FILM STUDIES
Workshop Rousseau mandate
Study trip of the Master in Film students in Val de Travers, on the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to work on the first stages of the Mandate proposed by the MLR - Maison Rousseau et Littérature, Geneva.
TYPE DESIGN
Labour Tool Product
with Julia Born
“Labour, Tool, Product” is an editorial project, self-initiated by Samira Schneuwly. The book explores the universal profession of farming, its evolution and the technologies and possibilities associated with it through carefully curated images from ETH Zürich’s online image archive and excerpts from her great-grandfather’s and grandfather’s inventory books.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Photobook - Fall 2021
with Bruno Ceschel
The photobook module introduces students to the history of photobooks and artists’ books and leads them to consider different strategies and approaches to contemporary book-making. In the first term students individually conceptualised a publication that have been designed, printed and distributed.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Avatars
with Samy La Crapule
It is around the theme “Avatars” that we spent this week of workshop with Samy La Crapule. The idea was to learn around the software Daz Studio in order to create a virtual CGI avatar. The results presented here are the result of a week’s work for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd year students. You can find more details about each project on our Instagram @ecal_mid.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Les statues de la discorde
with Gilles Gavillet & Jonathan Hares
PHOTOGRAPHY
Materialized Photography Workshop
with Mazaccio & Drowilal, MAP
During this one week workshop, the students were challenged every morning with a sculptural challenge and in the afternoon they continued developing their semester projects with the guidance of artist duo Mazaccio & Drowilal.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Transitions
with Mario Von Rickenbach
Webtoys coded by 1st year Bachelor students in Media & Interaction Design as part of a week-long workshop given by Mario von Rickenbach.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Automated Photography Worshop
with Marco De Mutiis
In this one week intensive workshop, digital curator Marco de Mutiis tasked the students with creating a photographic project through a process of gameification, or with otherwise automated processes.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Book making workshop
with Nicolas Polli
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
Junkyard Diving
with Philippe Malouin
"Form follows function" is an expression attributed to the modernist architect Louis Sullivan. It is a statement that is quite relevant to industrial design. On the other hand, form can sometimes also determine function in a process of reverse exploration. During the workshop with Philippe Malouin, students were encouraged to look for new functions inspired by forms found in a metal recycling center. In this process, random discoveries and associations were made to generate a new and surprising vocabulary of forms.
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
Alternative Measuring Tools
with Manuel Krebs (NORM)
Measuring, it seems, is one of the dominant concerns of modern society. We measure ourselves, our weight, our height, our temperature, from head to toe, from collar size to shoe size. We measure what is around us, from tiny to incredibly large. We measure time (from seconds to lifetimes), we measure the familiar (length, weight, volume) and the unusual (sound, radiation, voltage), we have measurement systems for everyday life and for experts. For this workshop, the students of the Bachelor Industrial Design have developed alternative measuring devices.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Workshop Stefanie Moshammer
with Stéfanie Moshammer
« For this workshop there are no rules but I want you to tell me a story. I prefer to see a few images with a good concept, rather than too many images without any idea. » S.M With this invitation, the students worked on the territory of the city of Renens in search of places, people and traces of a history that is not simply a series of beautiful images.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Higurashi book launch
with Milo Keller, MAP
In Summer 2019, thirteen students from the ECAL Master’s in Photography programme supervised by Milo Keller travelled to Japan to work on thirteen individual projects in collaboration with Japanese photographer Taisuke Koyama within the framework of the Tokyo Photographic Research project. The students’ artworks range from still and moving images to computer-generated photographic visuals and explore multiple facets of the Japanese megalopolis which is, once again, undergoing major transformation in preparation for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games. Some projects focus on aspects specific to the city, from the destruction of small residential houses to the construction of the gigantic Olympic Village and the conquest of new territories by the sea. Other works investigate distinctive Japanese culture such as home-cooked food, the appetite for designing humanoid robots, the blending of child and adult worlds in manga, pachinko gambling, the reinvention of ikebana and young girls as ‘rising stars.’ Finally, the works seek to visually represent more abstract concepts such as loneliness, emptiness and intimacy in a city that, due to its density, size and power, offers a challenging, fascinating and extremely stimulating complexity to the eyes of the thirteen photographers. Higurashi has been presented at Espace Commines in Paris in November 2021, inside the exhibition Automated Photography during Paris Photo. Head of Photography Milo Keller Invited Teacher Taisuke Koyama Assistants Florian Amoser Calum Douglas Graphic Design Thomas Le Provost Typefaces Craft by ECAL/Benoit Brun & Raphaël De la Morinerie ITC Garamond Std Head of Culture and Communications Embassy of Switzerland in Japan Jonas Pulver DGES/Summer University Maxline Stettler Photography Students Emidio Battipaglia Robin Bervini Jasmine Deporta Anja Karolina Furrer Alessia Gunawan Christian Harker Jung-Ting Hu Johanna Hullár Philipp Klak Doruk Kumkumoglu Igor Pjörrt Jelly Luise Gedvile Tamosiunaite Publisher ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne higurashi.zone Higurashi is available at ecal-shop.ch .
