phd design zhdk

Design Research

In co-operation with universities in universities in Switzerland and abroad, the ZHdK offers opportunities for artistic, scientific or artistic-scientific doctoral projects. In the discipline of design, individual individual doctorates are possible on this basis. The prerequisite for the supervision of dissertations is a connection to the research topics of design as well as the support by professors and lecturers from the Department of Design. Furthermore the Department of Design is also involved with a doctoral group on the topic of "Entangled Environments" in the Transdisciplinary Artistic PhD programme at the University of Linz. Further information on the admission requirements can be found on the website of the PHD Centre of the ZHdK.

The following dissertation projects show a selection of completed and ongoing dissertations.

Early Game Developer Communities in Switzerland

Sterben in der individualisierten und digitalisierten gesellschaft, bildrhetorik zwischen gefühl und vernunft.

Die Visuelle Kommunikation der Schweizerischen Bundesbahnen von 1902 bis 2022

Sympoïetic design practices with/in troubled waters.

Interactive Art for children focused on personal data processing

Oral Digital

The Design of Intraoral Machine Interfaces and Supporting Multisensory Design Frameworks

Abschiedssphären

Atmosphären des Abschieds gestalten

Speculating Futures of Ageing: The Impact of Design Fictions on Contemporary Decision-making

ZHdK offers prospective students the possibility to complete a doctorate in cooperation with universities in Switzerland and abroad. Like all Swiss art academies, the Zurich University of the Arts does not have its own right to award doctorates. However, in order to enable its graduates and international students to obtain a doctorate, the ZHdK has entered into cooperation agreements with universities in Switzerland and abroad.

The department of performing arts and film is developing a new Artistic Doctoral Programme in Performing Arts, Music and Film in collaboration with the department of music at ZHdK and several international partners, which have the right to award doctorate degrees.

The programme builds on an existing and successful partnership with the Doctoral School for Artistic Research at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG) (Austria), which started in 2014 in music and was extended to the field of theatre and performing arts in 2017. The programme further aims to consolidate and expand the strategically important collaborations between the ZHdK and the Dr. phil. in art Programme at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF as well as the Third Cycle Programme in Artistic Practices at the Stockholm University of the Arts to an in Switzerland unprecedented partnership in doctoral programmes in the performing arts, music and film. Both Babelsberg as the first and only practice-based doctorate in film in the German-speaking area and Stockholm with its specializations choreography, performing arts, opera, and film and media represent the full spectrum of disciplines in performing arts, music, and film.

The PhD-Programme is based on the high standards and demands of the model of artistic research developed there and encourages the exploration of transdiciplinarity between the performative practise and reflection within music, the performing arts and film.

Participants of the PhD-programme benefit from the expertise and facilities of ZHdK, a vibrant artistic research community and an excellent infrastructure. They can access a large pool of artistic and academic supervisors at the universities and participate in lectures, events and peer groups.

The establishment of this third-cycle programme goes hand in hand with the newly established ZHdK PhD Centre . PhD candidates can join one of the three cross-departemental PhD schools at ZHdK. More information on the conditions of doing a PhD with ZHdK (formal requirements, funding options etc.) can be found here: FAQ

Call for Applications

As we are currently restructuring the program, it is still unclear when a new call will be launched.

How to apply:

In order to apply for a PhD programme in collaboration with ZHdK, a MA degree (or equivalent) is required. For further requirements, please check the particular conditions of the partner universities .

We are currently cooperating with four acclaimed arts universities: — Graz University of the Arts (KUG): Dr. artium Programme — Babelsberg Film University Konrad Wolf: Scientific-artistic doctorate — Linz University of the Arts: Transdisciplinary Artistic PhD — Stockholm University of the  Arts (SKH): doctorate

If you are interested in applying for the collaborative programme with the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG), please check the information on the three-year programme, its curriculum and requirements: KUG-Website

If you are interested in applying for a PhD in performing arts or film at ZHdK in collaboration with other partner universities, such as the Film University in Potsdam-Babelsberg or the University of the Arts Stockholm, please contact us .

Current Doctoral Candidates  

• Patrick Gusset → abstract
• Manuel Hendry → abstract
• Ilil Land-Boss → abstract
• Lucie Tuma → abstract
• Eliane Bertschi → abstract
• Melissa Ryke → abstract
• Fadrina Arpagaus → abstract
• Anouk Hoogendoorn → abstract
• Andrew Champlin → abstract
• Ginan Seidl → abstract
• Hendrik Quast → abstract
• David Bloom → abstract
• Oliver Mannel → abstract
• Ilja Mirsky

Current Supervisors

• Yvonne Schmidt
• Ilse van Rijn
• Stefanie Lorey
• Jochen Kiefer
• Friederike Lampert
• Michael Schärer

Current Supervisors from Graz

• Christiane Willms  
• Daniel Rademacher
• Martin Woldan
• Ute Rauwald
• Werner Strenger  

Partner Universities

University of Music and Performing Arts Graz Stockholm University of Arts Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf

Interaction Design

Anthea oestreicher.

PhD Candidate

Plant Drifters (WT)

Supervisor: Dr. Roman Kirschner , ZHdK Prospective Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Karin Harrasser , University of Art and Design Linz. PhD Advisors : Prof. Dr. von Zinnenburg Carroll (TBA21), Prof. em. Clemens Posten (KIT Karlsruhe)

Anthea Oestreicher (PhD, Transdisciplinary Artistic PhD Program, Interaction Design, ZHdK) is an interdisciplinary designer and artistic researcher. Holding a diploma in visual communication (h_da Darmstadt, 2017) and an M.A. in Design & Future Making (HS Pforzheim, 2022), she understands design as exploration and physical storytelling to focus on exploring the entanglements between systems and living beings. By bridging the realms of design, cultural sciences, and biology, she underscores the significance of connections between humans and more-than-humans, organic and inorganic entities. Her projects and research serve as a testament to the implications of these entangled interactions, fostering critical thinking through sympoeitic correspondences. Since the summer of 2023, Anthea has been a fellow at KIT Karlsruhe, Institute of Bioengineering, where she conducts research on art and science collaborations focusing on microalgae. Her work at the intersection of art and bioengineering exemplifies her commitment to advancing our understanding of the symbiotic relationships that shape our world.

