Materials
have always been transmitters of messages. Today they have acquired a new relevance as a result of the increasing flows of
information that shape our societies. Consequently, many scientific fields are simultaneously developing ways of expanding
the potential of matter to handle these flows. On the road to realizing concepts like "programmable matter" or "adaptive architecture",
research groups on "mediated matter", "transitive materials" and "metamaterials" have recently emerged. However, these young
realms are characterized by a mechanistic way of thinking which leaves promising aspects of these novel, active and metamorphic
materials unelaborated. Considering Gaston Bachelard's poetic essays on the influence of matter on imagination and that fact
that our culture has been charged with ideas about transformations since the apparition of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" two thousands
years ago, we propose a practical and critical approach to the genuine advances in this field made by computer and materials
sciences, physics and chemistry to face questions regarding issues such as the physical resonance of materials becoming active
or their potential to cause a renegotiation of our material reality. We take both referential contexts, namely the scientific
developments and the imagination applied to transformations of matter, and combine them to present new ideas, concepts and
concrete actions with the intention of expanding artistic perspectives.
The project "Liquid Things" is organised in
three modules: Material/Thechnology, Theory/Reflection and Art/Process, each including several international invitations for
concentrated, time-limited cooperations ending in individual presentations. The first module focuses on experiments with novel
materials; the second deepens the context and sets the theoretical framework for our research; and finally, the third, consists
of the creation of artistic prototypes. The main outcomes are presented in: two workshops on the artistic manipulation of
active materials, a symposium that reflects on the theoretical and practical field adressed in the project in relation to
art-based research, an exhibition that places the prototypes in a public venue for open discussion and a final published book,
which summarizes the processes, collaborations, activities and results of the project. The three modules are deeply intertwined
and allow the development of a critical and simultaneously deep and original collaboration with matter.