PHOTOGRAPHY
Workshop Paolo Wood
with Paolo Wood
It has been established that photography is a language. With all its limitations and peculiarities, but a language anyway. Photography is often a relatively poor language that constantly repeats the same nouns and verbs. In the documentary tradition, the range of subjects treated is quite limited and recurrent, and for this reason, in order to make photographs, one must learn and master this language: its vocabulary, its grammar and its history.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Workshop Mårten Lange
with Mårten Lange
Failure is necessary and is part of the artistic development that is articulated by risk taking, luck, ambition, fear and freedom. The aim of the workshop was to successfully photograph, edit and sequence a series of images on the topic of failure. The final results are presented in various forms: editions, simple prints or more complex hangings and videos.
PHOTOGRAPHY
The Indecisive Moment
with Jaya Pelupessy
At a time when the distribution of images is lightning-fast and virtually infinite, and the distinction between the original and the copy often seems irrelevant, what is left? In this workshop the students were asked to partake in an experiment dissecting and illuminating various aspects of the image and reinterpreting its meaning. Using different reproduction techniques and methods of appropriation, students reflected on the origin and status of the image.
FINE ARTS
Workshop Cheryl Donegan
FINE ARTS
Workshop Attila Faravelli
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Communication of a location
with Nicole Udry
FINE ARTS
Workshop with Lydia Lunch
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Ultra Low Resolution
with Andreas Gysin
Projects created in the first year Bachelor Media & Interaction during a workshop given by Andreas Gysin.
TYPE DESIGN
Yearbook
with Nejc Prah
In October 2021, the Master Type Design welcomed Nejc Prah for a one-week workshop. Being in a masters program is a special time, both personally and professionally. To keep a memory of it, the students were invited to create a Yearbook. First years and second years were assigned into pairs and asked to make a contribution about their partner. Drawings, collages, letterings, doodles, patterns, 3D-modelling, … Experimentations and explorations were encouraged. It resulted into a colourful and joyous publication, displaying a diversity of characters and approaches. After a collaborative effort for the production on the last day, each student got a copy, as a memory.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Fantastic Smartphones
with Pauline Saglio, Vincent Jacquier
Fantastic Smartphones – a series of interactive installations developed by students in Bachelor Media & Interaction Design at ECAL, investigating in a critical and offbeat way our relationship with smartphones and the way they influence our daily behavior. See the press room
PHOTOGRAPHY
Steven Rüthy – Insight
by Steven Rüthy
« Do we still see everything that happens around us ? Insight is a short film set in an architectural social housing complex in Bümpliz-Bern, which offers a unique perspective of the world as viewed by an elderly couple living in the Holenacker district on the outskirts of the Swiss capital. In this project I confront the viewer with a way of life which for us as visual artists and most likely for many others, is unimaginable. I question the spatial notion of a secure/safe space and how it is used and therefore perceived from an external point of view, my own. Insight therefore consists of stepping into the shoes of someone who has blurred vision, understanding what it is like and how it affects the way you live.»
