In our collaborative projects, staff from institutes and companies have repeatedly described the same obstacles to us: experts tend to stick to their own circles, the potential of a technology remains hidden from view, and anything that emerges outside the plan has no place within funding frameworks. Our work addresses these issues in two ways. The Innovation Workshop is our programme for technology companies and research institutions, offered in three formats, ranging from a single day to a summer school lasting several weeks.
Innovation and development. Where can your technology go, in which applications, for whom, and with what risks? Artists use it for purposes for which it was not designed and create context. They reveal properties that the manufacturer did not seek. The result: a documented range of scenarios, prototypes and a technical question that nobody had asked before. The collaborations by Pinpoint GmbH and TU MERGE demonstrate how artistic inquiry has given rise to new fields of application.
Communication and demonstration. An object for trade fairs and lobbies, an installation, a narrative through which your technology reaches an external audience: on the website, at trade fairs, in recruitment, and in funding applications. A work of art born out of the technology sparked conversations across disciplinary boundaries and with outsiders, continuing well beyond the event itself without the need for a PowerPoint slide. Results from the FUNKEN x TUC workshops were showcased beyond the scope of the project at TUC Day or at KOSMOS. The shift in perspective endures because the object remains in place.
| Format | Duration | Service | Price | |
| FUNKEN Pilot. The 1-day workshop | 1 day | A partnership between an artist and your team, a suitcase, a workshop, an evening showcase. A model or a scenography, pages of ideas, images for your communications, and documentation four weeks later. An initial application idea that makes collaboration worthwhile | 3,500 EUR | |
| FUNKEN Collaboration. Development and Transfer | 4–open-ended weeks | An artist in your company or laboratory, weekly reflection with the Creative Catalyst, public showcase. An object, application or story as the final outcome, documentation. A prototype and a technical question that nobody has asked before | from 12,000 EUR | |
| FUNKEN Summer School. The network | 3–5 weeks | The collaboration leads not only to an object, but also to a workshop. A group of participants develop ideas and objects across disciplines on your chosen themes and showcase these in a public exhibition. | From 15,000 EUR per institution |
The object for the fair as a standalone commission, arising from a pilot project or collaboration: 8,000 to 15,000 EUR depending on production costs, with an option to purchase. Included in every price: artists’ fees, Creative Catalyst, preparation, materials up to a certain limit, exhibition, documentation.
For businesses. Your team knows how your technology works. We’ll find out what else it can do. An application your team hadn’t realised existed, an object that explains your product before anyone reads the data sheet, and an outside perspective that provides context you cannot generate internally. In a day or a month.
For research institutions. Asking questions is your job, and that’s precisely what’s becoming scarce. You’ll gain a channel for knowledge transfer that isn’t just PR, researchers who reframe their questions, and a partner for grant applications where art-science collaboration is now an evaluation criterion. Funding via knowledge transfer and project grants; FUNKEN is a partner in third-party funding applications.
In the interviews featured in the catalogue, the researchers describe their experiences of collaboration
Whyartists? Designers, agencies and consultants simply fulfil a brief. Artists get to work before anything is created. They work with your technology without adopting its purpose. Their material is attention: Through objects, installations and stories, they bring the processes behind a technology back into our awareness – in a sensory, accessible and discussable way. Placing the process at the centre of their work is their method.
Why now? Solutions are becoming cheap. Anyone who can describe a technical problem now gets an answer faster than ever before. Artificial intelligence makes creative products cheap – images, texts, designs in vast quantities – and with them, everything that has ever existed in a similar form. What is becoming scarce is the act of reinterpreting a technology in a specific place, with a specific team, and posing a question to it that does not come from any database. A language model delivers variations on what already exists – many of them, and quickly; it does not deliver a built use case with an audience. Research shows that AI enhances the creativity of individuals whilst reducing the diversity of ideas within a group. Everyone becomes better and more alike (Doshi and Hauser, Science Advances 2024).
Experience
Since 2019, FUNKEN has been collaborating with technology institutions in Saxony: with Chemnitz University of Technology and its centres MAIN, MERGE and MeTech; with the Fraunhofer Institutes ENAS and IWU; with the Saxon Textile Research Institute (STFI) and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ); and with companies such as Pinpoint, Fusion Bionic and Cewus, and on the Technology Campus with Vector Informatik, EDC and 3D-Micromac. This has given rise to our initiatives: Labor 2025 (2021), European Summer School 2023, FUNKEN Kolleg 2025 with five collaborations, FUNKEN × TUC 2025, and FUNKEN Pilot 2026. In 2026, FUNKEN, together with eleven partners from six countries, submitted a Horizon Europe proposal to scientifically measure the impact of this work. What researchers, companies and artists have to say about the collaboration can be found in the interviews in the ‘FUNKEN Kolleg’ catalogue .
Contact: Christoph Papendorf, Programme Director, FUNKEN Academy, Klub Solitaer e.V. christoph@klubsolitaer.de