Feed

“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.

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.

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.

FINE ARTS

HOW SOON IS NOW? HISTORIES AND FIGURES OF YOUTH

Symposium : HOW SOON IS NOW? HISTORIES AND FIGURES OF YOUTH This symposium is the first stage of the research project How Soon Is Now? Histories and Figures of Youth. It questions “youth” as a conceptual, aesthetic, andpolitical figure born with modernity in the visual arts, popular culture, and the humanities. At the same time, this project proposes to examine the implications ofthe problematic category of "youth" in contemporary art and thought. By exploring the processes in which youth is constituted through its forms of representation, thisproject intends to render intelligible the aesthetic and political dimensions of youth, and to grasp it as a historical allegory allowing for a reconsideration of thecontemporary in the light of its most lively site. What image(s) does the notion of youth carry with it? What idea does it have of itself? How can we talk about it beyond ingrained ideas and the fantasies that society projects on it (at least in Western culture), making it simultaneously a force, a market, an age, a culture, a piece of a history which which we only began writing inthe twentieth-century, and which today has reached its critical stage? In recent history, the notion of youth has so often been conflated with “bringing down the house” that we now expect everything from it: to reinvent us, to shake us up, to carry us, to succeed in what others have failed at (establishing the most open communities possible), to build bridges for the future, to be radical, to be uncompromising where anyone outside of youth has already given up, to be desirable where others are overwhelmed. But with what means? If not those that young people make themselves, for themselves, with elements that they alone will have chosen? With their culture, their places, their clandestinity. Because that which is not yet over happens in the shadows of the world. Youth is a secret. “How Soon Is Now?”, The Smiths once asked. When is it, now?

(Re-)Viewing Paik

with Patrick Keller

(Re-)Viewing Paik is a joint research initiative between Switzerland and South-Korea that involves Prof. Patrick Keller from ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO), Dr. Sang Ae Park from the Nam June Paik Art Center and archives (NJPAC) in South Korea, and Dr. Christian Babski from fabric | ch, an architecture and information technology collective based in Lausanne. The main long-term objective of this joint and interdisciplinary research, based on the archives of Korean artist Nam June Paik (1932–2006), is to establish novel types of online exhibition curating and design, which must take shape digitally at any viewer's (visitor's) place or housing, and to virtually populate it, in an autonomous way. The results of this initial joint work, which will take the form of a functional "demo" (proof of concept), will be used in parallel to formulate a more detailed research project which will then be submitted to a national funding agency.

Swiss Graphic Design and Typography Revisited

with Davide Fornari, Jonas Berthod

The research project Swiss Graphic Design and Typography Revisited is divided into three sub-projects: ‘Principles of Education’, ‘Networks of Practice’ and ‘Strategies of Dissemination’. This three-year project is the biggest research collaboration established in the design field since the SNSF began its activities.

The Sources of Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography

with Davide Fornari, Matthieu Cortat, Jonas Berthod, Chiara Barbieri

Jan Tschichold’s essay Die neue Typographie (The New Typography, 1928) is a game-changing book, acclaimed as the curtain raiser of modern graphic design. While it takes the form of a critical essay and an operative manual, its sources have been understudied because of their difficult identification. This project aims to reconstruct the body of sources that Tschichold drew on to understand the broader cultural context of the book, through an international conference on its impact and a travelling exhibition.

Phantom Power

with Stéphane Kropf, Thibault Walter

Phantom Power questions the social configurations of the non-audible narratives of aural practices in performances and public sound installations.

The Emergence of Video Art in Europe (1960–1980): history, theory, sources and archives.

with François Bovier

To date, there is no European-wide history of video art. It is this gap that the present research programme proposes to fill. Firstly by gathering data on the artists, the works and the events that enabled the emergence of this new artistic practice in the 1960s, or that were important in its development in the following years in Europe, and by bringing to light specific national conditions of production and distribution.

Furniture under pressure

with Younès Klouche Camille Blin, Christophe Guberan, Anniina Koivu, Julie Richoz, Anthony Guex, Chris Kabel

The potential of shape memory materials in furniture design.

Aural Practices in Visual Arts

The project is an investigation into the creative process of visual art through the concept of aurality, which explores sound, listening and auditory perception from a cultural perspective. It is about stepping beyond object culture to look at listening as part of the broader and richer cultural approach developed by studying the case of ECAL, its (human) actors and (non-human) agents.

Bobst Graphic 1972–1981

Bobst Graphic, 1972–1981, with a preface by François Rappo, an interview with six important actors and further selected texts, documents, at a distance of 48 years, the hitherto relatively unknown history of a Bobst company division: Bobst Graphic, pioneers in photocomposition.

Augmented Photography

with Milo Keller Maxime Guyon, Joël Vacheron

The Sausage of the Future

Can we count on the sausage to provide a solution, in order to reduce the consumption of meat? And can the use of new ingredients increase the diversity of our diets? Can the sausage make a considerable contribution to a sustainable food culture? To answer these questions, a chef of molecular gastronomy, a master butcher and a designer have teamed up to look into sausage production techniques and potential new ingredients – such as insects, nuts, and legumes – to reinvent the sausage of the future.

Exhibited cinema

Artists’ films, video art and exhibition of moving images in French-speaking Switzerland

Inhabiting and Interfacing the Cloud(s)

The design research I&IC (Inhabiting and Interfacing the Cloud(s), explores the creation of counter-proposals to the current expression of “Cloud Computing”, particularly in its forms intended for private individuals and end users (“Personal Cloud”).

Hermann Eidenbenz Teaching Graphic Design

DSGDM

Digital Strategies in Genre-Defining Magazines

FINE ARTS

Exhibition and book Vertiginous Parallels

Vertige des correspondances

Tattooar

by Thibault Brevet, Mark Mussler, Happy Pets, Cem Sever

Basics of Creativity