The Mechanics of Cinema in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
with Benoit Rossel
This research project by the Film Department at ECAL aims to assess the impact of artificial intelligence on cinema and film education.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Rationality/Expressivness - Carnal Verona Workshop
with Yanis Carnal, Raphaël Verona
The Swiss style, also known as the International Style, established itself as the symbol of a radical approach to graphic design and typography. It embodies an ideal of efficiency and rationality. Omnipresent more than half a century after its emergence, does it still hold the same relevance today? What is its influence on our imaginations and our practice? Doesn't Switzerland have other facets through which to communicate, and what new graphic and typographic languages could represent them?
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Reverse DIffusion - 2026
with Matthieu Minguet, Jamy Herrmann
This workshop explores the use of real-time video streams as a medium for transforming reality. Through live capture or interface-based processes, participants experiment with different ways of altering images using locally run diffusion models. The video stream is approached as raw material, opening up new perspectives on how reality can be perceived and transformed.
DIGITAL EXPERIENCE DESIGN
RE-STRUCTURE
with RNDR STUDIO
During this one-week workshop, Master Digital Experience Design students used machine learning tools to decompose music videos into their constituent parts: segmented scenes, detected gestures, extracted colors, analyzed beats, separated audio stems, transforming linear audiovisual artifacts into structured datasets. These components were then reimagined as interactive, non-linear systems: explorable maps, generative timelines, rhythm-driven interfaces, and self-recomposing structures built with the OPENRNDR framework.
PHOTOGRAPHY
ANALOG MEDIUM FORMAT WORKSHOP
with Anoush Abrar
DRIVE For this week’s theme, “Drive,” first-year photography students were asked to create a portrait shot on medium-format film. Inspired by the sensation of a first driving experience, travel, empowerment, or discovery, the week aimed to explore the relationship between one or more people and a vehicle.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
PHOTOGRAPHY
ECAL Light House
with Jean-Vincent Simonet, Léonard Guyot, Florian Pittet (Sigmasix), Vincent Jacquier, Julien Gurtner
During a week of collaborative work, first-year students in the Visual Communication department at ECAL were given the ambitious task of creating a complete audiovisual experience, designing a light and sound architecture based solely on five original musical compositions. Using a central totem-like screen installation and projections on the surrounding walls, enhanced with lasers, they created a visual environment, broadcast in real time, which was presented as a performance to the public at the end of the week. The aim was to construct a universe capable of fully utilizing the space and the various stage elements, inviting the audience to move around and experience the live performance in its entirety. Five cross-functional creative groups, each with a different sound base, were supervised by Jean-Vincent Simonet and Léonard Guyot to produce images and test them throughout the week on the device, which was developed, set up and operated by a sixth group under the supervision of Florian Pittet, Matthieu Minguet and Achille Masson.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Enshittification - 2026
with Tibor Udvari
Many platforms degrade over time, shifting from useful tools into manipulative systems. In this workshop, we explore enshittification as a creative method by modifying existing websites or developing small web experiments that exaggerate friction, automation, overload, and disorientation in order to reveal the underlying logics.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Workshop - Rachel de Joode - 2026
with Rachel de Joode, Clément Lambelet
For this workshop, ECAL invited Rachel de Joode, Berlin-based artist whose practice explores the relationship between photography, sculpture, and digital images. During the week, students experimented with transforming photographic images into three-dimensional forms. Starting from simple concepts, they produced or gathered image material intended for printing and treated images as surfaces to cut, fold, layer, and assemble into sculptural objects. Through rapid tests and material experimentation, the workshop encouraged students to move repeatedly between image, surface, object, and documentation. By working with printing, scale, and spatial placement, they explored how photographic images can gain physical presence and occupy space beyond the screen.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
