MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Betaverse 2025
with Mario Von Rickenbach
Using a mixed reality headset, the students used their surroundings as playground. Through creative gestures, each experiment proposes a way of interacting with the environment.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Altered Ego
with Harriet Davey
Who are you in the digital realm? Your avatar, your videogame skin, your alter ego. Second-year students, led by Harriet Davey, crafted digital alter egos from scratch. They used Daz, Blender, and VR to explore an alternate personality or expression through the digital self.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
PHOTOGRAPHY
ECAL Night Live
with Vincent Veillon, Paul Walther, Florian Pittet (Sigmasix), Vincent Jacquier, Julien Gurtner
During an intensive week, first-year students from the Visual Communication department at ECAL had the opportunity to create and produce the first edition of ECAL Night Live. The goal was to design a show inspired by satirical television formats. Divided into multidisciplinary teams—including students from the Bachelor programs in Graphic Design, Media & Interaction Design, and Photography—they collaborated to create all the content, set design, and visual identity of the show, delivering a fully homemade project in record time. The main theme revolved around self-mockery, targeting the visual communication professions, students, and the institution itself, with a subtle touch of current events. This project was supervised by Vincent Veillon and Paul Walther, directors of the RTS show 52 Minutes, as well as Florian Pittet, a digital scenography expert who guided the creation of the show's set design.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Talk to me 2025
with Alain Bellet
Talk To Me is a series of interactive objects designed by first-year students in the Bachelor Media & Interaction Design program. These creations use dialogue as a playground, drawing inspiration from conversational interfaces to create new forms of interaction.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Otherworldy Insects
with Kushagra Gupta
Third-year students in Media & Interaction Design created posters depicting insects whose appearance is inspired by their evolutionary adaptation to their environment. This week-long workshop was led by artist Kushagra Gupta.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Countdown (2024)
with Mario Von Rickenbach
The students worked on an interactive countdown in a web environment. Each day, they were tasked with creating a new sketch, culminating in their own collection, which could also be combined with projects from the entire class.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Wonder Rooms
with Gaël Hugo
During this workshop, second year media & Interaction design students crafted interactive 'wonder-rooms' inspired by curiosity cabinets, blending 3D environments with real-time interactions. A collection of bizarre, imaginative little worlds to be explored.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Digital Impact
with Nicole Ruggiero
Guided by New-York based 3D arist Nicole Ruggiero, the first year students brought their most impactful digital memories to life. Using Cinema4D, ZBrush, and Substance Painter, they crafted animations exploring how technology has shaped our experiences through nostalgic tributes.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Beyond the screen
with Angelo Benedetto
Beyond the screen - is a series of interactive machines developed by students in their first year of Bachelor Media & Interaction Design. These systems are inspired by the relationship between instructions and execution within a computer system. These machines create text through a modular typographic system.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
TOGGLE: Interactively fun buttons
with Sébastien Matos
A collection of interface buttons designed and animated by first-year students of the Bachelor’s program in Media & Interaction Design. Each element includes a standard animation, an exaggerated animation, and an unexpected version.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
GTE: Renens City Stories
with Jack McVeigh
A one week workshop where the first-year students were taught the basics of Blender and how to achieve a similar visual language to that of early era video game graphics. Students were asked to create a looping animation or 'Story' from the perspective of a character in the city of Renens where ECAL is based. These were then packaged into a playable game displayed on a series of CRT monitors controlled using a PS1 controller. The game itself was completely run in Blender using Geometry Nodes & Python.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
PHOTOGRAPHY
SYNC SCREEN
with Charlotte Krieger, Jean-Vincent Simonet, Florian Pittet (Sigmasix), Vincent Jacquier, Julien Gurtner, Matthieu Minguet, Cédric Duchêne, EPFL+ECAL Lab, Giacomo Bastianelli
For a week, the first-year visual communications students worked on an installation consisting of 15 screens, accompanied by a 360° sound system developed by EPFL+ECAL Lab. This chandelier, five metres in diameter and suspended from a height of three metres, served as a support for their experiments. Using music specially composed and spatialised for the occasion, the students explored the dynamics of sound both visually and in movement.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Agents are All You Need
with Matthieu Minguet
Agents Are All You Need is the result of a one-week workshop dedicated to exploring Autonomous Agents and their potential in innovative scenarios. By repurposing existing platforms, students leveraged the reasoning capabilities of multimodal language models to automate complex actions rather than limiting themselves to generating text or images.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Betaverse
with Alain Bellet, Mario Von Rickenbach
Using a mixed reality headset, the students used their surroundings as playground. Through creative gestures, each experiment proposes a way of interacting with the environment.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Speaking with your hands
with Vera van de Seyp
How does our physical body interact with digital content ? The students have explored creative ways in which typography and graphics can be manipulated in response to human movement.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Talk to me 2024
with Alain Bellet
Talk To Me is a series of interactive objects designed by first-year students in the Bachelor Media & Interaction Design program. These creations use dialogue as a playground, drawing inspiration from conversational interfaces to create new forms of interaction.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Can They Dance ?
