PHOTOGRAPHY
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.
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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.
PHOTOGRAPHY
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
with Nicolas Polli
PHOTOGRAPHY
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
by Manqin Zhang
I’m not a Loner is a photo-based installation in which Manqin acts as an archaeologist digging into the forgotten and insignificant part of life. The work consists of three resin spinning tops, four concrete blocks, five T-shirts, twelve lighters and two plates. By treating them as historical artifacts – displayed on plinths of different heights, evoking a forest-like environment – the work intends to construct a narrative of individual history through memories, relations and objects. While individual history describes fear, anger and guilt (personal, family-related, societal and historical), Manqin wishes to increase the role of the individual in history to evoke the importance of being oneself and to confront modern alienation.
PHOTOGRAPHY
by Natalie Maximova
Mention Bien This artwork is an interpretation of the possibility that we are living in a computer-generated reality, similar to a video game, inspired by the ideas of simulation theory. The world is built as an assemblage of soulless structures with no indication of time or place. The rapid change of architectural styles throughout the journey explains the ambiguity of simulation theory and the impossibility of proving it. There are multitudes of architectures and imaginations, thus there are multitudes of mysteries. It is a journey halfway between dream and nightmare. In the absence of a total understanding, what else can we do but plough ahead? Video installation: CGI animation created in the game engine, surround sound.
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by Sara Bastai
RAM 1.0 is a collaborative project between myself and Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is a fictional account of my life, based on my personal visual archive, but constructed and mediated by AI. The project explores the concept of memories and the importance of the construction of an archive in the digital realm. Focused on the interaction between images and text, I let AI analyse my memories and then reinterpret the captions to create new images. New memories are created in the form of five different books and five slide shows on a modular installation. Floating between human and non-human, the dialogue between myself and the machine comes into being and enables you to immerse yourself in a new data set of my memories through the gaze of technology.
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by Olivia Wünsche
New State of Equilibrium is a visual interpretation of my years-long spiritual quest and psychedelic adventures. Inner peace, a sense of deep connectedness, unbounded love for the natural world and longing for transcendence are central themes I tried to visualise throughout this project. Both the book and the installation attempt to question and investigate the mechanisms and limitations of our cognitive and sensory perception. By emphasising the simultaneous presence of the visible and the invisible, I seek to challenge the secular, materialistic worldview that still seems to prevail in our Western culture.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Milo Keller
On the occasion of the Biennale dell’immagine Chiasso, the 2nd year students of the Master Photography programme presented, from 17 to 19 September 2021, “Exquisite Corpse” - a series of Virtual Reality (VR) projects at the Palestra CPC. Art Direction: Milo Keller Assistants: Florian Amoser Robin Bervini Students: Emma Bedos Alexey Chernikov Mahalia “Taje” Giotto Clemens Fischer Nikolai Frerichs Hikaru Hori Augustin Lignier Sophie Schreurs Alisa Strub Yang Su
PHOTOGRAPHY
by Maeva Bosko
Entering the Unknown is an immersive experience that tends to alter the consciousness during an introspective journey. Because of its wild and authentic side, the forest has always bewitched the collective mind. A nature of peace but also a kingdom of mysteries, the forest gives off an almost supernatural force. To cross the threshold of the forest, because of its deep roots, is to open the door of the unconscious and to trigger the awakening of panic fears, terrors or even phobias. According to Jung, these terrors translate the fear of seeing the contents of the unconscious revealed, the fear of meeting oneself.Starting from the conscious world you gonna dive to reach the world of the unconscious. A fall into the realms of the unknown.