GEOFF HAN – WORK AND TURN
by Leandra Adler, Cansu Celen, Layana Comte, Anaïs Dermont, Camille Genoud, Eve Gremaud, Eloïse Guillod, Mathis Harmant, Marie Hintzy, Matteo Lucca, Maxime Manera, Gaëtan Mauclair, Mathys Mauron, Emma Morisseau, Sara Pedersoli, Lucie Pittet, Hélène Prongué, Leonardo Mariucci, Alice Refachinho, Justine Renevey, Gaspard Schlatter, Laura Simons, Vu Toni Thien Duc, Maïa Yassin, Jonas Zesiger
In November 2025, 27 ECAL students took part in Work and Turn, a workshop led by Geoff Han exploring the theme of labor and the often overlooked work that sustains the school. Located in a former IRIL knitwear factory in the industrial area of Renens, ECAL occupies a vast building whose daily functioning depends on many visible and invisible forms of labor. Over five days, students worked in small teams to produce a collective 96-page pocket-sized publication. Each pair created an 8-page photographic visual essay focusing on a specific aspect of labor at ECAL. Rather than relying on traditional portraits, the projects explored more poetic and indirect ways of documenting traces of work through spaces, gestures, materials, and infrastructures. The entire publication was manually printed on an offset press by the students themselves, in either black or red and black. The printing process was a central part of the workshop: participants prepared the plates, set up the press, and ran the prints. This hands-on production process echoed the theme of labor explored throughout the publication.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Betaverse – 2026
with Mario Von Rickenbach
This project brings together a series of experiments created by students exploring the intersection between physical reality and immaterial imaginary worlds. Using a mixed reality headset, they transform their environment into experimental spaces where real elements become supports for digital creations.
Arboricrop — Next generation agriculture using real-time information from tree crops
with Stéphane Halmaï-Voisard, Younès Klouche, Frederik Mahler-Andersen Pietro Alberti, Maxwell Ashford, Alain Bellet, Laurent Soldini
Arboricrop is a research project conducted by a multidisciplinary consortium bringing together Vivent Biosignals, Changins – University of Viticulture and Oenology, and ECAL/Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO), with the support of Innosuisse. Its objective is to develop a miniaturized plant electrophysiology sensor designed for use in real agricultural conditions: the VITA Mini Sensor.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Talk to me – 2026
with Alain Bellet
By combining code, electronics, and physical prototyping, first-year students design interactive objects that react, respond, and invite interaction, gathered under the title Talk To Me. Using dialogue as playground and inspired by conversational interfaces, the projects transform physical objects into new forms of interaction.
DIGITAL EXPERIENCE DESIGN
The Modular Mindset
with Antonin Waterkeyn
From connected watches to large-scale billboards, digital interfaces now operate across all scales. Designing a visual identity in this context requires thinking in terms of systems that can adapt to multiple formats, uses, and rhythms. This workshop explores the creation of modular, animated identities for a fictional music label, drawing on motion design and procedural logic. Using Cavalry, students develop dynamic visual systems that transform according to precise rules, while maintaining graphic coherence and a strong relationship to the sound universe.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Beyond The Screen – 2025
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.
FILM STUDIES
Workshop Shitty Rigs
Workshop led by Michael William Farino, Jonathan Ricardo Argudo and Herbert Mayer and given to students in the Bachelor's degree programmes in Cinema and Industrial Design.
FILM STUDIES
Workshop with Benoît Dervaux
by Noé Bregnard, Eva Rust, Victor Durand Matinella, Lou Haenggi, Samuel Harari, Hana Magimel, Nolan Grando, Mileny Viera de Andrade, Zélia Zanone
Second-year Bachelor's students attended a workshop with Belgian cinematographer Benoît Dervaux, known for his work on the Dardenne brothers' films. He was responsible for the cinematography on the Swiss films Laissez-moi by Maxime Rappaz (2023) and À bras-le-corps by Marie-Elsa Sgualdo (2025).
