PHOTOGRAPHY

We Do The Rest - PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP & EXHIBITION

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.

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.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Workshop - Charlie Engman

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.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Materialized Photography - Fall 2023 - MAP2

with Mazaccio & Drowilal

The purpose of this class is to examine the relationships between photography — in a context shaped by the digital — and its various modes of display. Students will have to consider what a photograph may be materially and explore how an image’s meaning is derived from both the mode of its distribution and the material form that it assumes. Although the final outcome has to include photography in a third dimensional way ( installation ), projects may use and combine image-based practices such as digital photography, collage, CGI, projection, printmaking, sculpture, objects, or performance, to encourage an expanded approach to photographic practice. The idea is to challenge the different types of engagement possible with pictures today.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Self-Initiated Project - Fall 2023 - MAP2

with Elisa Medde

This module assists the students to develop a long term project - touching upon all stages from the idea to the final presentation. Students will have the opportunity to take some of the ideas and project from the previous semesters, in order to explore them further, or engage in brand new ones. The outcome of the project could take any form - from book to performance, from physical exhibition to digital presentations. A strong emphasis will be on the research/concept and the impact, experience of the outcome.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Automated - Fall 2023 - MAP2

with Marco De Mutiis

Artificial Photography looks at the recent and current developments in computational forms of image-making. The course focuses on the ways in which algorithmic imaging systems have been shaping the role of the photographer and the material and aesthetic properties of images, challenging the traditional understanding of photography. Through a series of lectures and workshops, Artificial Photography will specifically centre on so-called AI image generators and Text-to-Image software, addressing notions of truth and photographic manipulation, image labour and digital economies, agency and authorship, circulation and networked images, representational bias and discrimination, ownership and political imaginations.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Frontiere di Sabbia - DRONE WORKSHOP

with Milo Keller, Clément Lambelet

"Frontiere di Sabbia" is an exhibition of the students of the Master of Photography at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, in collaboration with the Biennale dell’Immagine di Chiasso.The collection of projects you will see has been created with drones: aircraft originally developed for warfare that have been transformed into civilian and popular forms. In just a few years, these devices have undergone a dizzying technological evolution and achieved considerable commercial success. Used for a variety of purposes - recreational and professional, political and subversive - these “unmanned aerial vehi- cles” can be easily purchased and controlled remotely, like in a video game. The opportunities offered by civilian drones combine with multiple negative con- sequences: the confusion between reality and simu- lation, privacy violations, and the use for illegal and violent actions. From a photographic perspective, drones offer infinite viewpoints for exceptional, vertical, and total vision. Equipped with all-round sensors, they fly autonomou- sly on programmed routes and are able to monitor the territory and its inhabitants. The “Frontiere di Sabbia” exhibition, presented in the Ex Saceba building, a ce- ment factory located a few kilometers from the bor- der, recalls the past of these places where materials were produced to build houses, bridges, and highways, but also walls and barriers. By diverting from prede- termined and automated paths, a new generation of image creators questions us about our perception of our limits: human, political, and technological.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Materialized Photography - Spring 2023

with Rachel de Joode

This course, taught by Rachel de Joode explores sculptural photography. Through a combination of material experimentation, research, and collaboration, students explore the visual and physical dimensions of photography, sculpture, and installation. The course focuses on ways of seeing and thinking differently about materials, surroundings, and oneself. The curriculum includes a mix of reading and discussion as well as focused individual critique, all taught through the lens of the instructor’s practice.

PHOTOGRAPHY

self-Initiated Project - Spring 2023 - MAP1

with Bruno Ceschel

This module assists the students to develop into a finalized work a project that further expands their interests and research. The module gives the opportunity to take some of the ideas, skills and themes explores in the first semester and make into a brand new work that can take any possible form: a book, an installation, an online project, a performance.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Applied Photography - Spring 2023

