Design Investigations

🎥filmmaking workshop 🎥

With Saeed Taji Farouky, our class had the amazing opportunity to explore how to craft scenes that capture emotions and tension — transforming moments into powerful documentary or militant films. 🎞️



aimoviemaking nomorebullsh*tfutures

Another guest critic that we were glad to welcome to our semester’s midterm reviews is Pello Rauno 🌐💫

Pello Rauno is Managing Director at Open Future Lab. With two decades of interdisciplinary design experience at agencies such as TBWA and Brand Manual, an ongoing PhD research in human-centred financial well-being, and extensive lecturing background on research design, design thinking and creative problem-solving, Pello uniquely shapes impactful financial life design. 🌍💡



*tfutures

Our 💥 midterm reviews 💥 are taking place! We are looking forward to share our projects so far with external guests and critics. 🌍

For our semester brief No more Bullsh*t futures, we are delighted to welcome Klára Peloušková! 🎥🌱

Klára Peloušková is a researcher and strategist based in Prague, Czech Republic. She works at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM) where she co-leads the platform SHIFT – Sustainability Transitions Lab and develops strategies for sustainability-related research and education. Previously, she led Planet B, a transdisciplinary educational program at the same institution. As a consultant and designer, she collaborates with the innovation studio Pábení which designs services and strategies for regenerative organizations. In her PhD dissertation, she analyzed approaches to design for sustainability and their practical applications in strategic and systems design projects.



*tfutures

We are excited to announce that Lucy Li will be joining us as a guest critic for our midterm diploma presentations!💫

Lucy Li is a designer and researcher working on playful and imaginative interactions with machines. Her works are sociopolitical, multispecies, and intrinsically optimistic. Lucy is a current PhD candidate at MIT Media Lab Tangible Media Group.

…some more impressions from our Venice field trip ✨
📷Martin , ,








*tfutures

Our next guest tutor who is going to run a workshop at our studio is going to be Matthew Plummer-Fernández! ✨💥

Matthew Plummer-Fernández, an artist of Colombian and European heritage, works across physical and digital media to critically and playfully interrogate how algorithmic systems encroach on popular culture and everyday life. Their practice is informed by Software and Internet Art as well as Critical Design.

Plummer-Fernández’s work has been widely exhibited and commissioned by institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), AND Festival (Manchester), and ZKM (Karlsruhe). Their artworks are held in the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou (Paris), and in 2014 they received an Award of Distinction at Ars Electronica.

They hold an MA from the Royal College of Art (London, 2009) and a practice-based PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London (2019). In 2021, Plummer-Fernández founded the BA Fine Art: Computational Arts course at Camberwell College of Arts in London.



*tfutures

💫OPEN HOUSE 2025!💫

Design investigations warmly invites you to visit our studio on November 4th for the OPEN HOUSE at 💥

Come and meet our students, explore our studio spaces and ask all your burning questions!

Learn more about our study program during our info sessions at 11:00 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. — featuring a short introduction by our professor Anab Jain () and inspiring presentations by our students about their recent works 🤖🎬🎥⚡️

Come by, say hi, and feel the vibe — we’re looking forward to meeting you! 👋
For more information, visit openhouse.uni-ak.ac.at

🇮🇹🦁🛶Field trip🛶🦁🇮🇹

We explored the vast Arsenale exhibitions, the national pavilions, and many other works — researching and gathering inspiration for our upcoming semester projects. We encountered community-oriented initiatives, inventions fostering more-than-human connections, and fascinating experiments with AI and nature.

There was so much to see and experience - art, design, speculation, futuring, discussions, a sunny class-picnic and lots of pizza!🍕☀️
📷Martin , ,








*tfutures

We are delighted to welcome Saeed Taji Farouky for a three-day film workshop this week! 🎥💫

Saeed Taji Farouky is a Palestinian/British filmmaker who has been making films around themes of conflict, human rights, and anti-colonialism since 2005.

His latest feature documentary, A Thousand Fires premiered as the opening film in Directors Fortnight of Locarno 2021 where it won the Marco Zucchi award for most innovative documentary. His previous documentary Tell Spring Not to Come This Year premiered at the Berlinale 2015 where it won the Audience Choice Panorama award, the Amnesty Human Rights Award, and sold to Netflix.

Farouky is also a radical film educator, regularly teaching, leading workshops, and lecturing about alternative forms of cinematic storytelling. He is designer and lead tutor of the Radical Film School, a free film course based in London dedicated to political filmmakers from marginalised backgrounds.



*tfutures

Soph Dyer helped us start off the new semester with an exciting workshop about discovering value in non-monetary objects, rituals and experiences.🌻🦦
“Follow the value” invited the students to reflect on questions like: What is value? Where is it located? How is it created? We know that value exists beyond money, but non-monetary value can be hard to pin down and is often invisible. 🔎🌱
After some observation and conversation in the whole of the city, they came to present their resulting ritualistic objects in the studio, which for a moment had become the site of an archeological dig in the year 3025, acting as a team of student archaeologists and anthropologists. 🕵️🪲⏱️
“Free your mind of the idea of deserving, of the idea of earning, and you will be able to think.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (1974) The Dispossessed




*tfutures