The module is aimed at students from all departments at ZHdK who want to artistically explore the available technology in Immersive Arts Space and in particular the potential of three-dimensional media installations.
Autonomous flying helium drones will be realized within two weeks. Students will work in groups composed of as many different disciplines as possible to cover as broad a range of expertise as possible. The groups will have time for experiments, for the development and construction of a helium drone (airship or balloon with drone control) and for the development of a spatial installation concept. The team of lecturers from different disciplines (Scenography, Industrial Design, Spacial Projection) is available to advise on the concept development and support the planning of possible further developments.
Lead: Martin Fröhlich, Roman Jurt Further lecturers: Stella Speziali, Mariana Grünig, Melody Chua
This lecture series investigates questions of immersion from perspectives outside of the immersive arts. Guest lecturers come from curating, computer music and DIYelectronics, embodied human-computer interaction, animation and theater and scenography. Topics will include composing interactive systems, new concepts of extended animation, curating immersive experiences, disability and human computer interaction and new concepts of XR-based performative scenography in urban contexts.
DRAMATURGIES OF THE ANTHROPOCENE: RHETORICS OF IMMERSION, PARTICIPATION AND AGENCY IN CONTEMPORARY ARTS
José Luis de Vicente is curator and cultural researcher. Most famously, he is the director of Disseny Hub / Design Museum in Barcelona.
BRAINS IMMERSED IN A VAT. UNMASKING THE POLITICS OF IMMERSION
Livia Nolasco-Rózsás is curator and researcher at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (Karlsruhe/DE) and University College London (UK).
LEISURE IMPOSSIBLE – PLAYING WHILE DISABLED
Dr. Katta Spiel is an assistant Professor in Critical Access in Embodied Computing, Human Computer Interaction Group, Technische Universität Wien (Vienna, AT).
AUGMENTED SCENOGRAPHIES AND PERFORMATIVE URBANISM: LESSONS FROM THE FIELD
Dr. Shauna Janssen is an associate Professor and research chair in Performative Urbanism at Concordia University (Montreal/CAN).
This lecture series investigates the concept of immersion in art and design from aesthetic, historical and political perspectives. Guest lecturers come from digital arts, curating, media studies, and the histories of science and technology from the ZHdK, Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (New York), Haus der Elektronischen Künste (HEK, Basel) and the Technical University in Dresden. Topics will include contemporary artistic practices in multi-sensory immersion, extended reality and history of VR and the arts, and art and artificial intelligence.
The Immersive Arts Space hosts every semester a public lecture series with national and international guest lecturers. The lecture series aims to address artistic as well as theoretical aspects of immersion.
The current lectures are available via live stream.
Immersive Arts: Performative Perspectives on Immersion
This lecture series investigates questions of immersion from the perspectives of the performing arts including dance, theater and even real time animation. Our exciting list of five guest lecturers includes a world renowned choreographer and collaborating dance artist working with real time motion capture, the head of the theater program at the ZHdK and an expert in contemporary performance and digitality, a journalist and long-time editor of tanz, the most important dance magazine in the German speaking world, the head of the Ars Electronica animation jury and an Egyptian born, Greek computer scientist and dancer working on digital performance in Virtual Reality.
The Autumn Semester 2023 lecture series investigates questions of immersion from perspectives outside of the immersive arts. Guest lecturers come from curating, computer music and DIYelectronics, embodied human-computer interaction, animation and theater and scenography. Topics will include composing interactive systems, new concepts of extended animation, curating immersive experiences, disability and human computer interaction and new concepts of XR-based performative scenography in urban contexts.
The Immersive Arts Lecture Series for spring semester 2023 investigates artistic and design experiences in which humans, media and architectural spaces shape one another within the context of the built environment. Guest lecturers who come from the fields of digital arts, architecture, theater studies and the visual arts, will focus on specific artistic works from their practice, as way to open up critical discussion around emerging paradigms of bodily experience in spatial computing environments, human-machine interactions in architectural spaces, and immersive experiences between human, technical and natural systems.
This lecture series investigates the concept of immersion in art and design from aesthetic, historical and political perspectives. Guest lecturers come from digital arts, curating, media studies, and the histories of science and technology from the ZHdK, Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (New York), Haus der Elektronischen Künste (HEK, Basel) and the Technical University in Dresden. Topics will include contemporary artistic practices in multi-sensory immersion, extended reality and history of VR and the arts, and art and artificial intelligence.