PHOTOGRAPHY
Workshop - Simone C Niquille - 2025
with Simone Niquille, Milo Keller, Clément Lambelet
For this workshop, ECAL invited Simone C Niquille, Swiss designer and researcher based in Amsterdam whose practice investigates how digital images, computer vision, and 3D technologies shape the way bodies and objects are represented in contemporary visual culture. Through her research platform Technoflesh, Niquille examines the infrastructures behind digital imagery (from stock images and 3D assets to machine vision systems) and the cultural assumptions embedded in them. Her work reveals how datasets, rendering software, and visual standards influence how bodies, materials, and environments are modeled and understood.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
COUNTDOWN – 2025
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.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Workshop - CGI WITH AREA OF WORK – 2025
with Area Of Work
The Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) Workshop is an introduction to 3D creation software that allows you to create images with photographic qualities that are not photographs. This workshop centers on the theme of “Minimal,” inviting students to explore the creative and technical foundations of contemporary CGI image-making. It emphasizes materiality and the expressive impact of reduction. Every form, light, and texture has a specific role, negative space guides the emotional tone, and fine details unify the composition.
PHOTOGRAPHY
ECAL at OFFPRINT Paris 2025
with Bruno Ceschel, Nicolas Polli, Milo Keller, Clément Lambelet
During Paris Photo 2025, ECAL will present a selection of its books at OFFPRINT Paris. ECAL Master Photography is pleased to present a selection of books created by its second-year students. This event offers an opportunity to engage live with the young photographers, exploring the origins of their projects and the stories behind each of these publications.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Maisie Cuisine Book
with Maisie Cousins
The aim of this workshop, led by photographer Maisie Cousins, is to use photography as a tool to broaden our powers of observation. During the week, students explored macro photography to create miniature and abstract worlds using everyday objects and accessories. This invites us to reflect: what else are we overlooking in our immediate environment?
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Toggle - 2025
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. https://toggle.ecal-mid.ch/2025
PHOTOGRAPHY
ECAL x Polaroid Foundation
with Douglas Mandry
This workshop brought together ECAL graduate artist Douglas Mandry, the Polaroid Foundation, and around thirty Bachelor Photography students. They had the exceptional opportunity to work with a camera that produces Polaroid films in a 40 × 60 cm format and weighs nearly 200 kg. This experience was made possible thanks to its operators, John Reuter and Harriet Browse, who introduced the students to the use of this unique device and the Polaroid Foundation team. Douglas Mandry provided the project’s artistic direction and supported the students in their experiments carried out directly with and on the films. The final result was presented as a collective exhibition on ECAL’s premises, revealing a particularly rich diversity of approaches and visions.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Workshop NORM - A Shape in a Shape
with Dimitri Bruni (NORM), Manuel Krebs (NORM)
How can graphic design be promoted by demonstrating its fundamentals? Led by the studio NORM for first-year students, this workshop aims to highlight ECAL’s Graphic Design programme through the didactic lens of elementary instruction. Each day, students were assigned a global theme (A – Words, B – Images, C – Graphics, D – Drawings), along with a series of simple questions. By combining this input, they produced three collaborative double-sided posters, intended to be offset-printed for ECAL’s Open Days. Each poster features its own duotone combination and folds into a booklet. This project emphasizes how the combinatory potential of simple elements can become a powerful tool in graphic design, while underlining the importance of process in creation.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Digital Attention
with Irene Pereyra
Where does our attention go? In this workshop, first-year students become their own data researchers for 24 hours, observing when and why their phone draws focus. They track triggers, emotions, recovery time, control, context, apps used, duration, body language, energy, and inner dialogue. These everyday traces are then transformed into a one-page scrollytelling experience, a visual story of how attention moves through a day.
FINE ARTS
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Vibrations Forward
with Joël Vacheron, Angelo Benedetto, Olympe Boutaghane, Francis Baudevin
Based on archives and experiences associated with Vibrations (1991–2013), this research analyses how the magazine's textual, graphic and photographic content provides insight into the challenges of communicating about popular music today.
(Re-)Viewing Paik – 2025
with Patrick Keller, François Bovier, Erika Marthins
A comparative and practice-based study on the transformative effects at play in the digital and hybrid exhibition of a body of non-digital native artworks (some artworks by artist Nam June Paik serving as a mean of understanding).