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Guillaume Giraud – Goko
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
The Goko is a digital musical instrument that explores new ways of playing music. It is a chord machine in the form of a MIDI controller. This tool promotes and facilitates the composition of chords. It enables beginners to play while having fun and offers professionals a new understanding and visualisation of the rules of musical harmony.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Adeline Vermot – Victimes vs Héros
by Adeline Vermot
This project is an analysis of gender representation in contemporary popular cinema. The choice of films was based on the ones that were the most successful at the box office. I was interested to see the messages they conveyed, as they had been seen by a large number of people. The choice was also based on French cinema since Hollywood has already dealt with these issues a lot. To do this, a system was established to compare the six films with each other as well as the situation of men and women. The content is in the form of images and dialogues from these films and is supplemented with infographics and texts. The result shows how strong stereotypes still are and that being aware of them is a first step towards deconstructing them.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
Jean-Paul Brkovic – Air Carbon in Product Design
by Jean-Paul Brkovic
Mention Très bien Air Carbon is the topic of my graduation project. It is a promising new solution in the form of cutting-edge technology to combat climate change. My design research focused on the emission sources of materials that can be solidified as paper or polymers. This led to the creation of a structurally self-supporting frame concept made of carbon for a mirror. My design challenges the properties of air carbon and simultaneously explores its aesthetic value. I saw the growing need for new sustainable yet exquisite materials in the luxury industry. Many start-ups, institutions and researchers produce excellent but expensive materials. Through my design, I would like to build these essential bridges.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Thaïs Nguyen Huu – Mises à nues
by Thaïs Nguyen Huu
Mises à nues is a collection of five outfits. In my opinion, clothes are a reflection of who we are and the values we defend. Wearing an outfit is assuming one’s identity, being confident and loving oneself. Each outfit represents the series of gestures and attentions one can do for oneself to feel good and confident on a daily basis. Five women confided in me a part of their intimacy through a selfie and words they use to highlight their body. I then interpreted their stories and transcribed them on textile. Each fragment of life becomes a visual that is captured. Once worn, the static illustrations become a moving volume that takes our inner story to the outside world – out in the open, for ll to see.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Antoine Barras – Miksyn
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
Miksyn is an installation that invites us to rethink our relationship with living things by challenging our natural aversion to the various insects and arachnids of our domestic ecosystem, my primary motivation being to highlight the unexplored richness of microscopic forms. Miksyn is part of research on digital interactions with the microcosm. By decontextualising these tiny creatures under the lens of a high-resolution optical microscope, my project puts the spotlight on their imperceptible peculiarities. Can we use technology to overcome our bodily limitations and awaken a holistic conception of nature?
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Ivan Chestopaloff – (un)load
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
In a world dominated by images, where content is constantly blasted at our brain, the race for maximum performance and ultra-high definition feels endless. (un)load chooses to go beyond the classic forms of digital experience. With this tool, we will try to dive into a molecular state, where the single unit becomes the whole. In a kind of reverse cinema, you will be deprived of some of your senses and will reach overload through extreme reduction. Expressing the constant overload we experience as a society and the capacity we have to construct our own relationship to the world, (un)load explores the narrative potential of immersive technologies, based on the senses and beyond representation. Warning: this work contains flashing lights.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Malik Sobgoui – Oblique Reasoning
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
Nowadays, almost all of us have adopted the unconscious reflex of pulling out our smartphone when we are faced with some form of loneliness or passivity. Hence, it has become difficult for us to cope with waiting without the help of our cell phones. The aim of Oblique Reasoning is to invite users to question notions of attention economy and FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) while offering, in the manner of Oblique Strategies, reflections and alternatives. By recording unread notifications and quantifying them in units of time, this portable device offers us the possibility to step back and rethink our relationship with the smartphone.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Ignacio Pérez – Overloaded.supply
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
In 2020, we reached a tipping point with the mass of man-made artefacts exceeding the biomass on our planet. This is mainly due to an economic system of manufacturing and consumption where the overabundance of objects has become the norm. Overloaded.supply is a semi-autonomous system that exploits the control of creation algorithms in order to question current patterns of design, production and legislation. To do so, the installation allows users, via a physical interface, to control an intangible, invisible and vast universe of objects where they can take possession of them through a fictitious patent document. This document will be stored on a dedicated website that acts as a repository of already protected objects that may or may not be produced. overloaded.supply
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Michael Pica – Confessionnal
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
Confessionnal is a web app that enables users to anonymously confess their behaviour on social networks. With the advent of social media years ago, the behaviour of users varies. Unmentionable acts are sometimes committed on these platforms. This project is inspired by the Catholic confessional as we know it but is based on the digital era we live in. Users live the anonymous experience with a mask as participants or spectators. They confess orally and personalise their mask based on their age, the platform or the main subject of the confession. On the other hand, they can observe other masks and listen to the confessions of other users.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Rayane Jemaa – Is This the Middle East?