In this series, guest lecturers from the Swiss Institute of Technology ETHZ, the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences HSLU, the University of Zurich UZH shared their specific views along with lecturers from the ZHdK. The topics covered Architecture, Virtual Reality, Virtual Forensics, Game Aspects in Theatre and Extended Reality.
In this series, concepts of immersion as well as embodiment were explored from the different perspectives of fine arts, design, film, performing arts and music, with concrete examples of artistic practices and research projects.
REFRESH is a yearly, international conference on Design, Arts and Technology. It is initiated by the Department of Design (Maike Thies) and the Immersive Arts Space (Christopher Salter) and taking place in different locations within Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).
REFRESH#5
The interdisciplinary festival REFRESH (initiative of the Department of Design and the Immersive Arts Space of ZHdK) took place for the 5th time from November 9th to 12th, 2023. It addressed pressing issues at the intersection of the arts, design and technology in keynotes, masterclasses and a multi-layered exhibition. International designers, artists and researchers provided insights into their work and discussed it with the interested public. The critical topics of this year’s edition were «Immersive Journalism», «Design Realities», «Future Technologies», «Worldbuilding», and «New Ecologies».
With guests such as Nikolaj Schultz (sociologist, author of «On the Emergence of an Ecological Class» (2022) with Bruno Latour and author of «Land Sickness» (2023), Sarah Kenderdine (Head Curator EPFL Pavilions and Professor of Digital Museology at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne EPFL), Ian Cheng (Digital Artist), AATB (artist couple focused on experimental robotics) and Sam Wolson (Visual Features Editoris for the New Yorker and an Emmy award-winning director, photographer and journalist).
The Immersive Arts Space had two Spotlight events on November 9th and 10th. Spotlight I featured an exhibition of three currents projects, that are developed in the lab: Possible Worlds… (Oliver Sahli, Chris Salter), Changing Matters (Lorenz Kleiser, Floris Demandt) and Friendly Fire (Manu Hendry, Florian Bruggisser, Paulina Zybinska uvm.)
Spotlight II on November 10th was be a work exhibition of Zangezi, a Russian Cubo-Futurist poem/play written by the poet Velimir Khlebnikov in 1922. Fragments of Zangezi will be performed as a work in progress that takes the form of a theatrically staged reading within the technical machine of the Immersive Arts Space itself. The work exhibition includes a Q&A with the team members, discussing the usage of AI generated meta humans, environments and characters as well as the usage of a Large Language Model in a artistic project like Zangezi.
REFRESH#4
The fourth edition of REFRESH, from 10th to 14th November 2021, focussed on the topics «Immersive Journalism», «Immersive Play», «Digital Identities», «Digital Doubles» and «Techno-Biological Futures». The conference featured keynote speeches including panel discussions with national and international guests as well as a large exhibition have been part of the conference. Photographs of the conference have been published and can me viewed in this gallery.
The Immersive Arts Space hosted the Lab Insights and a VR exhibition. Team members offered insights into the projects Shifting Realities (Chris Elvis Leisi & Olliver Sahli (Multiuser VR), Martin Fröhlich, Max Kriegleder, Joel Gähwiler, Roman Jurt, Mariana Grüning (Helium Drones/ SAR)), Neural Volumetric Capture (Florian Bruggisser), Digital Twins (development of animated digital avatars based on photogrammetry and Meta Humans) and cineDesk (Norbert Kottmann, Valentin Huber).
Further Credits: Sound Design: Luca Magni Lights: Sébastien Schiesser Project Lead: Martin Fröhlich Production: Kristina Jungic Head of Unit: Christian Iseli Photography: Regula Bearth
REFRESH #3 took place from 17th to 20th September 2020 featuring keynotes, workshops, performances and an exhibition. Due to the Covid 19 pandemic it was designed as a hybrid event with online presentations of many speakers. The third edition was devoted to the topics «Digital Evidence», «Digital Humans», «Immersive Worlds», «Extended Realities» and «Imagine New Tomorrows».
REFRESH#2 took place from September 26th to 28th at the Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK, featuring keynotes, workshops, performances and exhibitions. The second edition focussed on the topic of Experimental Futures and Immersive Experiences. In close cooperation with Digital Festival and Hack Zurich at neighboring venues.
