FINE ARTS
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.
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.
PHOTOGRAPHY
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
with Chaumont–Zaerpour
Each group must create a series of fashion images by appropriating and/or subverting codes related to existing images. All the series will then be compiled like in a magazine, in a bound and printed format.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
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
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.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Simon Lehner, Milo Keller, Clément Lambelet
For this workshop, ECAL invited Simon Lehner, a Vienna-based visual artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans photography, 3D rendering, AI-generated imagery, lens-based paintings, and sculptures. Social media algorithms manipulate memory and emotions by trapping users in echo chambers of repetitive imagery and ideas. These visual cycles exploit memory processes, triggering emotional responses—such as fear, envy, or desire—that reinforce behavioral patterns. Corporations leverage photographic images to target insecurities, activating primal instincts to drive consumption and engagement. Before the workshop, students were invited to reflect on their personal echo chambers—encountered on their social media feeds. They were asked to think about the following: • What trends or niches were suggested to you? • Which emotions played a role in these trends? • What emotional responses did they trigger in you? By analyzing these patterns, students gained insight into how photographic images and algorithms influence memory, emotions, and behavior. This critical awareness serveed as a foundation for exploring the broader societal implications of visual media.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
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.
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Thélonious Goupil
During this one-week workshop led by Thélonious Goupil, edits were made to a ‘drop false ceiling’ in Bar Gala Lausanne. By hacking the system, playing with existing elements such as lighting or ventilators, the outdate ceiling was given new life without the need for full renovation.
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Studio Isabel + Helen
This workshop was led by Isabel + Helen Studio, a duo of London artists known for their captivating kinetic sculptures and installations. They blend art with movement to create playful and thought-provoking works. During the week, they guided students through the fundamentals of creating dynamic, moving sculptures. Using umbrella mechanisms, students created fireworks.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
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
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.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Augustin Lignier, Milo Keller, Clément Lambelet
From image capture to distribution, "We do the Rest" explores the notions of effort and bodily constraint in contemporary photographic mechanics. Through a series of spectacular and deceptive per-formances, Master Photography students at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne translate the gestures and the actions of visual fabrication with humor and absurdity. The project, conducted by Augustin Lignier, recalls the radical performances of the 60%, revisited in the digital age, when audiences are mainly virtual, and relationships are reduced to pixels. In search of permanent validation, we evolve in a digital theater governed by cameras, screens, and algorithms. We invite you to dive into these simulations, for real. And it's up to you to press the shutter... "We do the Rest" was created as a workshop during the second semester and was further developed in Italy, where it celebrated its premiere at the Biennale dell'Immagine di Chiasso. The constantly reimagined project was later presented at the Rencontres d'Arles 2024 photography festival, where it found a wide audience. The third and final edition was presented at ECAL in September 2024, closing the circle and illustrating the dynamic development process.
with Calypso Mahieu Laurent Soldini, Sophie Wietlisbach
The project aims to shed light on the career of Richard Authier (Lausanne, 1925–2018), who was an industrial designer at Hermes Paillard International in Yverdon-les-Bains and a pioneer of industrial design in French-speaking Switzerland.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
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.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Tamara Janes
The students task is to create their own story, storyline, narrative or sequences based on the existing given images. Using their personal interests, imagination and ideas they link the images together. They can continue the plot of the images, do in-depth research, write fictional stories or tell stories based on personal experiences. The students had the freedom to photograph, generate or film.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Lorenzo Vitturi
The aim of this workshop is to engage students in a multidisciplinary process that combines photography with sculpture and scenography. To emphasize the importance of the creative process, students are encouraged to use primarily collected and recycled materials, which will need to be transformed and integrated into their visual narrative. The work presented at the end of the workshop will reflect this approach, combining visual results with sculptures and ephemeral installations.
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Reed Kram
No Signal! Is the the outcome of an exploratory one-week workshop completed for, and now exhibited in, the Mudac’s exhibition ‘We Will Survive’, which delves into the world of ‘Preppers.’ Guided by designer Reed Kram, students from the MA Product Design program, worked in pairs to create solutions for a hypothetical scenario in which phones no longer work, the internet is down, and grid electricity is unavailable. Faced with this breakdown of modern infrastructure, their mission was to reimagine how we might fulfill one of humanity's most essential needs—communication.
FILM STUDIES
by Loris Ciaburri, Jonathan Daza Ospina, Loïs de Goumoëns, Sara Dutch, Fei Fan, Pablo Guscetti, Anna Joos, Saleh Kashefi, Theofanis Papadopoulos, Valentina Parati, Antoine Scalese
Students in the Master Film Studies ECAL/HEAD produced documentary vignettes for the Paléo Festival, which were shown for the first time at Visions du Réel in April 2024.