FINE ARTS
FINE ARTS
MA CI
The Assembly of Writings
with Federico Nicolao
A collective exploration of the new relations between contemporary writing and artistic practice.
Design for Recycling through Automation and Robotics in Apparel Accessories and Footwear
with Maxwell Ashford
This project develops design for recycling textile-based goods, one of the most damaging waste streams, using contemporary toolsets to dismantle products into pure fractions.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Audio Reactive Festival Poster Series
with Talia Cotton
First-year students designed a series of audioreactive posters for a music festival. They utilized dynamic tools and live data input to explore sound-responsive visuals within social media's digital format, creating a cohesive and recognizable festival identity.
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.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
ALICE FRANCHETTI WORKSHOP – RICHARD NEUTRA
with Alice Franchetti
During this workshop, each student was tasked with designing a poster inspired by the architectural legacy of Richard Neutra. Drawing from his modernist philosophy and formal principles — clean lines, transparency, strict geometry, and integration with the landscape — each student visually reinterpreted Neutra’s ideas within a 2D graphic format.
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.
PHOTOGRAPHY
The Indecisive Moment – 2025
with Jaya Pelupessy
This exhibition presents the outcome of a five-day workshop led by artist Jaya Pelupessy, where students explored the unstable terrain between creation and reproduction. Through hands-on experiments with various duplication methods and strategies of appropriation, the workshop invited a reconsideration of the image—not as a final product, but as a process, a question, a site of continuous transformation. Embracing moments of uncertainty, trial and error, and unexpected discovery, participants focused on what Pelupessy calls The Indecisive Moment: the in-between phase where outcomes are unclear and intention is disrupted by chance. These works reflect a shift from the pursuit of fixed meaning toward an image in flux—unfinished, open, and relational.
FINE ARTS
Workshop Una Szeemann
Une semaine focalisée sur la spéculations et les nouvelles histoires déclenchées principalement par la matière avec l'artiste Una Szeemann. Les étudiant.exs ont orienté leurs réflexions sur le pouvoir des objets, du point de vue de l'art, du fétichisme, de l'object oriented ontology, de la psychanalyse et de la magie…
FINE ARTS
Hum Hum, l'ecal à Treize, Paris
HUM HUM MAGAZINE est une publication-exposition nomade conçue par le Bachelor Arts Visuels de l’ECAL dont le premier numéro investit la galerie parisienne Treize. Organisée autour d'une série d'invitations, chaque édition est pensée par les étudiant·e·s du Bachelor Arts Visuels comme une exposition facilement diffusable et activable à l’infini. À l’occasion du lancement de son premier numéro, HUM HUM MAGAZINE investit Treize à Paris pour y déployer son sommaire à l’échelle du lieu. Un projet initié par Philippe Decrauzat, Gallien Déjean et Stéphane Kropf.
FINE ARTS
Workshop Trajal Harrell & Cécilia Bengolea
with Stéphanie Moisdon, Shirin Yousefi
In practice, Trajal Harrell will introduce participants to runway categories and dance techniques, guiding them through warm-up exercises and curated music playlists that shape his artistic approach. Meanwhile, Cecilia Bengolea will explore the concepts of self-presentation and performativity, inviting participants to engage in a dynamic investigation of identity, whether real or constructed. Through movement and expression, she aims to question the fluidity of identity and the ways in which it can be shaped or reimagined in a performative context.
FINE ARTS
Symposium - Worldbuilding in an era of extreme fragmentation
with Ingrid Luquet-Gad, Stéphanie Moisdon, Shirin Yousefi
This one-day conference is an interdisciplinary event taking as its starting point the fragmentation thesis, based on the observation that our political conversations online – in forums, social media platforms, or discussion sites – are secluded into ideologically uniform groups. This tendency towards homophily is nothing new yet it has dramatically taken speed recently, to the point that it can be seen as a planetary condition of our times. The infrastructural changes in our digital networks – privatization, tracking, and algorithmic rationality – are not the sole explanatory factors. Finance capitalism, genocidal conflicts, climate crisis, as well as ambient anxiety all trigger responses that tend to favor withdrawal strategies.