PHOTOGRAPHY
by Joanna Wierzbicka
What is a body, where does it start, where does it end? How do we experience having a body and being a body, especially among other bodies? How can we resituate ourselves within earth others, and rethink relations on a wider level between human and nonhuman actants to account for a more ethical living? The project aims to interrogate the notion of bodily matter, recapture our corporeality and challenge the assumption that our bodies end at the skin. Instead, they are redefined as radically open systems, human and non-human assemblages, corporeal chimeras, microbiotic multi-species in the constant process of becoming. Matter, when recognised as an active agent, helps to acknowledge infinite interactions within complex networks of agency between various porous corporealities and entities. Trans-corporeality disrupts divisions between a body and the world. Bodies leave traces everywhere, ascribing themselves into various corporeal, technological, political narratives, but also traces are ascribed onto bodies - mediating and altering their flesh. As captured by Haraway in the figuration of compost - we are always becoming with others, together creating a lively matter of compost, composing and decomposing each other. “Nothing is connected to everything, everything is connected to something” takes a form of an installation, a speculative self-portrait as compost, built out of images of my own body (made with different apparatuses including Scanning Electron Microscope, digital microscopes) mixed with still lifes of food and different materials representing the transformation and movement, as in compost. Additionally, sculptures are accompanied by the video that expands on the idea of corporeal companionship and brings in the notion of uncanny-like lump of flesh covered with skin. It is a performative act, a result of wondering how to become a microorganism, a bacteria and if I am already enough of one. All the parts of installation, exploring the line between oppositions such as human/nonhuman, internal/external, self/the other, refer to the definition of an abject and are meant to translate that moment, or a sensation - how a breakdown in meaning, something expelled from “I” eventually comes to define “I”.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Anniina Koivu
AUTHOR: Sara Bastai TITLE: How to build a collective memory in the digital realm? SUBTITLE: Depicting humankind through methods of preservation It seems, sometimes, like today’s main focus of interest lies in how future societies will perceive us. The traces we might leave behind can significantly impact the history and interpretation of our current present. Can we rely on digital preservation? What should we document for the future? How can we represent and preserve society in the 21st century without being reduced to mere computational information processing? This master thesis is a speculative reflection on our current and past methods of preservation of social history. ------ AUTHOR: Maeva Bosko TITLE: Dream worlds SUBTITLE: What happens when we’re asleep? Since my early childhood, I have dreamt a lot. Sweet, pleasant or strange dreams, nightmares, sometimes even lucid dreams. Night is when I escape to these virtual worlds. But what are these worlds? Why are they so different from my ordinary waking world? I’ve even gotten to the point, on various occasions, when I preferred these dream states to my everyday reality. This is a research project into the world of dreams as an attempt to decode the unconsciousness in relation to the virtual universe and reality we experience at night. ------ AUTHOR: Natalie Maximova TITLE: Walking the landscape, in video games With a focus on landscape representation in video games called “walking simulators”, this thesis attempts to uncover questions related to a complex and ambiguous notion of landscape, from its original conception to today. During my research, I applied the interpretive approach of “reading” and decoding landscapes that have been used by geographers, as well as sociologists, artists and historians. Video game landscapes could be thought of as a system consisting of natural, man-made and cultural forces which can be identified and studied. The landscape in this case plays as a medium that combines, holds and channels these forces. If video game environments exist as part of our culture, what kind of connections do these virtual spaces form? This thesis tries to uncover processes behind the construction of the “natural” in video game environments. ------ AUTHOR: Joanna Wierzbicka TITLE: Why should our bodies end at the skin? SUBTITLE: Rethinking bodily matter beyond a humanist imagination This thesis follows the turn to matter within the fields of body studies, posthuman feminist theory, and new materialism in order to rethink the definition of what a body is and, more importantly, what a body can do. The main research objective is to find out how through questioning the definition of a body and the use of metaphorical thinking in this process, we can establish a more ethical living ground among other bodies. ------ AUTHOR: Olivia Wünsche TITLE: Myths shape reality After having lived a deeply transformative psychedelic experience, all previously held beliefs and perceptions which conditioned my relationship to the surrounding reality, suddenly broke free from the prison of mental programming and limited awareness. Different aspects of this internal change manifested through an almost visceral connection to the Earth. I started to direct my attention towards subjects revolving around environmental and humanitarian crisis, simultaneously wanting to find the cause that has led to our current state of separateness, in which we distance ourselves from others and from nature. I understood quite rapidly that socio-political problem-solving is undoubtedly urgent and indispensable, however it remains shallow and incomplete by treating symptoms without curing the cause. ------ AUTHOR: Zhang Manqin TITLE: A diamond-shaped egg This master thesis is based on different tools that can be used to explore the power of memory. Closely related to the author’s “I’m not a loner” photo installation, this research project combines fictional writing with the documentary approach of a diary.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Rachel de Joode
First-year students have been tutored artist Rachel de Joode into using a more plastic approach in the way they conceive and display physical images.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Bruno Ceschel, MAP
First-year course with Bruno Ceschel
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Milo Keller, Robin Bervini
Virtual Reality introduction workshop tutored by Milo Keller with the technical assistance of Florian Amoser and Robin Bervini. During this 5 days introduction, students learned to use Unreal Engine 4 to prototype and test their scenes in real-time. Working in pairs, each of them started to develop a level of a global VR experience that will be presented at the Biennale dell'immagine 2021 in Chiasso.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Lauren Huret, MAP
In this workshop, first and second year students had group discussions around what makes an image iconic and developed group and individual projects. The workshop was tutored by Lauren Huret
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Simone Niquille
The assignment draws inspiration from traditional portraiture but intentionally diverges, enabling a critical exploration of the cultural and digital constructs of 'self' and 'family' through the lens of Neural Filters, emphasizing daily output over quality, with editing deferred until later in the presentation preparation stage.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Marco De Mutiis
2nd year Automated Photography course tutored by Marco De Mutiis.