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
Is This the Middle East? investigates representation of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in a selection of video games. I am interested in the patterns, repetitive artefacts, locations and texts in games that claim to be set in the MENA region. These objects become archetypes. Are these photo-realistic environments also realistic in the scenes they depict or do they become another backdrop for war-related games? Using photogrammetry to reconstruct these environments, I address the implications of seeing an abundance of often over-simplified images of the Middle East, especially in a world where video games are becoming not only a global phenomenon, but also a means to encounter other cultures.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Valentine Leimgruber – Sanctuaires
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
Through a narrative experience, Sanctuaires invites visitors to discover their relationship with plants. This project is structured as an interactive exhibition on the great trees of the city of Lausanne. As in a treasure hunt, visitors have to look for the trees, thanks to clues and a map on the app. When they find one, they connect to it through touch, thus triggering the beginning of the experience. Like a wise storyteller, the sanctuary-tree shares a tale with the visitors, telling them about its sensitive experience and observable universe. Urban tree development coincides with the advent of issues related to the ecological crisis. What do trees have to say about this and how can their perception help us improve our lifestyles?
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Basil Dénéréaz – Reif
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
Mention Très bien Through our entertainment media, partnerships and sponsored content are becoming omnipresent. Based on this observation, Reif i s a fictional account of the objectification of a digital influencer. Through different media created with computer generated images, we visualise the change of identity of this character who allocates areas of her body as advertising spaces, generating her metamorphosis from human to object. In order to realise the content for Reif , a process of digital production was set up, adjusting to the standards of avatar creation which affiliates this fiction to the current technical reality.
PHOTOGRAPHY
David Benito Py – Pigeons, They Make Up the Beehive
by David Benito Py
« Every city is the unique work of its inhabitants and, paradoxically, it concerns every one of them in a different way. In my opinion, in order to solve the apparent contradiction between intimacy and urbanity, the appropriation of space, both material and mental, is necessary. Only then can urban wandering be experienced as a real sensory experience. Through this installation, I invite visitors to live my personal experience of space, horizontal and vertical, contemplative and obsessive. As Jean-Christophe Bailly put it, “Each city has its own slang and has, within itself, a clandestine city that pierces it in scattered meshes whose bare thread the stroller puts back together.”»
PHOTOGRAPHY
Emeline Courcier – Sous les Cendres du Mekong
by Emeline Courcier
« Sous les cendres du Mekong is a film that questions the coexistence of opposed traditions and cultures, life and death, and the confrontation between history and individual stories. Against the backdrop of the health crisis and anti-Asian racism, family ties are revealed through conversations questioning my place as a Viet Kieu daughter and my lineage. Through our beliefs in reincarnation, I project myself onto a familiar yet foreign figure: my mother’s cousin, who drowned in the Mekong, creating a link between past and present, war and peace, words and silence. It is through traumatic memory and psychological heritage that the after-effects of a war from which my family escaped reach me, taking precedence in my dreams and my mind.»