The practice-based research project «Mobilis in mobili – Drifting with/in planktonic seas» (WT) (supervised by Dr. Kirschner, ZHdK and Prof. Dr. Harrasser, University of the Arts Linz) delves into the intricate realm of phytoplanktonic entities, unraveling their significance as keystone species within planetary cycles. Focused on Phytoplankton (greek φυτόν [phytó], ‚plant‘; πλαγκτός [planktos],‚drifter‘) as a vital part of an intricately balanced system, the project is indicating effects of climate change and ocean acidification to foster a connected ” plant-thinking“ (Marder, 2013). Through amplifying the importance of these species and its connection to global ecological networks, Oestreicher’s practice of spatial installations including converted oceanographic devices (e.g. drifters as tools, diving regulators as exchange interfaces, „Mesokosmen“ as observators) makes invisible processes perceptible. By attuning and witnessing processes in wet labs, which include both open water environments and traditional biology laboratories, the project seeks to comprehend how assemblages around breathing and becoming-with can point out the effects of oceanic and global changes. This interdisciplinary initiative prompts us to reconsider the intersection of scientific and artistic methods and to develop practices of “care” (de la Bellacasa 2017) —a mindset crucial for navigating precarious times. With immersive, multi-sensorial translations of marine biologists’ tools, the role of the human is transformed from thinking about to thinking and designing with these plant drifters in mobility.

antheaoestreicher.de

Selected Publications

Oestreicher, A. and Reitschuster, L. (2022); Lynn Margulis: Gelebte Vielfalt zum Ausmalen. Wie durch die Vermittlung mikrobiologischen Wissens ein Perspektivwechsel auf die binäre Ordnung der Geschlechter eröffnet wird., FKW//Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur (In press).

Oestreicher, A. (2022) »(B)OTHERING - Algen als Inspiration für Kunst und Design«, 13. Bundesalgenstammtisch, DECHEMA Frankfurt, Poster.

Oestreicher, A. (2022) »(B)OTHERING - substrate of coexistence«, SDN Winter Research Summit: Counterparts: Exploring Design Beyond the Human, Panel Discussion.

Selected Awards

2022 »German Design Award - Newcomer« (Nomination) 2021 LBBW Grant for Production and Publication of (B)OTHERING 2015 »Förderpreis für junge Buchgestaltung« (Shortlist) Title: Plant Drifters. (WT)

[email protected]

Luke Franzke

Oral digital.

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Karmen Franinović , ZHdK & Prof. Dr. Martin Kaltenbrunner , University of Art and Design Linz.

Luke Franzke is a research associate at Interaction Design at the ZHdK, where he heads the Physical Computing Lab. His teaching spans technical subjects such as physical computing and programming to conceptual approaches in material practices and embodiment in design. His research investigates the role of emerging material technology in Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction and wearable technologies. Luke completed a BA in Multimedia in 2006 and MA in Interaction Design in 2013 and is currently pursuing his PhD.

We experience digital systems predominantly through modalities that exploit our innate strengths in hand-dexterity and vision. Yet, we are also immensely gifted with sensory-motor ability in the tongue and mouth, allowing us the ability to eat, breathe, synthesise language and sense complex textures, tastes and flavours. These modalities have been completely neglected in the design of human-computer interfaces.

This PhD thesis begins with basic research in currently unknown neurophysiological measures related to tactile acuity in the mouth, variations in dexterity and the diverse impacts of sensory integration. The empirical evidence gathered supports the development of an expanded framework for multisensory design and specific guidelines for the design of Intraoral Computer Interfaces. This framework lays the ground for prototypes allowing for radical sensory experiences, cognitive and physical augmentation and novel modes of interaction.

lukefranzke.com

Selected Publications & Awards

K. Franinović and L. Franzke. 2019. Shape Changing Surfaces and Structures: Design Tools and Methods for Electroactive Polymers. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '19). (Honorable Mention Award)

K. Franinović, L. Franzke, F. Wille, and A, Villa Torres. 2019. Interacting with Electroactive Polymers in Responsive Environments. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '19).

L. Franzke, D. Rossi, K. Franinović “Fluid Morphologies: Hydroactive Polymers for Responsive Architecture ” in the proceedings of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture 2016.

K. Franinović, L. Franzke “Luminous Matter: Electroluminescent Paper as an Active Material” in DeSForM - Design & Semantics of Form & Movement, 2015.

K. Franinović, L. Franzke and C. Winkler, “Enactive Environments: Thinking and Creating with Active Materials “ in Contemporary Design Education & Research, Ed. Li Degeng and Luo Yi, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2014.

[email protected]

Nomi Sasaki Otani

Interactive art for children focused on personal data processing and children's rights in the digital realm

Supervisor: Prof.Dr. Manuela Naveau , Linz and Prof. Dr. Karmen Franinović , ZHdK

Nomi Sasaki Otani is a Peruvian Japanese visual artist devoted to Chinese black ink tradition and animation. Her work explores scale and dimension, the material nature of water, the behavior of light, and how these elements can create new landscapes and atmospheres for multidisciplinary performances. Her recent work focuses on micro realities, peep media and data processing. She holds a MA from the University of Art and Design Linz and a BA in Communication Sciences from Lima University.

DADA-TATA is an artistic/scientific research project that reflects on children's rights in the digital environment. It focuses mainly on the right to privacy and to freedom of thought threatened by data processing and artificial intelligence systems. The DADA-TATA project approaches this issue from an artistic perspective to create interactive artworks and cultural actions designed especially for children. In this regard, DADA-TATA explores the potential of interactive art to enhance children's data literacy and disseminate and better understand children's rights in the digital world.

nomisasaki.com/dadatata-en

[email protected]

Symbiocean (WT) A sympoietic design approach to the Ocean.