Selected speakers: Thomas Oberender, curator and artistic director @Berliner Festspiele Sarah Ellis, director of Digital Development @Royal Shakespeare Company Kevin Curran, vision director @Space10 Gayatri Parameswaran, immersive journalist @NowHere Media Andreas Refsgaard, artist & creative coder Galit Ariel, future tech expert @Wondarland Yakeshi Yamada, recruiter @teamLab Yasaman Sheri, creative director, designer and researcher Tobias Gremmler, visual artist
Dancing Digital performance on September 26th 2019. (Photo by Davide Arizzoli, ZHdK 2019).
Shifting Realities was an overarching interdisciplinary research project, that started in Spring 2021. The goal is to explore the interplay of real and virtual experiences as well as the interaction of VR-users and by-standing spectators in shared experiences. Combining these different perspectives creates scope for new practices and forms of expression in Extended Reality (XR).
The research is structured in four binary focus areas (or pair of opposites): • Virtual vs. augmented environments • Virtual vs. real spaces, objects or humans • Binaural vs. spatial audio • Storytelling vs. game mechanics
The research focuses at the interfaces defined by the pairs of opposites above. Through them, differences in perspective, shifts in perception, and the extent of interactivity can be shaped and controlled. The primary goal is the development of prototypical unique solutions in limited subareas.
In a first phase, basic concepts of reality shifts were explored and developed. They all depict situations, in which the users find themselves in transitional states between virtuality and reality. The aesthetics to create such transitional settings are defined by rough 3D scans, sketchy point clouds created in real time by depth cameras or the Oculus passthrough feature. The resulting imperfection of such low-end processes induces an awareness of our fluctuating and at times uncertain perception while experiencing mixed reality content.
In a second phase, three prototypical experiences were developed. Two are device-based with mixed reality components displayed in VR goggles: • PASSING THROUGH THE REAL and • FRAGMENTS OF REALITY.
One is installation-based with spatial augmented reality contingent on projection mapping: • FRAGMENTS OF A CONVERSATION (watch video).
For the first time, the three experiences were presented in preliminary versions at the LabInsights in June 2022.
Team: Researchers: Florian Bruggisser, Martin Fröhlich, Valentin Huber, Norbert Kottmann, Eric Larrieux, Chris Elvis Leisi, Oliver Sahli, Stella Speziali. Production manager: Kristina Jungic; Chief Technician: Sébastien Schiesser. Principal Investigator: Prof. Christian Iseli
Jordan Juras & Davide Luciani are Artists in Residence 2021 at the Immersive Arts Space and ICST.
Focal Field explores the spectrum of presence felt in augmented sonic reality – from the intimacy of closeness to the abstracted relation between disembodied voice, sound, and space. Perceptual relations between the real and virtual are tightened by situating augmented reality sound within synthetic reverberant architectures, and reinforcing localisation through light. The installation engages with our necessity to rationalise any aural manifestation. These fields of fragmentation – between the spectrums of connection and disconnection – have led the duo to draft a sound space where the voice, the Phonè, and its experience become the object and subject of aesthetic speculation.
The presentations took place on Thursday, October 22nd 2021.
In the Z-Module “Immersive Landscapes in Art and Film” in September 2021, students from the fields of design, film, theatre and fine arts dealt with photogrammetry, virtual reality and 3D sound. Within two weeks, the groups developed three different immersive landscapes:
– Using virtual reality glasses, an actor could discover a walk-in visual scenery by means of the sense of touch and change it by interacting with virtual objects. – Real hands became moving digital sculptures in a planetary virtual reality landscape using photogrammetry and motion capture. – White rigid bodies became transformers of an abstract soundscape via motion capture in a participatory performance in immersive arts space.
In addition to engaging with transdisciplinary art and film projects, the students were able to test and evaluate the latest ‘interactive experience’ with Birdly at Somniacs in a field trip.
Photo by Jyrgen Üeberschär
Teaching Staff: Miriam Loertscher (Institute for Performing Arts and Film) Thomas Isler (Department Fine Arts) Jyrgen Ueberschär (Departement Fine Arts) Valentin Huber (Department Performing Arts and Film/ Immersive Arts Space) Stella Speziali (Immersive Arts Space) Eric Larrieux (Immersive Arts Space)
