The small particles deposited on surfaces, serve as environmental markers. They capture airborne pollutants, pollen, and microbial elements, providing insights into air quality, climate changes, and ecological transitions. Analysing dust composition helps trace pollution sources and historical environmental conditions, making it a vital research tool. Dust is seen as intrusion, and engenders labor to render surfaces immaculate, only to return later. The experience of an intensified air pollution is long lasting, yet its presence so minuscule it is understood as fleeting, and this ephemeral cover of our material world always calls for more work to remove it and dispose of it.
Dust
R.U.M. – Research Unit of New Materialities
R.U.M. – Research Unit of New Materialities is a research and creative platform dedicated to exploring 21st-century material entanglements and socio-material networks. It fosters collaboration and knowledge exchange among colleagues and students, engaging with ecological systems, digital networks, speculative spatial-temporal scales, and more-than-human perspectives. Grounded in design culture studies, R.U.M. integrates creative and design practices to critically examine contemporary material relations. Its main activities include workshops, reading circles, exhibitions, and publications, building a dynamic knowledge base. R.U.M. provides a space for experimental inquiry, encouraging interdisciplinary dialogue and new perspectives on materiality.
Ákos Schneider, assistant professor, PhD, with researchers Tekla Gedeon, Péter Hámori, Máté Hulesch, and sound artist Bálint.