with Cyril Diagne
CAN THEY DANCE? is the result of a week-long workshop centered around the concept of Large Action Models (LAM). By repurposing existing platforms, the students leveraged the reasoning capabilities of these artificial intelligence models (LLM).
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
TalkCity
with Gaël Hugo
During a one week workshop led by Gaël Hugo, students developed situational conversational agents integrating artificial intelligence. These exchanges generate associated 3D environments to provide visual support.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Fishtank
with YONK
Under the guidance of 3D duo YONK, Second-year students worked on creating animated water creatures with accompanying habitats for the project “Fishtank”, inspired by the wall of aquariums you find at a fish store. The students learnt the ins and outs of using Virtual Reality to Sculpt 3D assets as well as animating, lighting and texturing in the 3D software Blender.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Handmade Reality
with Mario Von Rickenbach, Alain Bellet
Handmade Reality is a series of AR experiences using a mixed reality headset, the Hololens, created by the 2nd year Bachelor Media & Interaction Design students. Using the environment around us as a playground, each experiment proposes a different way of interacting with it, guided by our hands.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Talk To Me
with Alain Bellet
Talk To Me is a series of interactive objects designed by 1st-year Bachelor Media & Interaction Design students. These objects use dialogue as a playground and draw inspiration from conversational interfaces to create new interactions.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Beyond The Surface
with Vincent Schwenk
Under the guidance of 3D artist Vincent Schwenk, second-year students skillfully created an abstract animation centered on the theme of relaxation. Throughout the process, they gained valuable insights into various techniques such as modeling, texturing, simulations, rendering, and sound design.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
PHOTOGRAPHY
Hyperlab
with Vincent Jacquier, Angelo Benedetto, Ali-Eddine Abdelkhalek, Jean-Vincent Simonet, Clément Rouzaud
In collaboration with the HYPEROUEST music festival, ECAL students were given the opportunity to design a visual installation in the room adjacent to the festival's ephemeral club, located on the Veillon wasteland in Crissier. For this project, 1st-year students worked in groups, mixing Bachelors in Graphic Design, Media & Interaction Design and Photography. Their main objective was to create powerful and creative visual sequences around the central theme of "HYPER". At the same time, second-year students in the Graphic Design option enriched this project by developing the exhibition's visual identity. These interdisciplinary collaborations stimulated exchanges and encouraged visual cohesion, connecting the different ideas and reinforcing the "laboratory" and experimental aspect of the project.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
TalkCity
with Gaël Hugo, Yehwan Song
The students worked on creating a typographic 3D environment in a web browser. Using the words extracted from a dialogue, a sequence is illustrated in a synchronised way on two screens.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Interactive gestures
with Yehwan Song
“During the workshop we’ve invented a new web-interaction with the hand and body gesture. The unique gestures found in our daily habits have been combined with mobile touch screen, gyro sensor, web camera and microphones and created new narration in the websites on the screen. As we use specific gestures to express certain feelings, we need to create more sophisticated and diverse user web-interaction. This workshop was the first step of inventing and exploring diverse user interaction and sophisticated web-narration.” Yehwan Song
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Break It Fix It
with Daniël Maarleveld
Break it Fix it is the workshop's result conducted under the direction of Daniel Maarleveld. Based on the music Technologic - Daft Punk, each group have reappropriated a phrase to enhance it graphically. The result is a series of posters, a video clip compiling the different typographic systems, and a series of interactive posters based on the same rules.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Beyond The Screen
with Angelo Benedetto
Beyond the screen - is a series of interactive machines developed by students in their first year of Bachelor Media & Interaction Design. These systems are inspired by the relationship between instructions and execution within a computer system. These machines create text through a modular typographic system.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Random?
