A new educational model for a post-pandemic world
Collaboration (2021) by Ivan Chestopaloff, Basil Dénéréaz, Nora Fatehi, Paul Fritz, Sébastien Galera Larios, Rayane Jemaa, Dorian Jovanovic, Lisa Kishtoo, Valentine Leimgruber, Valerio Meschi, Mika Pica, Ignacio Pérez, Malik Sobgoui
The global pandemic has forever changed how we work, learn and play, making virtual communication the primary form of human interaction. Here and There is a new digital pedagogy that enables students to create networked physical interfaces with limited material resources and tools, while being away and stripped from a traditional in-person studio and workshop setting.
Initiated during a week-long workshop in Cambridge (USA) in March 2020, it brought together students in Bachelor Media & Interaction Design from ECAL and students from MIT’s Undergraduate Design Minor and Bachelor of Science in Art and Design programs. During the 2020 spring quarantine, a series of open source software and hardware tools were developed to allow students to build electronic objects from simple and readily available materials. These objects were then dynamically routed and connected to each other to physically augment video chatting and to allow students to extend their virtual reach into each other’s tangible spaces.
For the first phase of this project, students had to imagine, design and implement two interfaces, whose design and behavior allowed and suggested a new form of communication between two people, in two separate places. Notions of remote presence, simultaneous actions, shared experience and telepresence were explored, fundamentally expanding the ways through which we interact and communicate.
Open to other academic institutions and the public at large, we plan to continue improving the software routing interface, the techniques for documentation and sharing prototypes, as well as the remote interfaces that we hope will help foster a more human and connected post-pandemic world.
A collaboration between ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne and MIT Department of Architecture
Pauline Saglio, Head BA Media and Interaction Design, ECAL
Gael Hugo, Interaction Designer, Associate Professor, ECAL
Marcelo Coelho, Lecturer, MIT Department of Architecture & Head of Design, Formlabs
Pierry Jaquillard, Ous Abou Ras, Benjamin Hoyle, Thaddeus Lee, David Allen White
Ivan Chestopaloff, Basil Dénéréaz, Nora Fatehi, Paul Fritz, Sébastien Galera Larios, Rayane Jemaa, Dorian Jovanovic, Lisa Kishtoo, Valentine Leimgruber, Valerio Meschi, Ignacio Pérez, Michael Pica, David Reitenbach, Malik Sobgoui
Violetta Jusiega, Nikodimos Sendek, Leslie Yan, Katie Bacher, Justin Christensen, Ailing Zhang, Hassaam Ali, Teis Jorgensen, Chenlu Wang
Alain Bellet, Gaël Hugo
Pietro Alberti, Clio Hadjigeorgiou, Pierry Jaquillard, Sébastien Matos
Gianni Camporota
Skylar Tibbits, Associate Professor in Design Research and Design Program Director, MIT Department of Architecture
Cécile Vulliemin, Strategic Partnerships - R&D, ECAL
Hosted at the MIT International Design Center; supported by the General Board of Higher Education State of Vaud and its Summer University program.
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BA MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
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
BA MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Gene Kogan
This workshop was a hands-on introduction to machine learning with a focus on creating artistic and interactive applications. Machine learning is a field dedicated to teaching computers how to perform tasks given examples and human oversight and has been used by artists, musicians, and designers to add a dimension of machine intelligence and interaction to their work. The students focused on the core algorithms used for discovering patterns in complex multimedia data, including images, sounds, and text. They learned how to use neural networks to create real-time, cross-modal interactions for use in video, installation, live music performance, and physical computing. They were provided a suite of tools and code for clustering, visualizing, and searching through large collections of multimedia.
BA MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
IFTTA (If This Then Authenticate) is a modular authentication kit that allows users to design passwords to access their digital environment. Nowadays the majority of online services require complex authentication from their users. However, our ability to manage our passwords is becoming time consuming: we forget, make mistakes and retype. By default, we have accepted the present systems in place: double verification, SMS, phone calls, e-mails, etc. What if we tried something different? A more personal approach for example. This kit reflects the way we want to view our relationship with passwords. Each of the proposed modules involves a distinct mnemonic interaction: touch, position in space, hearing and sight. These elements can be added up as well in order to design a personalised authentication system.
BA MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
The barrier of entry to sound synthesis software has historically been kept high by visually abstract, overloaded interfaces and expensive ecosystems like those of Pure Data or MAX. Tone Alembic seeks to make sound experimentation accessible to a beginner audience. It does so by offering a platform consisting of a digital interface that abstracts many of the concepts of synthesis in favour of a more visual approach and a set of MIDI controllers that allow more hands-on interaction with the interface while providing everything one needs to get started creating sounds.
BA MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
What time is it at Hortense’s in Montreal? What’s the weather like at Alexandre’s in Tokyo? When I communicate with my loved ones, scattered all over the world, I am disconnected from my physical time-space. Sources of constant artificial light and windows on the digital world, screens replace the sun as a space-time reference point. Sun Connection enables you to reconnect with your loved ones through a delocalised sun. Everyone is free to use their own physical and digital space with a luminous and colourful presence, to transpose themselves into another time and space.