication addresses those who are already interested in science. We are preaching to the converted. But if scientific knowledge is to show an effect for society ‚everybody‘ has to be reached - especially those who skip the science-part in the newspaper or wouldn’t lose sleep for a science-night. In order to reach those ‚non-believers‘ Paul-Drude-Institut has brought MTL (a concept developed by the greek organization SciCo) to Berlin, presenting science of nine Leibniz-institutes and DLR in 5 subway stations. This experiment during Berlin Science Week  was new to everybody involved. Mercedes Reischel (transfer-manager at PDI) found a wonderful partner in Berlins BVG, the Science Week p

The artist Sadie Weis was shadowing some of the scientists at Paul-Drude-Institut (a research-institute for nanomaterials) for eight weeks, observing the way they work, how scientists communicate with eachother, how they explain stuff to an outsider. The result of this dialogue is a light-installation and - maybe more important for the scientists involved - a reflection of the scientists  and of the artist on the languages they use.  T his project of an artist in a fly-by-residency will be wrapped up on Saturday, November 10th with a p resentation by the artist Sadie Weis and a panel discussion on differences and similarities in the way artists and scientists communicate with the outside world                  November 10, 2018 from 14-18                 Paul-Drude-Institut für Festkörperelektronik                  Hausvogteiplatz 5–7, Berlin-Mitte                Germany For  the Dialogue,  please register at   exhibition@pdi-berlin.de .   Der Dialog wird auf Deutsc