with Andreas Gysin
Workshop with Andreas Gysin The students worked on the concept of randomness to generate a series of patterns and drawings.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Moody Orchestra
with Lucas Zanotto
Moody Orchestra is an interactive orchestra of seamless mood-loops. The students learned the software Cinema4D in order to create a visual and musical loop. This week of work led by @lucas_zanotto resulted on colorful and satisfying visuals.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
The Loop
with Dirk Koy
During a week, our first-year Bachelor students in Media & Interaction Design attended a workshop led by Dirk Doy focusing on “Loops”. It assisted by Sébastien Matos The workshop was divided into two distinct parts, each utilizing a unique technique: typography and image.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Raster Walker
with Gaël Hugo
Content produced during a one week workshop led by Gaël Hugo, around experimenting with image rasterisation and particle systems.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
What’s The Prompt?
with Cyril Diagne
During a week workshop given by Cyril Diagne, second year students explored the integration of machine learning tools in their creative process. By limiting the coding step in favour of using the concept of Prompt they experimented with Diffusion Models such as GPT3, Clip or DALL-E to create texts, images and videos. Comparing the way our brain seems to make our dreams and the way some AI models work, Elina Crespi used some Diffusion Model to represent her dreams.
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.
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.
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.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Circle Studies
with Zach Lieberman
A week-long remote workshop taught by Zach Lieberman around daily sketching. The students all started with the same circle and found different ways to push and manipulate it. Workshop taught by Zach Lieberman, assisted by Sébastien Matos.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
From Screen to Paper Abecedarium
with Jessica In
A one week workshop with Jessica In where 1st year Media & Interaction Design and Graphic Design students worked together on the link between screen and print content. During this week, the students did formal research in Processing in order to create an alphabet book, which was then printed using an Axidraw plotter.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - Mindmaze x ECAL
with Mindmaze, Laura Nieder, Tibor Udvari
“Harder, better, faster, stronger” was a one week workshop in collaboration with Mindmaze exploring playful interactions with medical sensors and devices.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
TEXTMODE
with Andreas Gysin
Modes of display and use of text as creative material: raster, ASCII art, emoticons and poetry. Projects created in the first year Bachelor Media & Interaction workshop TEXTMODE given by Andreas Gysin. Workshop assisted by Paul Lëon.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Extra 2020
with Cyril Diagne
A one week workshop with Cyril Diagne where students were asked to question the browser and its use, to change the experience of the web thanks to chrome extensions.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Hide / Reveal
with Ines Alpha, Aaron Jablonski
It is around the theme “Hide / Reveal” that we spent this week of workshop with Ines Alpha and Aaron Jablonski. The idea was to learn around the software “Spark AR” in order to develop a face filter for Instagram. The results presented here are the result of a week’s work for the 2CVMID and 3CVMID students. You can find all these filters and try them on the Instagram @ecal_mid
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Signal Spectacle
with Marion Pinaffo, Raphaël Pluvinage
Graphical motion experiments using only different papers and mechanics. A one week workshop led by Marion Pinaffo and Raphaël Pluvinage. Assisted by Benoît Chastenet De Gery and Sébastien Matos.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Satisfaction 2020
with Mario Von Rickenbach
Satisfying webtoys coded by 1st year Bachelor students in Media & Interaction Design as part of a week-long workshop given by Mario von Rickenbach.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
TYPEMACHINES
with Tim Rodenbröker
Exploration through the infinite possibilities of typographic expression, framed in a strict visual system. A one week workshop given by Tim Rodenbröker to the 2nd year Bachelor in Media & Interaction Design, assisted by Pietro Alberti.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Super Low Resolution
with Andreas Gysin
For a week, the first year students of the Media & Interaction Design Bachelor were given the challenge of creating interesting experiences using a super low resolution. Project week led by Andreas Gysin and assisted by Callum Ross.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Fake it until you make it
with Cyril Diagne
Photorealistic renderings of interactive installations imagined by 1st year Bachelor students in Media & Interaction Design as part of a week-long workshop given by Cyril Diagne.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
XY
with Ted Davis
XY - Experiments around the graphical and interactive potential of oscilloscopes. One week workshop given by Ted Davis to the 1st year Bachelor in Media & Interaction Design. Workshop assisted by Sébastien Matos.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Extra 2019
with Cyril Diagne
A one week workshop with Cyril Diagne where students were asked to question the browser and its use, to change the experience of the web thanks to chrome extensions.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Simulations
with Hayden Zezula
Simulations - 3D workshop, focused on particle and fluid simulation, given by Hayden Zezula/ @zolloc to the 2nd and 3rd year of the Bachelor's degree in Media & Interaction Design.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Satisfaction 2019
with Mario Von Rickenbach
Satisfying webtoys coded by 1st year Bachelor students in Media & Interaction Design as part of a week-long workshop given by Mario von Rickenbach.