I as an Island

I as an Island

 

Like Robinson Crusoe scavenged the wrecked ship for materials to build his home, First Year Master Product Design students, guided by Chris Kabel, were invited to delve into the flotsam of their creative minds for this open workshop. The workshop began with collecting, organizing, and analyzing creative flotsam and jetsam to create a self-portrait as a designer.

Unrealized projects, obsessions and fascinations, irritations, vague dreams, (bad) jokes, and ideas too weird to talk about—all these resided within a designer's mind. Beginnings already existed: inspiring photos on phones, inviting materials, first ideas hastily scribbled down, quick sketches on paper, half-baked assemblages, or flimsy maquettes.

These fragments and particles were analyzed to discover the kind of designer each participant was, extracting a direction for development during the week. This process of analysis, ideation, and translation, including the ‘end result,’ became visible as an island, shaped and populated by each individual's design process. It featured fragile beginnings, iterations, and the choices made along the way, culminating in a final conclusion shaped by material samples, shape research, 3D sketches, the development of a mechanism, a campaign, a film scenario, or whatever else was distilled from the initial flotsam.

 

Workshop (2024) with Chris Kabel

Assistants
Yohanna Rieckhoff
Students
Louis Bosnjak, James Caruso, Marco Ciacci, Adam Friedrich, Takumi Ise, Carl Johan Jacobsen, Natsumi Komoto, Wei Li Chung, Oscar Massaud, Min Xiyao, Yeonsu Na, David Ortiz Quintero, Alicia Stricker, Brice Tempier, Liyah Tomashof, Cedric Zimmerman
Workshop
1st Semester
Know-how
Installation, Portrait
MaDPworkshop_3_creditsMarvinMerkel.jpg
ECAL/Yeonsu Na
MaDPworkshop_4_creditsMarvinMerkel.jpg
ECAL/Oscar Massaud
MaDPworkshop_10_creditsMarvinMerkel.jpg
ECAL/Louis Bosnjak
MaDPworkshop_15_creditsMarvinMerkel.jpg
ECAL/ Wei Li Chung
MaDPworkshop_5_creditsMarvinMerkel.jpg
ECAL/Marco Ciacci
MaDPworkshop_8_creditsMarvinMerkel.jpg
ECAL/Takumi Ise
MaDPworkshop_2_creditsMarvinMerkel.jpg
ECAL/ Workshop Ending

Projects related to Installation

Dramatic portraiture

BA PHOTOGRAPHY

Dramatic portraiture

with Louie Banks

Returning to the basics and origins of photography will allow students to focus their energy and ideas meaningfully on their concept and subject.   Louie Banks provided them with three keywords to consider as a way to create photographs with more impact than what is typically expected from today’s editorials and campaigns. The students were free to draw inspiration from one of the following keywords or to try incorporating a bit of each into their project: "Movement," "Costume," "Emotion."

Folklore Fusion

BA MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Folklore Fusion

with Pauline Saglio

Folklore Fusion – a CGI character project developed by students in Bachelor Media & Interaction Design at ECAL, exploring the creative collision between Japanese and Swiss folklore through the lens of contemporary visual storytelling.

Workshop with Thomas Rousset

BA PHOTOGRAPHY

Workshop with Thomas Rousset

with Thomas Rousset

The aim of this workshop is to explore the boundary between docu-fiction and magic realism in photography, using the architecture and spaces of the ECAL as a narrative framework. Both approaches are rooted in reality, but differ in the way they inject fiction.

Soft Photography

MA PHOTOGRAPHY

Soft Photography

with Salomé Chatriot, Charlie Engman, Simon Lehner , Milo Keller, Marco De Mutiis, Claus Gunti, Clément Lambelet, Giulia Bini, Simone Niquille

Soft Photography is a research project conducted by the Master of Photography at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne with the support of the HES-SO. It aims to shed light on the role of human emotions in the creation and reception of images produced using generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) or computer-generated imagery (CGI).

Le pavillon de l'élégance

BA PHOTOGRAPHY

Le pavillon de l'élégance

with Chaumont–Zaerpour

Each group was tasked with creating a series of fashion images by appropriating or subverting visual codes from existing images. Everyone approached this exercise with creativity, exploring a variety of references, whether iconic fashion shots, works of art, or visuals from popular culture. Once all the series were completed, they were compiled into a printed and bound magazine. The assembly of the images gave rise to a unique object, where each project found its place within a coherent and visually striking whole. This magazine thus became the tangible trace of this collective exploration of fashion imagery and its multiple reinterpretations.

Related courses