FILM STUDIES
with Alejo Moguillansky
A 1 week filmmaking workshop led by the Argentinian director, screenwriter and producer Alejo Moguillansky with the students of the Master in Film - major direction.
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Chris Kabel
Like Robinson Crusoe scavenged the wrecked ship for materials to build his home, First Year Master Product Design students, guided by Chris Kabel, were invited to delve into the flotsam of their creative minds for this open workshop. The workshop began with collecting, organizing, and analyzing creative flotsam and jetsam to create a self-portrait as a designer. Unrealized projects, obsessions and fascinations, irritations, vague dreams, (bad) jokes, and ideas too weird to talk about—all these resided within a designer's mind. Beginnings already existed: inspiring photos on phones, inviting materials, first ideas hastily scribbled down, quick sketches on paper, half-baked assemblages, or flimsy maquettes. These fragments and particles were analyzed to discover the kind of designer each participant was, extracting a direction for development during the week. This process of analysis, ideation, and translation, including the ‘end result,’ became visible as an island, shaped and populated by each individual's design process. It featured fragile beginnings, iterations, and the choices made along the way, culminating in a final conclusion shaped by material samples, shape research, 3D sketches, the development of a mechanism, a campaign, a film scenario, or whatever else was distilled from the initial flotsam.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
PHOTOGRAPHY
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
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
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
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.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Candice Aepli, Amélie Bertholet, Coraline Beyeler, Delphine Brantschen, Léa Corin, Matteo Cortesi, Mathilde Driebold, Eliot Dubi, Marc Facchinetti, Emilie Müller, Dorian Pangallo, Paul Paturel, Hugo Scholl, Diego Steiner, Cyprien Valenza, Alfredo Venti, Arnaud Wenger, Constance Mauler, Flora Hayoz, Lidia Molina González
An Ode to the Poster 80 Attributes 80 Fonts 80 Posters During this week, the second year students had to create 80 posters, i.e. 4 posters per person. Based on a list of defined attributes, they had to create typography and concepts around them.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Eilean Friis-Lund, Alice Vodoz
Mise en scène An exercise centered around the poster format with a typographic approach. The goal is to convey the atmosphere of a film through lettering by graphically staging the text.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
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.
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.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
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).
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Candice Aepli, Amélie Bertholet, Coraline Beyeler, Delphine Brantschen, Léa Corin, Matteo Cortesi, Mathilde Driebold, Eliot Dubi, Marc Facchinetti, Emilie Müller, Dorian Pangallo, Paul Paturel, Hugo Scholl, Diego Steiner, Cyprien Valenza, Alfredo Venti, Arnaud Wenger, Constance Mauler, Flora Hayoz, Lidia Molina González, Vladislav Tschumi
During this week, the students had to create Obi Strip, a strip of paper surrounding the cover of a vinyl. A visible layer representing the world of their vinyl and an invisible layer creating a security raster. The result was screen-printed, using visible ink and UV ink for the security design.
FOUNDATION YEAR
with Clemens Alexander Severin Piontek, Karla Hiraldo Voleau, Vanessa Safavi, Basil Dénéréaz, Bruno Deville, Aurélie Vial
Option Cinema Bruno Deville Instructed to follow one or more people in the course of their work, the students were each asked to make a documentary with the constraint of treating it the attributes of fiction. Option Media & Interaction Design Basil Dénéréaz Introduction to 3D through a week-long workshop on the theme of CGI still lifes, designed to familiarise students with this medium. Option Photography Karla Hiraldo Voleau How do we communicate today, within our relationships? How is the online environment shaping the way we talk about love, whether through words or images? The students delved into their experiences and perceptions of relationships to create a portrait of love in the digital age. Option Graphic Design Clemens Piontek Modular Expression Exploring modular design and creating lettering and new typography. The aim is to create fonts that express a feeling, an emotion, a mood or an atmosphere. The set of components specific to each is created from the Vevey* typeface, which has two variants: Vevey Positive & Vevey Human Kind. Option Visual Arts Vanessa Safavi Working with specific objects or materials chosen by the students on the basis of their physical and symbolic properties, to reveal a gesture or intention in the conception of a defined plastic work. Option Industrial Design Aurélie Vial Exploring digital cutting and assembly techniques. Starting with sheets of honeycomb cardboard and using the workshop's digital cutting table, we created columns and structures, the only constraints being that they had to be vertical and self-supporting. How do you inhabit a space with 26 different proposals to create a collective and coherent whole? Pictures © ECAL/Marvin Merkel Poster © ECAL/Aude Meyer de Stadelhofen
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.
