Building on a long-term partnership with Lift Conference, HEAD – Genève will show three 2015 graduation projects and two ongoing student works from MA Media Design at Lift16. These projects question crucial aspects of our lives such as the food we eat, the water we have access to or the data we exchange, and their relationships with technology.
2015 graduation projects
Insightful host is a speculative design project that reflects on the definition of a “smart” system and questions the increasing development of devices that collect and analyse data on a daily basis. The project focuses on an IT system, imagined in a near future, that enables its users to organize tailored dinner events. Using a calendar application interface, users create their events and choose a specific purpose for each of them. Based on this, the system then takes over the dinner preparation by defining the menu and inviting guests.
Masquerade is an obfuscation tool for citizens who want to protest against mass surveillance. When it is plugged into the Internet, the masq box generates small suspicious messages based on alleged trigger words and sends them to other masqs. In large numbers, those messages create a constant noise on the network in order to disrupt mass surveillance.
A home-made water filter becomes an everyday utility within developed societies, when the lack of efficient resource distribution infrastructures becomes a global concern. Deriving from Vytautas’ general interest in the changing definitions of nationality and citizenship, this project explores a microcosm where drinking water becomes part of our national identity.
Ongoing student projects
Print Plastic, it's fantastic! is a living laboratory where animals, bacteria and humans cohabitate in perfect symbiosis. Some natural bacteria, like the Janthinobacterium lividum for example, are making dark purple pigments. M.luteus and M.roseus, are making yellow and pink. Some of them, like the purple one, is found in Salamanders back. Others in soil or some marine species. After a regular extraction protocol, pigments are extracted and ink can be mixed with paper, clay or even bioplastic which can be used to create 3D printing objects.
kbps, Étienne Ndiaye
With every music format comes specific features and particular listening configurations. kbps is a project tackling new ways for listening and experiencing music when confronted to domotics. From the connected fridge ordering new yoghurts to the smart thermostat monitoring energy consumption, our homes turn more and more into coherent organisms. Therefore, listening to music in a computer-controlled house also implies being able to affect a whole ecosystem of electr(on)ic objects.
The Media Design course is aimed at graduates in visual communication, multimedia design, game design or computer science, as well as designers or engineers. Students are trained for careers as designers in digital media, interactive visual communication, information design and creative, research and innovation industries.