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Karmen Franinović , ZHdK and Prof. Dr. Karin Harrasser , Cultural Studies, University of Art and Design Linz. Associated with: "Matters of Activity" , Cluster of Excellence, Humboldt University Berlin. Collaborators: Jordan Lab , Max-Planck Institute of Animal Behavior.

The practice-based research project «Symbiocean» (WT) explores the concept of growing material systems as marine Zoöps (more-than-human habitats, Zoé= life, Greek) for architecture and design in multispecies marine environments via scuba-diving.

At the intersection of marine biology, anthropology and design, the research explores practice-based and theoretical research on sympoietic design processes with human, animal and microbial actors with/in the ocean. Inspired by the process of oceanic mineral accretion (developed in the 1970s by Wolf Hilbertz and Thomas Goreau as «Biorock») the project researches on developing a new approach to critical ecological practices within the environment of the seascape (limestone, marine neophytes, biofouling and bioreceptivity). By methods of underwater attunement, co-speculation and marine fieldwork, the project observes Interspecies Architecture as a new model for fostering the cultivation of designing materials as a sensitive, multispecies habitats.

Rasa Weber is a designer, research (and scuba-diver) with a focus on bio-based materials and interdisciplinary research. Her design concepts are driven by a strong narrative approach and critical ecological thinking. She regularly teaches at international universities and is currently a research associate at ZHdK and pre-doctoral researcher at "Matters of Activity", Cluster of Excellence. She works across the disciplines of material research, architecture, product design, and film. In her practice-based PhD, she investigates new material processes of built habitats within more-than-human marine environments, as a way to both practice and question architecture today.

She is one of the founders of 'They Feed Off Buildings', a design and architecture collective from Berlin, in collaboration with Luisa Rubisch. As head of design & founder of Studio Blond & Bieber she works on bio-based material- and color concept together with textile designer Essi Glomb.

She brings sustainable material development from the closed system of the laboratory to the open system of the ocean via interdisciplinary field methods (collaboration with Max-Planck Institute of Animal Behavior). By researching applications and production processes of post-fossil material production, from strategies of mining to future methods of growing matter, her work challenges the concept of active matter on an ecological and architectural level.

rasaweber.com

Weber, R. , Wegner, A. (2022) Getting Attuned to the Ocean. Immersive field methods between marine biology and design research. SDN Winter Research Summit: Counterparts: Exploring Design Beyond the Human.

Weber, R. Designing (in/with) the Ocean. (2022) Sustainability Science Dialogues. Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland.

Weber, R. Symbio Design - Toward sympoietic materials research in the ocean. (2022) Design X Nachhaltigkeit - DGTF Jahrestagung, Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design, Kiel.

Weber, R. Growing Matter. (2021) Symposium: Material Negotiations: Practices of Biodesign, Collaborations, Making With & Transience. Matters of Activity. Berlin. Virtual.

Rubisch, L., Weber, R. Transformative Matter - Materials Research for our Sustainable Future? (2020) Design TO Opening Lecture. Harbourfront Center Toronto, Canada.

2020 Deutscher Nachhaltigkeitspreis (Nomination). Stiftung Deutscher Nachhaltigkeitspreis.

2019 AD Design Award - Best Concept (Nomination). Design Award. »Urban Terrazzo.« AD Magazin

2019 German Design Award - Newcomer (Nomination). Design Award. »Urban Terrazzo.« Rat für Formgebung.

2018 Bundespreis Ecodesign. Design Award. »Urban Terrazzo.« Deutsches Bundesumweltministerium / Umweltbundesamt.

2016 German Design Award - Newcomer (Nomination). Design Award. »Algaemy.« Rat für Formgebung.

2014 Bundespreis Ecodesign. Design Award. »Algaemy.« Deutsches Bundesumweltministerium / Umweltbundesamt.

[email protected]

Antoine Bertin

Antoine Bertin is an artist working at the intersection of science and sensory immersion, field recording and sound storytelling, data and music composition. His creations take the form of listening experiences, immersive moments and audio meditations exploring and sculpting relationships with the living world. His work has been presented at Tate Britain, Palais de Tokyo, Serpentine Gallery, KIKK festival, CCCB Barcelona, Dutch Design Week, Dakar Biennale, 104 Paris, Centre Wallonie Bruxelles, with Google Arts & Culture and the Centre Pompidou. Antoine has received the Act Award from STRP festival in 2020 for his work Species Counterpoint, and the Sferik Art in Nature award in 2023. He produces a quarterly show called “Edge of the Forest” on NTS radio, weaving together field recordings, data sonifications and science inspired contemplations.

Antoine is conducting his PhD research as a part of Interfacing the Ocean SNSF project. Antoine’s research project, entitled Aquatic Conversations, explores the significance of digital acoustics in augmenting the sense of hearing, sculpting relations between humans and aquatic beings, and extending understanding of marine ecosystems. At the intersection of telemetry and machine learning, artificial listening facilitates the search for architectures in the communications of aquatic species. As humans seek to decipher the vocalisations of other beings, and engage in conversations with forms of intelligences different than their own, the research delves into the opportunities and uncertainties of developing new interspecies relations through sound in the ocean. Alongside examining the historical context of human-marine interactions, Aquatic Conversations proposes methods for listening-driven underwater field research and digital acoustic based interaction design. Ultimately, the project aims to design interfaces that explores possible conversations between humans and the marine ecosystems, fostering sustainable relationships and ecological commitment.

www.studioantoinebertin.com

[email protected]

Emily Groves

Culture cultures.

Bridging creative and fermentation practices in Romandie (WT)

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Joelle Bitton, ZhdK and Prof. Dr. Karmen Franinović , ZHdK

Emily Groves is a designer and researcher interested in the intersection of food, culture and interaction. With a background in anthropology, biology and experience design, she currently works at the EPFL+ECAL Lab in Lausanne, Switzerland as an interaction designer and coordinator of their Masters of Advanced Studies in Design Research. She regularly teaches critical design research methods to masters students in the UK and in Switzerland.