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.
with Quang Vinh Nguyen, Cynthia Ammann, Chi-Long Trieu
Cà phê (coffee), atisô (artichoke), xi nê ma (cinema), căng tin (canteen) or xi-măng (cement): in the Vietnamese language, many words bear the imprint of a French origin. And what if the same were true of everyday objects? Somewhere between cultural anthropology, the epistemology of Vietnamese design and the sociology of objects, this research project analyses the production of objects in Vietnam in the light of French colonisation and decolonisation.
FOUNDATION YEAR
by Adam Touhami, Alice Refachinho, Anaïs Dermont, Cansu Celen, Eloïse Guillod, Emma Morisseau, Filipa Batalim, Isabelle Virnot, Laura Simons, Lena Mancini, Mathys Mauron, Matteo Lucca, Noé Fortuit, Pierric Mamin, Tobia Rizzon, Marie Macherel
A day-long workshop given by Aude Meyer de Stadelhofen to students in the Graphic Design option. The aim was to compose by hand using tracing paper on which were printed visuals previously produced by the students. The possibility of cutting, cropping, pasting and drawing allowed everyone to make the visuals their own and create original posters.
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
with Erwan Bouroullec
Led by the acclaimed French designer Erwan Bouroullec, the workshop 'Presque Rien' unfolded as an exploration of design possibilities within the setting of his estate and recently renovated Burgundy farm. The project envisioned an open canvas, encouraging ECAL’s Bachelor Industrial Design students, to diverge from traditional problem-solving.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
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.
PHOTOGRAPHY
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.
with Davide Fornari, Jonas Berthod, Chiara Barbieri
The research project investigates the discourse on graphic design in Switzerland in the under-researched period from 1980 to 2020. While the 1950s and 1960s saw graphic design in Switzerland reach international recognition and commercial expansion under the label “Swiss style”, a paradigm shift emerged in the following decades. The attention of many practitioners turned away from design as a pure service for the industrial and service sector and moved towards cultural commissions on a local, national and international level. Instead of aiming for maximum return, they chose their commissions according to whether they promised them creative freedom and whether they contributed to the profiling of their portfolio in alignment with their new definition of the profession as a lifestyle. This project examines the emergence and the development of this phenomenon, which became known as “cultural graphic design”, in professional graphic design in Switzerland.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Charlie Engman, Milo Keller, Clément Lambelet
"Treatment, Synthesis, and Art Direction" Charlie Engman is an artist, photographer, writer, and art director based in Brooklyn, New York.He works across a range of media and disciplines from gen-AI art, photography, video, and fashion, and balances artistic, commercial, and pedagogical practices. He is the art director of the sustainable fashion brand, Collina Strada, where he is responsible for print design, branding, and runway show design. This workshop will investigate the ways in which media, aesthetics, and culture are interwoven and overlapping and are driven in large part by the accessibility of popular technology. It will also investigate the ways in which creativity is a collaborative and iterative process that bleeds across genre and category. There will be a key focus on the intersection of photography, AI tools, and videogaming / user-driven media.In this workshop, participants are expected to explore and challenge the ways they integrate and synthesize both professional and vernacular registers and new and traditional techniques. This will also serve as an introduction to developing art direction and making “ treatments ” for commissioned projects, and practical experience concepting and executing assignments that can bridge between a distinctive artistic practice and preexisting modes of making and sharing.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
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.
FINE ARTS
The BAAV is inviting two leading figures to its semestrial workshops: Pierrine Poget, author and poet, and Marie-Caroline Hominal, dancer and performer, both from Geneva. The former, described by one student as an "osteopath of the brain", invites a group of students to make a family with the voices in their heads, while the latter invites bodies into the space of the party for a performance in the ECAL film studio.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Candice Aepli, Amélie Bertholet, Coraline Beyeler, Delphine Brantschen, Léa Corin, Matteo Cortesi, Mathilde Driebold, Eliot Dubi, Marc Facchinetti, Emilie Müller, Dorian Pangallo, Paul Paturel, Hugo Scholl, Diego Steiner, Cyprien Valenza, Alfredo Venti, Arnaud Wenger, Constance Mauler, Flora Hayoz, Lidia Molina González, Vladislav Tschumi
Workshop Atelier Brenda During this week, the students created posters based on Ken Nordine's music album "Color".
FINE ARTS
FILM STUDIES
FINE ARTS
FILM STUDIES
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
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
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.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
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.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Angelo Benedetto, Diego Bontognali, Nicole Udry
Paisajes Políticos Summer University November 2022 During their trip, the students met several artists/designers and visited different cultural places such as Suizspacio, Pablo Suazo, Ciudad Abierta, Universidad Publica, Gam, Naranja Publicaciones, Tipo Movil.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
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.