Feed

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.

“The Eskimo in the Mojave Desert”: Herbert Matter, a Designer Across Scenes and Genres

with Jonas Berthod, Louise Paradis, Gilles Gavillet

Matter’s career was that of a multidisciplinary, international designer working across commerce and culture. He was not only a graphic artist but also a photographer, type designer, art director, teacher and film-maker. His work in the field of advertising and editorial design, his collaborations with artists, his self-commissioned work, his photography and film outputs and his long-serving position as an educator provide as many entry points to analyse the impact of migration and an international network on a graphic designer’s career. It also provides a case study to analyse the professional model of the designer working as photographer and layout artist simultaneously.

TYPE DESIGN

Beyond Bézier. Explorations of drawing methods in type design

with Matthieu Cortat, Alice Savoie, Kai Bernau, Radim Pesko, Roland Früh

In the early age of digital type, several methods were explored to draw letterforms. One of them, the Bézier spline, an algorithm that generates curves with a small quantity of data, has the crucial advantage of sparing computer memory and processing resources. It is today the industry standard. This project aims to question and reevaluate it, to move beyond established trends, to develop innovative ideas by exploring alternative methods of drawing curves, and letterforms.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Tribute to Masterpieces

with Elodie Anglade

Selection of animated sequences made during a 3D course directed by Elodie Anglade. The students were inspired by a painting and transcribed it into three different scenes.

The Manufacture of Type for Typewriters in Switzerland

with Sophie Wietlisbach

Between the 1940s and the 1990s, three companies manufactured type components for typewriters in Switzerland: Caractères SA, Setag and Novatype. During more than fifty years, they supplied the biggest manufacturers of office machines in Europe and around the world, such as IBM, Remington, Olivetti, Paillard-Hermès or Triumph-Adler. Having held a leading position worldwide, the three manufacturers played a key role in the design, development, and production of type components and typefaces for typewriters, as well as for all kinds of impact printers.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

PHOTOGRAPHY

PROJECTIONS XXL

with Sami Benhadj, Vincent Jacquier

An immersive and magnetic visual environment, created by ECAL students, illuminates the facades of the mudac and Photo Elysée building. As part of an interdisciplinary project within the Visual Communication department of ECAL, students in the Photography, Graphic Design and Media & Interaction Design Bachelors programs developed immersive video projects designed to adorn the facades of Photo Elysée.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Automated Photography at Foto/Industria

with Milo Keller, Marco De Mutiis

The MAST Foundation is presenting the seventh edition of Foto/Industria, the world's first biennial event devoted to photography of industry and work, at a number of historic venues in Bologna and at MAST. The 12 exhibitions in Foto/Industria 2023 represent a chronology of points of view on the theme of PLAY, from the end of the 19th century to the present day. They offer an opportunity to observe and delve into the research of a selection of international artists. The ECAL is presenting an exhibition of its research project Automated Photography. An increasing number of images are produced autonomously by machines for machines with a gradual exclusion of any human intervention. Automated Photography is a research project developed by the Master Photography that addresses this situation by examining the technologies of image production and distribution such as: machine learning, CGI, photogrammetry.

FINE ARTS

FILM STUDIES

FINE ARTS

FILM STUDIES

Archive as a Creative Act: The Absolute Cinema of Gregory J. Markopoulos and the Temenos Utopia

with François Bovier

Artists who produce archives from their own work approach archival activity as a creative gesture: here, the archive literally becomes a work of art. In parallel with the “archival impulse” that has run through contemporary art since the 1960s, this research project examines the “performative agency” of archives when they are constituted from “image acts”. The selected corpus is based on an extremely singular case, the cinematographic work of Gregory J. Markopoulos (1928-1992) and the Temenos archives.

UNITE DE THEORIE

FINE ARTS

The Raving Age. Histories and figures of youth

with Vincent Normand, Stéphanie Moisdon

This research project questions what has come of youth – a conceptual, aesthetic, and political figure that was born with modernity – in the visual arts, popular culture, and the humanities. Conversely, the project addresses what the problematic category of “youth” has brought about in contemporary art and thought.