Emily is also the co-founder of the design studio for conviviality, Cocktail Sandwich , which has been running since 2018 creating projects linking food and design. In 2021, Cocktail Sandwich developed, designed and built Deli Social , an active café and culinary residency space in Lausanne. With a focus on local, seasonal and creative cuisine, she is involved in operations, menu creation and collaborations. Her role as president and mentor for residents on the space’s Mise en Place culinary residency programme, furthers her engagement with experimental and critical thought around the future of food.

As designers increasingly seek ways to decenter people from the design process, certain food practices involving microorganisms already embody the interdependencies humans have with the entities around them. The production of gruyère cheese, for instance, involves cows, grass, soil, lactobacillus helveticus, people, the weather and many more entangled actors. This example also highlights how such practices can span multiple spatio-temporal scales, from microbe to landscape, and second-long actions to year-long maturations. So what opportunities lie in bridging fermentation and design practice? Could this intersection promote practices that attune us to entangled environments?

Firstly, pursuing more-than-human approaches from anthropology and design, I will look to understand existing fermentation practices in Suisse Romand, from industrial to domestic production and consumption. Then, working in the context of Deli Social, a creative culinary centre in Lausanne, I will mediate this situated knowledge by proposing and curating a series of public-facing events, artefacts and outcomes. Based in the culture and landscape of Romandie, these will combine creative design practice with the enacted knowledge of food practices. In doing so, this thesis aims to foster experiences and generate knowledge that can contribute to new theoretical frameworks for dealing with our increasingly entangled world.

emily-groves.com

Selected Publications & Activities

Junior Research in Design Program Grant - From food practices to design research methods: Advancement of a PhD proposal for developing creative interaction design methods from food cultures with a beyond human focus (2022)

Jury Member for the architectural competition for the renovation and transformation of a prominent public building in Lausanne (2022-2023)

Henchoz, N., Groves, E., Sonderegger, A., & Ribes, D. Food Talks: Visual and interaction principles for representing environmental and nutritional food information in augmented reality. ISMAR 2019 Poster Papers. ISMAR 2019, Beijing. (2019)

Fass, J., & Groves, E. (2019). Global HCI Curricula: The Case for Creativity. EduCHI 2019. EduCHI 2019, Glasgow. (2019)

Distil - augmented gin tasting. Featured artwork at Food Culture Days Festival (2018).

[email protected]

Robertina Šebjanič

PrePhD (alumni)

Robertina Šebjanič is an independent artist and researcher whose work explores the biological, (geo)political and cultural realities of aquatic environments and the impact of humanity on other organisms. In her analysis of the Anthropocene and its theoretical framework, the artist uses the terms “aquatocene” and “aquaforming” to refer to the human impact on aquatic environments. Her projects call for the development of empathetic strategies aimed at recognising the rights of other (non-human) species. Her art work Aurelia 1+Hz / proto viva generator (artist proof) is since 2019 part of the .BEEP {collection;}_ Electronic Art Collection, Spain. She exhibited/performed at solo and group exhibitions as well as in galleries and festivals: Ars electronica Linz, CAAM Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (Grand Canaria), Kosmica festival_ Laboratorio Arte Alameda (Mexico City), Centre d'Art Santa Mònica ISEA 2022 (Barcelona), Matadero(Madrid), La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), Le Cube (Paris), MONOM_ CTM (Berlin), Art Laboratory Berlin, ZKM (Karlsruhe), re:publica (Berlin), Mladi Levi_Ljubljana, Centro de Cultura Digita (Mexico City), Device art 5.015 at Klovičevi dvori (Zagreb), Eastern Bloc (Montreal), Eyebeam (New York), PORTIZMIR#3 (Izmir), KIKK festival ( Namur), +MSUM (Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova)_Ljubljana and more….

robertina.net

The Multispecies Sensorium and Communication in the Age of the Aquatocene

The practice-based Pre-PhD project »The Multispecies Sensorium and Communication in the Age of the Aquatocene« by the art-science researcher Robertina Šebjanič will address interspecies sensing/sounding and communication in the context of human interaction with other creatures and forms of life in the new (ecological) realities of the marine Anthropocene. The main objective will be to develop remote sensing methods through audio-observation and haptic reflection loops from the more-than-human animals living in marine environments, with the intervention that will provide insides into vivid soundscapes of underwater environments in non-invasive ways. With the research, Šebjanič will tackle and utilise interspecies sensing and communication, which have the potential to serve as a means of our interaction with other forms of life in the new (ecological) realities of aquatic life.

Selected Awards & Nominations

More: robertina.net/bio

Falling Walls 2021 – winner of Falling Walls in the Art and Science category, falling-walls.com/people/robertina-sebjanic

Honorary Mention @Prix Ars Electronica 2016, a project Aurelia 1+Hz / proto viva sonification by Robertina Šebjanič, archive.aec.at/prix/showmode/52898

STARTS2020 nomination of the project Aqua_forensic (co-author with Gjino Šutić), starts-prize.aec.at/en/aqua_forensic

STARTS2016 nomination for project Time Displacement/Chemobrionic Garden (co-author with Ida Hiršenfelder and Aleš Hieng Zergon), starts-prize.aec.at/en/timedisplacement

Selected Articles & Publications

More: robertina.net/press

Robertina Šebjanič: ‘There are still songs to sing beyond mankind’: Sounds of a troubled world = songs for serenity, Sage journals, Social Science Information SSI, Special issue: ANTHROPOCEAN, Volume 57 Issue 3, September 2018, First Published August 2, 2018; pp. 422–431, Accessed online: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0539018418

Plastic Ocean: Art and Science Responses to Marine Pollution, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2021. Ingeborg Reichle, editor ; With contributions by Dianna Cohen, Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor, Regine Rapp, Christian de Lutz, Mary Maggic, Robertina Šebjanič, Brandon Ballengée, Victoria Vesna, Martina R. Fröschl, Alfred Vendl, Reiner Maria Matysik, Ingeborg Reichle, Thomas Schwaha, Stephan Handschuh, María Antonia González Valerio, Rosaura Martínez Ruiz, Pinar Yoldas and Michael Sauer. degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783110744774/html

[email protected]

Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano

Vibrating bodies of water.

Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano is an artist, writer, and educator born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. With a background in film, cultural studies, and contemporary art, his research dives into the relations between water, technology, ecology and telepathy, which he weaves in the form of essays, video and sound installations, and participatory workshops. Juan Pablo has done extensive research on submarine infrastructures such as fiber optic cables, which he approached from a poetic, fractal, and non-linear lens. He has also worked with fermentation and urban gardens as an extended practice of techno-ecological transformation.

Juan Pablo worked as one of the program managers at Plataforma Bogotá , the only public media lab in Colombia’s capital, between 2017 and 2019. Amongst several projects, he co-created an exchange program for media artists between Colombia and South Africa, an initiative led by TriasCulture, a Senegalese association. Juan Pablo also worked as a cultural programmer at Espacio Odeón in 2019 and 2022, a contemporary art space where he co-created an urban garden, a community kitchen, and dance lessons along with local cultural organizations. He has been a professor of artistic research at the Javeriana and Andes Universities in Bogotá (CO) and at the Royal Academy of Arts The Hague (NL).

The working title for his thesis is “Vibrating Bodies of Water”, a project that seeks to regenerate coral reefs through a poetic and material experimentation in bioacoustics, developing participatory design methods with coastal communities. Coral reefs, one of the most biodiverse and fragile ecosystems on the planet, are built by symbiotic beings that have a particular, yet under-studied, relation to sound. Anthropogenic activity, such as sound pollution, is having a negative impact in these ecosystems. In collaboration with marine scientists, artists, and coastal communities, Juan Pablo plans to design submersible non-invasive sound prototypes to record and reproduce sound as a method of marine restoration. Juan Pablo’s approach uses theoretic frameworks and participatory methods that aim to decolonize science and conservation practices, and engage with sound as a powerful medium to learn from the polyphony of coraline lifeworlds.

@jppachecob

www.juanpablopacheco.com

[email protected]

Zicheng Liu

Zicheng Liu is a senior director of GenAI at AMD. He is building a team for large scale foundation model training including large language models, large multim odal models, and image/video generation models.  His team is hiring scientists and engineers at all levels. His team is also hiring research interns.

Principal Research Scientist

Applied Research Scientist

Research Intern

Prior to joining AMD, he was a partner research manager at Microsoft Azure AI. Zicheng Liu joined Microsoft Research in 1997. Prior to that, he worked at Silicon Graphics where where he developed the trimmed NURBS tessellator shipped in both OpenGL and the OpenGL Optimizer.

Zicheng Liu has served in the technical committee for many international conferences. He was a member of the Audio and Electroacoustics Committee of IEEE Signal Processing Society. He is the chair of the Multimedia Systems and Applications Technical Committee of IEEE CAS society. He is a steering committee member of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Visual Communications and Image Representation, and an associate editor of Machine Vision and Applications.  He served as a guest editor of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, and a guest editor of IEEE Multimedia Magazine. He is an affiliate professor in the department of Electrical Engineering, University of Washington. He was an IEEE distinguished lecturer from 2015-2016. He won APSIPA Industrial Distinguished Leader award. He is a fellow of IEEE.

Building on my previous work addressing geologic bodies and time scales, \"Meteolore: Air Stones, Ground Holes (or how meteorites flow in our bodies)\" focuses on three meteorite falling sites and their imprint onto landscapes and human perception. I will investigate the ecological, mythological, scientific and speculative affects these meteorites and their craters carry through field work, conversations, (more-than-human and human) participant observation, performative actions, material experimentation and audio-visual techniques. It is relevant to bring attention to the unique, yet changing identities of island communities who live close to these meteorite sites, engage with what is still there and give voice to the human and more-than-human stories from these peripheral areas in Eastern Europe.

In this PhD project, three sites in Estonia are chosen as departure points for my research - Kaali, Kärdla, Neugrund -, each providing different points of access, methodology of research, and artistic approachability. My artistic practice around the communication with the more-than-human is shaped within the frameworks of more-than-human theories, environmental poetry, speculative writing, folklore studies and somatic practices. Exchange and collaboration with other practitioners close to my field artists is equally relevant for this research project.

In parallel and with the knowledge gathered during the three case studies, I will create a methodological toolbox which will grow out of the field work done during this research adventure. The instructive toolbox will become a guide for my own artistic practice, but it could be used by artists, biologists and landscape architects working with landscapes and senses. Hopefully, my research will also affect the social environment in Estonia, attempting to show an expanded and more playful view on seemingly fixed identities of people and places. I want to contribute to a perspective of the world that is not so strictly divided into human and more-than-human, but instead that of a space which is more inclusive and less anthropocentric. My research will be relevant to many fields standing with the urgency of committing to studying these phenomena (humanities, arts, sciences). Meteorites themselves would be carriers of this desire - alien bodies that make their homes and landing sites on Earth, bringing both destructive and creative powers with them.

Strategic decision-making in organizations, especially in healthcare, faces increasingly complex challenges in the face of rapid technological, demographic, and societal changes. Understanding and anticipating possible futures is crucial to keep organizations resilient and adaptable. While the concept of diegetic prototypes within design fictions has helped to discuss and visualize complex future issues in other fields, their application in the context of ageing and particularly from the perspective of a health insurer is largely unexplored. Tangible future scenarios enable decision-makers to experience potential challenges and opportunities not only intellectually, but also emotionally and practically. In the context of ageing, where demographic changes will have significant implications for healthcare and society at large, the need to make possible scenarios tangible is even more critical. This research has the potential to provide insights into the ways in which speculative design, particularly diegetic prototypes, can enhance strategic decision-making. This is relevant for health insurance executives and boards of directors, as they face the twin challenges of both meeting the current needs of their customers and anticipating and responding to future developments.