PHOTOGRAPHY
Axelle Bruniau – Leughenaer
by Axelle Bruniau
« Leughenaer is an autobiographical fiction about my relationship to my childhood in a particular geography and culture – Dunkirk – a city in the north of France. This film refers particularly to my non-binarity and transfemininity in a social context where carnival culture and cross-dressing are an important part of life for three months a year. The architecture of the city of Dunkirk is of particular interest to me because of the parallel I can draw with my own person. This city was 90% destroyed during World War II and was quickly rebuilt into a modern city. Deconstructing in order to reconstruct, that is how I went back to make this film.»
PHOTOGRAPHY
Antoine Martin – Via Alpina
by Antoine Martin
Swiss iconography presents the mountains under two ambivalent aspects: on the one hand, a hostile and dangerous environment, and on the other hand, an environment tamed and dominated by humankind. The interesting aspect of this project is that it transposes certain characteristic images from this iconography and leads viewers to question the boundary between stereotypes and the reality in which they live. It also questions the use of mountains as an «artefact» conveyed by commercial clichés. Viewers are led to get involved physically with the image by immersing themselves in the relief of this alpine imaginary, forced to observe the paradox of its symbolic and monumental reduction through commercial imagery.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Jenna Callewaert – Her and I
by Jenna Callewaert
« What do you do when you miss everything? How do you avoid being haunted by the place you left? A painful absence mixed with hope, nostalgia that associates past and future, like a paradox. Above all, this project is a quest: that of finding a part of myself in a country where I once lived, and whose only memories I had were of colours, smells and sensations. Throughout my journey, I sought to explore and confront these memories built on a form of absence. Between dismay and delight, I often asked myself the question of the integrity of these images. Were these memories real or pure fabrications of the mind? I thus designed this book with the aim of capturing a process of transformation where each image, composed of sepia, shadows and ochre, carries in its flesh the testimonies of the past and illustrates that nothing ever dies.»
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Timo Tiffert – Ornamental Impulse
by Timo Tiffert
Ornamental Impulse , the first issue of SUPER FRESCO FUMETTI , is a magazine that addresses a variety of topics in a playful and visually experimental way.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Julie Neuhaus – The Bio Mind
by Julie Neuhaus
Prix BG Ingénieurs Conseils | The Bio Mind illustrates eight principles of creation and function existing in nature and thus focuses on biomimetics.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Laura Trummer – When She Left the Room, the Spirits Went With Her
by Laura Trummer
In her latest collection When She Left the Room, the Spirits Went With Her , fashion designer Tara Mabiala brings together various sources of inspiration, including those of 70s Blaxploitation films and Westerns. The two genres might seem far apart but they meet on the importance of the characters’ clothing: it is symbolic of their roles, asserts their statuses and anchors the action.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Guillaume Pavia – Medium is the Party
by Guillaume Pavia
Medium is the Party aims to communicate and defend the importance and benefits of partying while bringing together a worldwide community around these claims.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Inés Barrionuevo – L10n
by Inés Barrionuevo
L10n is an independent web platform and magazine allowing the geolocation of a quality but non-mediatised movement. It supports artists and aims to compensate for social inequalities.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Samuel Schmidt – 1096 Halftones
by Samuel Schmidt
A handbook for handmade screen printing, this project offers an alternative frame construction technique.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Julie Ryser – Dupliréalité
by Julie Ryser
Dupliréalité aims to immerse us into reproductions of places of life that are essential to an individual’s existence. The cities explored include La Chaux-de-Fonds, Lausanne and Renens, which have a direct link with my own reality.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Emilie Bouchet – Ho(me)-to-Mobile
by Emilie Bouchet
Through this project, I have tried to reappropriate this automotive world by focusing on the forgotten details of the car while creating a publication bordering on fetishism, which retraces my various outdoor rides of the past few months.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Emma Chapuis – Typeswing
by Emma Chapuis
This project offers a typographic approach to express emotions in digital communication.