with Cactus Digitale

The Applied Photography course will look into the concept of photorealism in all its means. Cactus Magazine has always worked on new visual languages through all sorts of techniques; classic photography, graphic design, video, CGI, VR, Sound design. The only feature that has always guided this research was to seek for a photorealistic result that could ensure a sophisticated and luxurious feeling to the final outcome. In the past 4 years Cactus Magazine has been exploring the CGI technique and always tried to emulate the classic photographic style applied in the 3D realm. This had been done by the means of lights, textures, modeling and also camera techniques. After doing a lot of CGI work we got interested in merging the IRL world in a seamless way with the CGI world. Using XR techniques or VFX. But always looking to have a perfect photorealistic result. With the emergence of Ai powered software for image generating, creating HD images of almost everything seems to be everyone’s finger tip. Nowadays people consume more CGI imagery than IRL imagery, just think of Instagram filters.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Applied Photography - Fall 2022 - MAP1

with Charles Negre

This course focuses on the ability to answer a commission within its own artistic practice and leading the students through a better understanding of studio photography, challenges of constructed images and their processes. Experimenting with still life photography is a starting point, then anyone can develop a method for their ongoing subjects. For this semester, we will be collaborating with Macguffin, a magazine dedicated to the life of things, objects that tells stories, stories that are told by objects.

PHOTOGRAPHY

self-Initiated Project - Fall 2022 - MAP1

with Milo Keller

This module assists the students to develop into a finalized work a project that further expands their interests and research. The module gives the opportunity to take some of the ideas, skills and themes explores in the first semester and make into a brand new work that can take any possible form: a book, an installation, an online project, a performance.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Applied Photography - Spring 2023 - MAP1

with Cactus Digitale

The Applied Photography course will look into the concept of photorealism in all its means. Cactus Magazine has always worked on new visual languages through all sorts of techniques; classic photography, graphic design, video, CGI, VR, Sound design. The only feature that has always guided this research was to seek for a photorealistic result that could ensure a sophisticated and luxurious feeling to the final outcome. In the past 4 years Cactus Magazine has been exploring the CGI technique and always tried to emulate the classic photographic style applied in the 3D realm. This had been done by the means of lights, textures, modeling and also camera techniques. After doing a lot of CGI work we got interested in merging the IRL world in a seamless way with the CGI world. Using XR techniques or VFX. But always looking to have a perfect photorealistic result. With the emergence of Ai powered software for image generating, creating HD images of almost everything seems to be everyone’s finger tip. Nowadays people consume more CGI imagery than IRL imagery, just think of Instagram filters.

PHOTOGRAPHY

ON 2040 - MASTER PHOTOGRAPHY

with Maxime Guyon

Following a collaboration with the Swiss avant-garde brand On, ECAL is proud to present the interdisciplinary work carried out jointly by the 2nd year students of the Product Design, Photography and Type Design Masters.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Mahalia Taje Giotto – Existential Boner

by Mahalia Taje Giotto

existential boner is a book about obsessions. Obsessions linked to the body, gender identity, sexuality and desire. Mahalia Taje Giotto, born in 1992, was assigned female at birth. Going through several phases of physical transformation - from writing on their skin as a child to tattoos as an adult and eating disorders as an adolescent - Taje began their transition in 2020. This identity journey is at the heart of their work, which expresses the incessant thoughts that drive them through a play of superimpositions. The daily observation of physical changes is transcribed in images and texts, somewhere between abstract and concrete. The result is an articulated chaos that reflects the way in which taje is experiencing their transformation, with a sculptural approach to the book as a reflection of the changes in her body. The artist explores their desires and fluid identity, while giving visibility to the transgender community from which they come.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Materialized Photography - Spring 2021

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

VR Workshop

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

Self-Initiated Project - Fall 2020 - MAP1

with Milo Keller

First-year students worked on self-initiated projects tutored by Milo Keller. Students had the option to propose projects that would explore technologies and themes related to the current master's research project Automated Photography.

EXHIBITIONS

ECAL×On,
23.09–08.10.2022,
Zürich

Following a collaboration with the Swiss avant-garde brand On, ECAL presents the interdisciplinary work carried out jointly by the 2nd year students of the Product Design, Photography and Type Design Masters. An exclusive exhibition to discover from 23 September to 8 October 2022 in Zürich.

PARTNERSHIP

ECAL×On : interdisciplinary collaboration to rethink the brand's universe

Following a collaboration with the Swiss avant-garde brand On, ECAL is proud to present the interdisciplinary work carried out jointly by the 2nd year students of the Product Design, Photography and Type Design Masters.