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

A Third Hand – Creative Applications for Robotics

with Alain Bellet, Andrea Anner, Thibault Brevet, Martin Hertig

Robotic arms have long been a common sight in many industries. They are currently making a rapid entry into art and design studios and practices. Yet, at the same time, difficulties remain in accessing the workflows and work methods demanded by these machines given a clear lack of reference resources suited for this community. The same applies to Art and Design schools, which are increasingly investing in this type of equipment, often without having the resources to run it. This research project uses applied case studies to explore and define a set of exemplary work methods, capable of both informing and inspiring future users.

Design Research for Digital Innovation (EPFL+ECAL Lab)

Rémi Opalinski – Photobook Uncovered

by Rémi Opalinski

Photobook Uncovered is an interactive installation which was developed in collaboration with the Museum for Photography – Photo Elysée. The design research project aims to enhance the comprehension of photobooks among a diverse audience. Through this immersive experience, visitors can navigate a curated collection of 300 photobooks, discovering intriguing connections based on layout similarities. By leveraging cutting-edge technologies, the installation offers a unique and engaging way to interact with the photobooks, revealing insights into the relationships between the different works.

FINE ARTS

Juri Bizzotto – Shy Opener, Transfarmer Miniconcert

by Juri Bizzotto

Shy Opener, Transfarmer Miniconcert consists of a live set and presentation of the first single + video clip Shy Opener, made for the Transfarmer Series project. The concert stage is transformed into a window into the world of Transfarmer, where sound, performance and stage elements recreate the bucolic ecosystem of a rediscovered periphery. Transfarmer is a long-term research project, which is committed to creating intersectional critical thinking with respect to the condition of queer, trans* subjectivities in the rural context – imagining metamorphoses of them and their landscape. The practical project includes drawings, texts, sound compositions, videos and props, and aims to produce an EP that will narrate the cosmovision of the character of Transfarmer.

FINE ARTS

Simon Colliard – Celle-ci je voulais la chanter au bord du gouffre

by Simon Colliard

Celle-ci Je Voulais la Chanter au Bord du Gouffre talks about having dreams and getting lost in the process. Celle-ci Je Voulais la Chanter au Bord du Gouffre is what remains when you have been looking within for too long. Celle-ci Je Voulais la Chanter au Bord du Gouffre is a 17-minute musical performance that tells a fragment of a story.

FINE ARTS

Sofia Fresey Angelopoulou – Juggler

by Sofia Fresey Angelopoulou

Juggler is an installation that consists of four large prints on micro-perforated tarpaulins, which are suspended from the ceiling. Viewers are welcome to walk around them and appreciate their see-through qualities. In many instances the juggler shares its identity with the magician, the jester and the fool. It is a duality: folly and non-folly, order and disorder, a joke and a warning. It is an entity that creates amusement with implements and in some cases with a physically deformed body. Through that, it generates patterns that describe the bizarre. Combinations of incompatibility, fantasy and reality, caricature and plausibility, alogicalness and hyperbolism. A big part of this project consists of images generated by an AI trained with pictures of freaks in sideshows.

FINE ARTS

Yoonjae Lee – Umwelten: Four Humans

by Yoonjae Lee

Umwelt (pl. Umwelten) refers to the world as it is experienced by a particular organism. This installation visualises subtle differences in the Umwelt of four human beings. Eight live streaming cameras face one LED through bespoke camera filters that are shaped based on four individuals’ corneas. Specifically, the four individuals here are Yoonjae Lee herself and people she cares for. She tries to understand the fundamental differences between her dear ones and herself by discovering the morphological differences in each vision. By focusing on the fact that each person’s perception is different due to their bodily differences, before their experiences, this work questions the implicit agreement and undisclosed biases in visual arts that assume everyone sees an artwork in the same way.

FINE ARTS

Claudia Mangone – Diagrams

by Claudia Mangone

This series of drawings is the result of a process in which the amount of information is continuously dosed. Communication is partially silenced; the structure of the shapes is blurred and lost, like a clouded mind or a hidden secret. Breaths in the room or manifestation of thoughts, they represent nothing more than what comes to the eye; the work thus becomes malleable under the gaze of the viewer, highlighting the unspoken. Made on paper, cut out, reassembled and then veiled by the milky surface of plexiglass, their manifestation is elusive. The colours are calibrated according to the surface’s capacity to hold or enhance them. The three pivots that support the drawings move around the four sides to find points of stability.