The practice-based research project «Mobilis in mobili – Drifting with/in planktonic seas» (WT) (supervised by Dr. Kirschner, ZHdK and Prof. Dr. Harrasser, University of the Arts Linz) delves into the intricate realm of phytoplanktonic entities, unraveling their significance as keystone species within planetary cycles. Focused on Phytoplankton (greek φυτόν [phytó], ‚plant‘; πλαγκτός [planktos],‚drifter‘) as a vital part of an intricately balanced system, the project is indicating effects of climate change and ocean acidification to foster a connected ” plant-thinking“ (Marder, 2013). Through amplifying the importance of these species and its connection to global ecological networks, Oestreicher’s practice of spatial installations including converted oceanographic devices (e.g. plankton dragging nets and microsopes as tools, diving regulators as exchange interfaces, „Mesokosmen“ as observators) makes invisible processes perceptible.

By attuning and witnessing processes in wet labs, which include both open water environments and traditional biology laboratories, the project seeks to comprehend how assemblages around breathing and becoming-with can point out the effects of oceanic and global changes. This interdisciplinary initiative prompts us to reconsider the intersection of scientific and artistic methods and to develop practices of “care” (de la Bellacasa 2017) —a mindset crucial for navigating precarious times. With immersive, multi-sensorial translations of marine biologists’ tools, the role of the human is transformed from thinking about to thinking and designing with these plant drifters in mobility.

The PhD project is part of the practice-based research cooperation \"Interfacing the Ocean\" between University of the Arts Zürich in first supervision of  Dr. Roman Kirschner (Design, Zhdk) and Prof. Dr. Karin Harrasser (Cultural Studies, Kunstuniversität Linz). The research team further includes Karmen Franinović (PI), Rasa Weber (PhD) and Antoine Bertin (PhD).

The artistic practice-based PhD project APPROACHING DEATH: transforming our conversations around fear of dying will develop an integrated and active language for discussing fear of death. This will happen through the production of a mixed mediainstallation, workshops, a podcast, a leaflet and a website. A fundamental ambition of this PhD project is to create a space, within both physical and virtual realms, to allow people to approach death and engage with their related fears from new perspectives. 

As a visual artist I question the role and effect images have on our perceptions and emotions when discussing death. Here I see a necessity of studying new possible forms of communication around dying. With this PhD project I therefore wish to question which images can be used for examining death without making it fearful, but at the same time not making it remote. I furthermore wish to question which images can come close to the actual experience of dying. Within this PhD project it is specifically the connection to the moving image and sound that I wish to study. It is my intention to utilise the moving image as a medium to explore the connection between the human engagement with our own mortality and our phenomenological and temporal experience of a video installation.

The PhD project is predominantly empirically oriented, and the research will therefore enfold through interviews and field recordings in hospices and in private homes with dying people. These studies will investigate the fear of what will happen in the moment of dying, and the fear of what will happen after the moment of dying. Throughout this process I plan to collect an extensive record of interviews, data, images and audio. These will be used as the material from which I will create an artistic installation containing moving image and sound. Here I will explore if the aesthetic and physical experience of the installation can have a transformative effect on a viewer, through which they are lead towards discussing death in a less fearful way, and with a more active language.

Fear of death is a widely researched and extremely broad subject matter. I believe that as an artistic researcher there is a potential to approach the subject matter with an subjective-essayistic practice informed by critical thought on representation that will contribute to the fields of other disciplines.

While the approach of this project is primarily an artistic one, it also aspires to work within the often conflicting fields of medical/scientific and the religious/spiritual in conversations around death, aiming to examine disagreements and contradictions in their respective understanding of the process of dying, and ultimately look to highlight overlaps and connections in their operations. Along this, through my working practice and methodologies, the project will have strong connections to Antropological and Sociological departments, while also contributing to the contemporary discourse around video art installations.

Over twenty years ago, biology educators coined the term ‘plant blindness’ to describe people’s inability to recognise and even notice plants in their environment. They argued that plant blindness causes people to underestimate the aesthetic and ecological importance of plants, which are often viewed as inferior to, and certainly less interesting than, animals. This issue is still prevalent, as other biologists and educators have recently pointed to the continuing need to replace outdated narratives that render plants as passive organisms while integrating modern scientific discoveries on plant behaviours and sensory systems. It was also emphasised that if we are to develop solutions to the urgent environmental crisis, it is essential that we position plants at the centre of the sustainability debate, overcoming human insensitivity to plants. It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green seeks to do just that by challenging and restructuring how we engage with plants.

It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green aims to investigate artistic strategies that address the plant blindness issue and promote sensory and perceptual awareness of plants through artistic interventions. It ultimately strives to transform our perception of plants and thus the ways in which we engage with plant life. For these purposes, the project will conduct a series of artistic explorations that focus on three aspects of plant-human interaction: 1) Sensing plants – how humans perceive plants through sensory systems; 2) Understanding ‘plantness’ – how plants sense and respond to their human-centred environments and 3) Green conversations – how human societies and individuals perceive plants with respect to ethical and legal concerns. Part one, ‘Sensing plants’, will study experts who have particular ways of sensing plants (e.g., through sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch). It will focus on participant observations of those experts and how they approach plants using time-based media and experiment with cross-sensory settings. Part two, ‘Understanding plantness’, will examine plant sensory systems and reactions by conducting art-science experiments in plant laboratories, such as measuring plant stressors in urban environments and capturing plant bioacoustics. This part will explore the ability of plants to respond to their surroundings, encompassing artistic observation and media as well as scientific knowledge and technology. Part three, ‘Green conversations’, will analyse the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology’s decision-making process regarding plant policy. Field research on the aftermath of Swiss plant policy will be undertaken at Switzerland’s various botanical and historical gardens. These research elements will lead to reflective writings on the intersection of art and law, including fictional court cases and debate scripts. By combining the research outcomes of these three aspects, the PhD project will create a transformative environment around human perceptions of plants linked to public urban spaces or devices, which will be further developed based on the research findings. This study is expected to provide diverse sensory approaches to plant life and contribute to proposing an integrated discourse on the issue of human perception neglecting plants compared to other living beings.

