Tomáš Mančal approaches language from the perspective of quantum physics and information theory, reflecting on how physical systems communicate and exchange information through coherence, resonance, and interaction. His perspective highlights the abstract but fundamental notion of “language” as it appears in the behaviour of particles, systems, and spectroscopic phenomena.

Markéta Dolejšová presents her research in the field of multispecies communication and feral ecologies, exploring language as a situated, embodied, and relational practice that goes beyond human norms and semantics. Her work experiments with co-creative modes of expression across species and explores how language can emerge through touch, taste, intuition, and shared environments.

The two presenters respond to selected words and notions related to the concept of language, each from the viewpoint of their respective fields and methodologies. While Dolejšová brings an artistic, more-than-human lens rooted in sensory and ecological engagement, Mančal opens a window into the invisible structures and formalities of physical communication and coherence. Interdisciplinarity is central to both their practices - each moving across and merging multiple domains of knowledge and experience.

Tomáš Mančal is a physicist specializing in optical spectroscopy and quantum systems. He completed his Ph.D. in Physics at Humboldt University in Berlin in 2002, focusing on laser pulse control of dissipative dynamics in molecular systems. Following his doctoral studies, Mančal pursued postdoctoral research in the United States. From 2003 to 2004, he was a research fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, working on theories of two-dimensional optical spectroscopy and two-color photon echo peak shifts and on simulations of two-dimensional optical coherent spectroscopy of photosynthetic systems.​ In 2007 he returned to Charles University as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, where he investigated non-linear optical spectroscopy of dye molecules and photosynthetic complexes, as well as the effects of coherence in energy transfer within open quantum systems. In 2014, he expanded his international experience as a Visiting Professor at VU University Amsterdam's Faculty of Science. By 2021, he was appointed Associate Professor at Charles University. Since 2012, Mančal has also contributed to the scientific community as an Editorial Board Member for Scientific Reports, a journal under the Nature Publishing Group.​

https://www.mancal.cz

Markéta Dolejšová is a practice-based researcher experimenting with co-creative, embodied and sensory experiences in multispecies contexts. Her recent focus has been on ferality and feral eco-systems, exploring what relations, intuitions, and ways of knowing can emerge in the liminal spaces between the wild and the domesticated, the familiar and unknown, the serendipitous and intentional. She develops her artistic inquiry into multispecies relationalities, often in collaboration with (more-than)-human collectives such as the Prague-based Uroboros festival or the international Open Forest Collective.

Currently she acts as the Head of Doctoral Research Department at AVU and as Assistant Professor. Before joining AVU, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Aalto University in Finland, where she worked with the CreaTures – Creative Practices for Transformational Futures project and co-researched the role of the arts in fostering eco-social change. In 2018, she completed her doctoral studies at the National University of Singapore with the dissertation project Edible Speculations.

https://materie.me

The project is a cooperation between The Academy of Fine Arts in Prague,  LARGE –– Laboratory for Art, Research and Graduate Education, and Velrybí srdce, z.s.

Organised by Anetta Mona Chișa, Irina Gheorghe, Jakub Podgorný.