FINE ARTS

Sebastien Rück – Jeanne’s Promdress

by Sebastien Rück

My project is a reflection on how to showcase a series of drawings. Jeanne’s Promdress was created with the same energy I would have put into making my own prom dress. I sought to create a space, a cocoon for my drawings – a place that compels visitors to linger, take a moment, peek inside and discover a selection of drawings resulting from an intimate sketchbook production, made in the living space that is the bedroom. I used different materials such as the tulle of a mosquito net or a piece of muslin fabric (100% polyester), wire, a metal circle and a hanging rod. I sewed everything myself, hence the title, Promdress.

FINE ARTS

Clara Sipf – Outlaw History: Bird Invasion

by Clara Sipf

A couple of days ago, the birds flew into the city. Enormous flocks of all varieties of birds, plenty of crows, seagulls and sparrows. The sky became dark. Determined and angry, they swooped down on the panicked masses. Greedily they pecked the flesh of living bodies; the big birds ripped whole shreds out of them. I spotted one that the woodpeckers, with their rapid hammering movements, had carefully severed from the neck including the spinal bones and the head had rolled dully down a small slope, meeting its end in the roadside ditch. The judges must have lingered in the courthouse for some more time until a falcon threw itself like a martyr through the colourfully decorated church window and herded them out.

TYPE DESIGN

Lana Soufeh – Toujan Display: Contextual Arabic Typeface

with Kai Bernau, Matthieu Cortat

Today, most typographic design is done in Latin script and type design software is geared towards Western scripts. Toujan is a contextual Arabic typeface that aims to explore the potential of this software to reintegrate versatility and connectivity in Arabic script, while preserving its dynamic nature. It is inspired by the Tawqii’ style, a hybrid of thuluth and naskh calligraphy and features ligatures that enhance the visual allure of the text but also serve a functional purpose, optimising the spacing and improving the text flow. Toujan pushes the boundaries of Arabic type by reintroducing one of its unique features, i.e. that of connecting all words in a sentence with a series of swashes that link the last letter of each word to the first letter of the following word.

FINE ARTS

Fanny Dunning – Figures in a landscape

by Fanny Dunning

thinking of sculptures in a big garden, on acres of land popping up like hills but hills with crowns of horns here function follows form. it has built this as a sculpture. then installed its mirrors. thinking of sculptures in a big garden people inviting artists to come and stay

FINE ARTS

Tianchang Gu – Papers, please

by Tianchang Gu

The title of my graduation work comes from the video game of the same name and is the sequel to my thesis “Renens Palace”, an autofiction based on a dystopian future. In this fiction, the “self”, a former immigrant in Europe, becomes an immigration officer. How can writing be transformed into performance? The observed becomes the observer. The formerly oppressed blends into the system and becomes a person of authority. Bureaucratic gestures turn into choreography. Official documents become poems. Administrative motifs and symbols of power turn into visual aesthetics. These are the questions I contemplate during this creative process. All these strangely romanticised and anxiety-inducing elements evoke a reality we don’t always want to confront.

FINE ARTS

Yann Fankhauser – Étendard du marcheur

by Yann Fankhauser

This project is a print on a PVC tarpaulin (2500 mm x 1200 mm) of 18 silhouettes in boxes forming a black and white checkerboard. The development of the project was done from hand-made sketches, then digitised with Illustrator and arranged in a checkerboard. These sketches of silhouettes were made through various processes: 1) the modification of an initial silhouette to create a new one, 2) the juxtaposition of several silhouettes with each other, and 3) by illustrating a new angle of a silhouette already created. The concept revisits the idea of a motor-racing finish flag, transforming it into an endless journey, playing on the boundary between the figurative and the abstract in the image of pareidolia.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Benjamin Freedman – Positive Illusions

by Benjamin Freedman

Positive Illusions is a photobook that depicts a series of childhood memories constructed using CGI. The resulting uncanny still lives, imagined from the perspective of a child, evoke a strange family presence in photo-realistic environments. Inspired by the nature of memory and simulation, I have based my scenes on what I could remember and used a phenomenological approach to fill in the blanks. Revisiting the past using CGI technology to re-stage events creates a unique flattening of the past and present – a process of pseudo visual archaeology. Some images in the series are repeated but with slight alterations, revealing the surrealist process of fabricating them and underscoring the phenomenon of distortion that is inherent to memory.