This PhD proposal critically examines a particular state of being/thinking/feeling/moving I have been exploring, and sharing with others, in a diverse variety of settings: the moment of a performer and the world they inhabit enacting an erotic relationship to each other.

Can erotic Desire emerge intersubjectively not only between people, but also between a performer and the space itself? And if so, how are the two phenomena connected? In other words, how can we cultivate a consensual erotic relationship to the universe?

I have found Desires between human beings, especially sexual ones, to be easy access points, as there's a lot of curiosity, fear, and energy around sexuality that doesn't take much to bubble up, so people are vividly present. Also, it’s fun! :) But the more compelling question to me addresses a performer’s Desires that emerge during performance: for instance, to suddenly change their position in the performance space, their relationship to the audience, or the dynamics of their actions. Not compositional choices based on broad knowledge of improvisation techniques, but a clarity of decision-making in which consciousness is not located entirely within the individual, but rather emerges as an active interplay with their environment. There is often a sense of entering a pre-existing channel: it is clear what needs to happen. The PhD is intended to articulate a map to expand consensual erotic relationship between humans to eventually include everyone, and everything. It draws on practical strategies from three fields to do so - conscious sexuality practices (such as tantra or BDSM), spiritual practice (particularly mystical Judaism), and art-making (specifically choreography) - and brings them into conversation with each other. It proposes that these strategies for using the body as a channel connecting to something beyond the individual self are all but different aspects of the same prism.

In the last several years, I have been working mostly on postcolonial and environmental matters through the medium of film, interested in how to construct narratives that divert the conceptual binary oppositions of presence and absence, visibility and invisibility, memory and oblivion, the real and the fictional.

With this artistic research, I interrogate the haunted aspects of colonial and environmental entanglements with the means of moving images, involving living and dead memories. I intend to explore how filmic language, as a tool that generates and enables vision and representation, can engage with decolonial ecology searching to generate a visual vocabulary, enabling a language that challenges normative ways of seeing.

I will experiment possible ways of revealing invisible human and other-than-human presences, and blurring temporalities through diverse image-making techniques*. The development of a spectropoetical imagery based on analog and digital expanded film is at the heart of the research, aiming to produce a de-centering experience for the viewer, a shift in their perception.

My aim is to create a transforming viewing experience where a sensorial approach brings awareness to contemporary socio-political concerns and potentially, poetically contribute to trigger possible shifts.

Butterflies, dead and alive, will be at the center of the project.

* I refer to “image-making“ as practices that create images in the viewer’s mind. This mostly implies still and moving images, sounds and writtings.

My research around love had a conscious start with: The solution is to convert them into highly digestible protein sources (Viviani 2019), a semi-autobiographic audio installation — even though the majority of my previous works were somehow related to this interest. On one side there was a sort of love illiteracy, dragged from childhood into my adult life, and on the other, I was driven and fascinated by the understanding of this new feeling for which I didn’t find a vocabulary that was precise while spacious enough.

“L’amore comporta una difficoltà d’espressione, di comunicazione, dato che ciò che si tratta di esprimere sono effetti, sensazioni e la sensazione si sottrae al linguaggio dando luogo a una sorta di afasia” [Love brings with it a difficulty of expression, of communication, since what is to be expressed are effects, sensations, and this sensation evades language giving rise to a kind of aphasia] (Barthes 2017). A big Object entered a vacant room, if I was previously unsure about what love is and how to navigate it, for sure the absence of it was occupying an interesting place inside me. I started reading more and less trivial books on the subject, listening to podcasts, be the confidant of friends and especially acquaintances. I started realizing that there was a common ground of confusion.

Love is elusive and rebellious to definition, and its propriety is to be expressed and not analyzed; for its essence is the one of a pure effect, an effect purified from all responsible reasons, the source of reason, and the ends itself. In my PhD-project, I intend to deconstruct and reconstruct the vocabulary surrounding love.

As an artist, I use language as a tool to recreate narrations, both via text-based works in the form of audio drama (used as an umbrella term for songs, opera, poetry, or plays), and with visual representations (mainly sculptures and installations). These object-characters, take the place of the aphasic voice of the lover who does not know what else to do. The outcome is simply the result of the path. Understanding through making.

In my exploration of the vocabulary surrounding love, I aim to understand how different ways of knowing can be generated through artistic practice. To surprise entities that are elusive to definitions, one needs to find new ways. In preparation for this doctorate, I started visiting a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, I felt it was a mandatory step I had to take before walking this path. In addition to that, I will attend a series of seminars designed to help develop a diverse toolbox needed to approach the field of relational intelligence. I will then activate workshops, open to voice-over actors and curious, together with a professional, using forms of psychodrama to unlock an initial safe space and test new possibilities, in order to develop a working methodology that influences and informs the writing of my scripts. “When we enter the role of another, especially someone whose perspective challenges us, we get closer to understanding one another” (Perel 2021).

People love storytelling, some say we lost our tail while sitting around the fire, telling stories. Or at least that’s what I heard from someone during a dinner a few months ago. Each method is important in its capacity to address a specific issue and anecdotes often place the role of modifiers. When I ask a question, and someone replies with an anecdote, it reveals often more of the understanding of the topic itself, than the actual fact, same is when I tell my story and you reply with yours, and somehow similar to my waking self trying to listen to and make sense of the stories that my asleep-self is trying to narrate me. It’s a game of connecting hyperlinks, which can build webs of relations outside our own.

I started recording as soon as my phone allowed me to do so, it was a way to keep track of my dreams, then I moved to strangers in the streets, then conversations. Recording comes from the Latin re- with a sense of “restore” + cor from cordis “heart”, bring back to the heart, as in the Italian ricordare “remembering”. Audio recording is an exercise on memory, since remembering and forgetting are at the base of “thinking of”: I think of someone because I had for some time forgotten them.

I start with the assessment that love is a revolutionary act. In a moment in time of ferocious changes in structures, relations, and norms, I find that we are in need of understanding love again, and this calls for a reconsideration of its language. The reconstruction of love opens to the future, not a future that is the tomorrow we assume as certain, a repetition of today and replication of the past, but a limitless future (Zambrano 2011). “And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before” (Audre Lorde 1984). “Revolution doesn’t become poetic, poetry shatters itself in the process of becoming revolutionary” (Sean Bonney 2016).

