Fachwerk ist ein charakteristisches Merkmal der Siegerländer Architektur, und Fachwerk ist ein charakteristisches Thema der fotografischen Arbeit von Bernd und Hilla Becher, die in ihrer strengen Sicht auf die Struktur der Hausfassaden Rationalität und Funktionalität dieser Architekturen in den Blick genommen haben. Eine Ausstellung mit Fotografien des Becher-Schülers Laurenz Berges im MGKSiegen (Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen) im Sommer 2023 erweiterte die Perspektive: Berges hatte das Mudersbacher Fachwerkhaus der Großeltern Bernd Bechers von innen fotografiert, Räume, in denen seit Jahrzehnten die Zeit stillzustehen scheint, Möbel, Bilder, Lampen, Honiggläser, ein angefangenes Puzzle, Blicke durch die Fenster nach außen. Seine Arbeiten thematisieren die Vergänglichkeit und unseren Umgang mit ihr, „Halten und Schwinden“, wie es der Titel der Ausstellung formulierte. In einem Seminar der Fächer Architektur und Musik an der Universität Siegen haben sich Studierende unter der Leitung der Professoren Ulrich Exner und Martin Herchenröder mit dem Thema Fachwerk, dem Haus in Mudersbach, den Fotografien von Bernd und Hilla Becher und Laurenz Berges auseinandergesetzt und dabei analytisch den Blick für Struktur und Erleben, Innen und Außen geschärft. Die universitäre Analyse mündete in eine gemeinsame, interdisziplinäre künstlerische Reaktion, eine Performance aus Architekturinstallation, Video, Licht und Musik auf dem Schlossplatz vor dem MGKSiegen. Die Ideen, Arbeitsprozesse und Ergebnisse sind hier dokumentiert. (Link zum Video unter "Externe Ressource")

The increasing strain on teachers is reflected in high rates of sick leave as well as forfeit income due to reduced working hours and the wide-ranging use of early retirement arrangements. The potential of pedagogical professionalism to play a protective role in this context has, however, rarely been addressed so far. This PhD thesis addresses this issue. It examines what pedagogical professionalism must look like today in order for teachers to cope with current challenges in a way that promotes learning, is appropriate, and takes their own health into account. To this end, the contemporary social character is first analyzed, which, can be characterized as narcissistic due to prevailing societal conditions. This facilitates that corresponding dispositions may be passed on to students, for example in the form of appealing and widely disseminated narratives. As a result the narcissistic social character may lead to challenges in everyday school life. Dealing with these in a way that promotes learning therefore requires a modern form of pedagogical professionalism that takes these premises into account. The thus developed argumentation is then related to the status quo by means of case studies, making it possible to identify both resources and developmental potential within the current state of pedagogical professionalism.

The article examines the epistemic conditions of human world relations in the Anthropocene by adopting a media-philosophical perspective on the interplay between anthropocentrism, visuality, and the medial figurations of epistemic premises. It departs from the diagnosis of a disrupted communication between humans and their environment(s), a disruption rooted in a humanistically grounded anthropocentric worldview. This worldview manifests not only in practices of distancing objectification and universalization but also in medial forms through which “world” becomes visible and thinkable. Using the Blue Marble—NASA’s popular photograph of Earth—as a case study, the article analyzes how an icon of planetary wholeness stabilizes the epistemic architecture of a quasi-cosmic observer standpoint. The image generates a normative holism that brackets the processual, conflictual, and situated character of terrestrial relations, thereby reproducing a hierarchical relation between observer and observed. In the objectification and utilitarian reduction of the Earth, the same circular logic of control is reiterated—one that has contributed to the ecological disruptions characteristic of the Anthropocene. Against this iconic totalization, the article proposes a sympoietic approach that foregrounds the participation of non-human actors in world-making and conceptualizes media as instruments for rendering their forces and agencies perceptible. Media are thus understood as partial, relational, and processual actors. A media epistemology of sympoietic world relations makes it possible to conceive mediality beyond the ideals of a god-like observer position: as a situated, dependent, and co-produced mode of being-in-the-world. In doing so, the article sketches an epistemic model that does not seek to transcend the centrality of the human in thought, but rather aims to situate human existence within the relational entanglements between humans and their environment(s).

The "Automation Paradox" in safety-critical domains shifts human operators into supervisory roles, degrading their skills while still requiring them to act as the ultimate cognitive failsafe during critical events. This necessitates new methods to monitor the operator's cognitive state, but research is hampered by a "fidelity gap". High-fidelity simulators are often inaccessible, while accessible low-fidelity tools may not produce generalizable results, creating a need for a new approach to simulator-based research. This dissertation addresses this gap by proposing and validating the concept of psychophysiological realism, a criterion for simulator validity based on whether an environment feels real to an operator's cognitive and autonomic nervous systems. The core methodological contribution is a framework for instrumenting accessible simulation platforms with multimodal sensor suites, turning them into valid scientific instruments for assessing operator state and behavior. The research progressed through four empirical studies. First, the approach's feasibility was established by instrumenting a web-based emergency dispatch simulator (LstSim), showing it could capture psychophysiological responses to stress. This method was then validated by correlating objective respiration data, which increased by 13.08% under high load, with subjective NASA-TLX workload scores, confirming the simulator could reliably measure cognitive load. The framework's scalability was subsequently demonstrated by successfully generalizing the methodology to an Air Traffic Control (ATC) simulation with an expanded, integrated sensor suite. Finally, to assess behavioral fidelity, a study comparing cyclist movement in a virtual reality (VR) simulator to the real world empirically quantified a "fidelity gap". It revealed that while core biomechanics transferred well, significant divergences emerged in higher-order control strategies and emotional responses. Collectively, this research delivers an integrated and validated methodology that connects the objective measurement of an operator's cognitive state within a simulator to the quantitative assessment of that environment's behavioral fidelity. The framework provides the sensory input for developing intelligent adaptive interfaces, enables more rigorous, state-aware training, and supports an evidence-based approach to designing cognitively ergonomic systems in safety-critical domains.