TYPE DESIGN

Minjong Kim – Amateur

with Kai Bernau, Matthieu Cortat

Amateur is a serif typeface that synthesises the calligraphic features derived from historical research. It evokes a niche sanctuary for a forgotten genre, exuding a sense of elegance. Inspired by the letterforms of early antique German models, Amateur cleverly plays with a distinctive form of horizontality, simultaneously revealing untamed strokes and meticulously crafted details. The uniform text styles provide robust, harmonised textures for optimal readability, while the display styles amplify the expressive qualities of each letter to the extreme, fearlessly embracing deliberate imperfections that blur conventional type systems and showcase captivating aesthetics.

TYPE DESIGN

Coline Besson – Girlz – They Gave Us Pink Let Us Make It Powerful

with Kai Bernau, Julia Born

This editorial project embraces a new interpretation of the stereotypes of Femininity. The conscious reappropriation of its attributes becomes an act of awareness, subversion and empowerment. As a woman, being dissonant, allegedly vulgar and girly is a way to disrupt and challenge the established order and the agreed expectations of society. The publication gathers and highlights the works of a variety of female artists for this cause. It also features a custom-made font, Courtesy, with a neo-kitsch display cut that plays with proportions and consistency and a reader-friendly text cut – both sharing specific and sharp features. Finally, a monospace version allows for more freedom in compositions. It is used where traditional typesetting would favour italics.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Mattia Dagani Rio – METAMORPHOSIS

by Mattia Dagani Rio

METAMORPHOSIS is a photobook that delves into the complex tapestry of bodybuilding, examining its inherent interplay with torture, hedonism and eroticism. Bodybuilders subject themselves to gruelling training regimens, pushing their bodies to the absolute limits in the pursuit of self-expression. Using a combination of CGI with traditional methods of photography, this project explores moments of agony, highlighting the struggle and dedication required to reshape the body into an extraordinary form. However, it also shows how this practice is a deeply personal journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance which consists of introspective moments, vulnerability and a profound intimacy with themselves, where viewers witness a process of transformation that extends far beyond the physical body.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Noa Chevalley – Bêche pour dame

by Noa Chevalley

“In the middle of this gravel pit, a vast, artificial and monumental landscape, I try to leave my mark. In mimicry of this environment, I cut into the soil with the strength of my arms. The naked body becomes a tool for digging and filming. It is desexualised in this vain and infinite action. I use my strength to feel more powerful and to detach myself from the normative injunctions that are imposed to me. Despite this, I cannot compete with this place. A relentless battle takes place between the shovel and the ground – a battle that breaks the body and dismantles it. This work mirrors the feeling of inadequacy that comes from the dynamic of striving to meet the expectations that are imposed on us. I do not listen to my body anymore and I am conditioned to accept a world that rips it apart.“

PHOTOGRAPHY

Moritz Jekat – Wetlands of Pharmacology

by Moritz Jekat

Exterior virtual organs that enter our bodies and transform our brains surround us. These pharmaca multiply in wetlands between online and real life. In a desire for healing and reconnecting, a group of humanoid aliens inhabit this space and come together in a caring pile of thoughts, emotions and dreams. They share with you, thanks to subconscious writing and wetland tools. A waterbed in space invites you to relax. In the concept of adoption of pharmacology, in contrast to adaptation to the super-fast, consumption-based virtual spheres that are transforming social habits, Wetlands of Pharmacology experiments with a slow coming together and exchange of emotional and physical knowledge of five artists in a computer game engine.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Amandine Kuhlmann – Cash Me Online

by Amandine Kuhlmann

Cash Me Online is a video project where I stage myself, combining performance with found footage. With the goal of achieving viral fame, I embrace delusion and despair in this exploration, which delves into the impact of cameras in the era of social media. Through a hyper-feminine digital alter ego based on my own algorithm, I perform in virtual and physical realms, fulfilling desires and aspirations. The project questions self-representation and the female gaze in the presence of empowered women on screen. The project examines tensions between toxic feminine tropes and how women reclaim them for empowerment. Found footage combined with a deepfake of my own face serves as a visual album, revealing content diversity and standardisation, introducing ambiguity in notions of dysmorphia.