This research focuses on collective moments of change and exchange to develop a practice-based theory of sensuous address . Moments of meeting are structured by pre-existing conditions, which often obscures their very creation. Sensuous address , in contrast to a hierarchical exchange of information, is an approach to meeting and sharing (knowledge) from their sensory and aesthetic qualities. This aims to counter ideas of intersubjectivity and transactional ideas of learning. An intimate and intensive understanding of shifts can reclaim the importance of movement and experimentation in collective moments. The shift as a notion is central to this project; akin to the shared moment of the transition from waking to sleeping in a lullaby. The project is grounded in language-based artistic-research, through three research tasks and practical methods: text(ile) writing, movements in proximity, and memories of the future. This is approached through the fields of radical pedagogy, process philosophy, disability and queer studies, as well as performative/material practices in textile, language, and sound. 

An important part of the classical guitar repertoire of the 20th century is made up of works whose main source of inspiration is traditional Spanish popular music. This term refers –as opposed to what could be called academic or artistic music– to the songs and dances of popular roots that are preferably located in rural areas of the Spanish geography and that are transmitted orally. The creative formula, which thrived successfully since the second half of the 19th century, has been maintained without interruption throughout different generations of composers who have been incorporating their own voices.

This research proposal, as well as the choice of methods of analysis, diagnosis and exposition, is motivated by two perspectives. On the one hand, it aims to be a research work that responds to some omissions that had been detected when approaching previous studies and which have to do with the scarce attention to the primary sources that inspired these authors and their compositions or, similarly, the absence of studies of the whole or other resources that incorporate the novelties and advances in the field of ethnomusicology and which could serve as a guide to understand and structure this vast repertoire with objective and practical criteria. However, there are only occasional and scattered works that sometimes focus on the most recognized works and genres of Spanish music, but which, at the same time, frequently offer a distorted vision of the heritage of the popular musical tradition in the classic academic production, as they are limited to archetypes –such as some flamenco moulds, jotas, boleros or habaneras , for example– which reflect a simplified, picturesque and costumbrist vision of a richer and more complex reality.

On the other hand, this project is also linked to an artistic activity as a classical guitar performer and should result in the creation of proposals based on the musicological conclusions of the research. It raises the need to reflect from our own time on questions such as the enriched dialogue established between artistic creation and the music of popular tradition or on the new value that this guitar repertoire can acquire today. Precisely, one of the fundamental proposals of this research aims to calibrate the degree of dependence on the source from which it is derived, in most cases hidden and silenced by the composers themselves. Bringing these primary sources to light does not detract in any way from the value of the works they inspired, but, beyond their documentary and musicological interest, they can be of great help to us in our work as performers, as they reveal clues that can sometimes go unnoticed.

Silvia Escamilla Jiménez (Madrid, 1998) completed the Classical Guitar Bachelor Degree (2020) and Master's Degree in Performance and Research of Spanish Music (2021) at the Royal Music Conservatory of Madrid with Professor Javier Somoza. She has also completed —with Cum Laude qualification— the Master in Classical Guitar Performance and Research at the Koninklijk Conservatorium-Royal Conservatoire of the University of the Arts in The Hague with Professor Pavel Steidl (2022). Currently, she is pursuing a PhD in the Universitat für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Graz in collaboration with the Zurich University of the Arts.

She has given recitals and masterclasses at festivals in cities in Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Croatia, Slovakia and Slovenia. For instance, in the Second Edition of the Festival de Música Ribera Alta del Ebro (2022), in the 2022-2023 Guitar Recital Season programmed by the Spanish Guitar Society or in 14th MAGfestival International Chamber Music Festival at Hrvatski Dom, Split. She has also performed for institutions, including the Fundación Don Juan de Borbón ( Ciclo 921 Distrito Musical ) or the Instituto Cervantes in Stockholm. She has won prizes and awards in various international guitar competitions such as the Third Prize at the Visegrad Guitar Competition (Bratislava, Slovakia, 2021) or the First Prize of the Internationales Gitarrenfestival (Tübingen, Germany, 2021). Her works and research articles, focused on the dialogue between tradition and modernity in musical composition, have been published in specialized media such as the magazine Roseta , published by the Spanish Guitar Society, and the Koninklijk Conservatorium Research Catalogue of the University of the Arts in The Hague. She has received several scholarships for academic excellence and for postgraduate studies abroad.

Silvia Escamilla plays with a guitar by luthier Yunah Park (Madrid) from 2019.

UX Researcher, Mixed Methods (PhD)

• Work closely with product and business teams to identify research topics
• Act as a thought leader in the domain of research, while advocating for the people who could use our products
• Design and execute end-to-end custom primary research using a wide variety of methods
• Design studies that address both user behavior and attitudes
• Effectively manage and prioritize research plans through ambiguous and fast-changing environments, align and efficiently execute critical insights and work with a large group of stakeholders
• Communicate results and illustrate suggestions in compelling and creative ways
• Work cross-functionally with design, product management, content strategy, engineering and marketing
• Generate insights that both fuel ideation and evaluate designs
• Currently has or in the process of obtaining PhD in a human behavior-related field, such as Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, Sociology, Communication, Media Studies, Anthropology, Economics, Information Science, Computer Science, or Political Science. Degree must be completed prior to joining Meta.
• Relevant experience within user experience, applied research setting and/or product research and development
• Experience conducting In-Depth Interviews or Focus Groups and Concept Testing or Usability Testing
• Experience coding with R, SQL, STATA, SPSS or equivalent
• Experience applying statistical analysis methods such as Regressions, ANOVA, and T-Tests
• Interest in and experience executing hands-on, primary research
• Experience translating research findings into strategic narratives
• Experiencing working independently and autonomously
• Must obtain work authorization in country of employment at the time of hire, and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment
• Experience with consumer products, consumer insights, or product development

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