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.
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.
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).
FINE ARTS
Parasonic: Transmission of fugitive aural practices
with Stéphane Kropf, Thibault Walter, Lucas Erin, Gina Proenza, Joël Vacheron
Parasonic is a research project on the social and racial constructions of aural practices, based on a critique of a regime of thinking and listening to sound that is over-represented in the arts, and which aims to create spaces for the transmission of fugitive aural practices.
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.
The Picture-Writer. Warja Lavater, Graphic Designer and Illustrator
with Jonas Berthod, Davide Fornari
This project investigates the work of the graphic designer and artist, Warja Lavater, an internationally recognised Swiss graphic designer, illustrator, bookmaker, filmmaker and artist.
FINE ARTS
DON'T BE HAPPY, WORRY - ecal students x Kenneth Goldsmith
Inspiré·e·s par un atelier intense et stimulant avec l'artiste américain Kenneth Goldsmith, les étudiant·e·s du Bachelor Arts Visuels ont valorisé des signes subtils du quotidien, transformant des pensées errantes en un tapis : non pas comme un dessin, mais comme un détour ; non pas comme une déclaration, mais comme une collection d'absurdités oubliées. Poète distingué par le MoMA, Kenneth Goldsmith s’inspire de son manifeste Uncreative Writing pour créer notamment livres, textes critiques, émissions et installations à partir de collages de matériaux trouvés.
FINE ARTS
FÉLIX VALLOTTON, UN HOMMAGE, musée Jenisch, Vevey
by Zuzana Baková, Caroline Bischoff, Emma Blanc-Germser, Mykolya Churmantaiev, Anna Cocimarov, Oana Cuozzo, Mayalène de Roquemaurel, Eulalie Félix, Louis Fontaine, Duna György, Marsaili Venus Haas, Olivia Handschin, Amina Loumachi, Clara Luna, Céleste Meylan, Diego Mühlematter, Paul Reachi, Baptiste Schaerer, Charlie Schär, Jamie Soria, Nayla Younes
Pour célébrer les cents ans de la mort de Félix Vallotton, le Musée Jenisch Vevey invite le Bachelor Arts Visuels de l'ECAL à rendre hommage à cet artiste suisse emblématique dans une exposition collective. S'inspirant de ses gravures qui reflètent l'ambiance parisienne de la fin du XIXe siècle, des colonnes Morris sont recréées dans le musée comme supports modulaires. Elles accueillent affiches, tracts et posters, échos de la culture contemporaine et des questionnements des étudiant·e·s d’aujourd’hui.
FOUNDATION YEAR
Foundation year's Workshop – 2025
Film Option Christophe M. Saber This workshop aims to give young filmmakers the tools they need to obtain more precise and nuanced performances from their actors. Directing actors, the very heart of a film's success, will be explored from a number of angles: how to make relevant casting choices, work on the rhythm and dynamics of a scene, and communicate effectively with actors to translate an artistic vision into a convincing performance. Media & Interaction design option Floating Point Studio Introduction to 3D through a week-long workshop on the theme of CGI still lifes, designed to familiarise students with this medium. Photography Option Sabina Bösch Free photographic work on the body or bodies from different angles: The body as a physical entity and as a functional system, The body in digital space, Touch as interaction and its dimensions, The body as material and medium, The space of the body and its symbolic significance, Societal significance and the construction of the body. Graphic Design Option Eilean Friis-Lund Based on an unchanging timetable, this workshop provides an introduction to risography and explores a number of technical principles (screen, resolution, file preparation). Visual Arts Option Chloé Delarue In a world saturated with images and simulations, where the real and the virtual are intertwined, Chloé Delarue's aim is to create a world where the real and the virtual are intertwined.
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.
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."
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.