IFD:RGAD WiSe25

Fachmodul

Re/Generative Art + Design

Instructor: Lotta Stöver

Credits: 6 ECTS, 4 SWS

Capacity: 15 students

Language: English (German possible too)

Date: Mondays 11:00 -- 15:00, weekly

Location: TBA

First Meeting: MONDAY 2025-10-27 - 11:00

BISON Nr.: TBA

URL: TBA

Description

This *Fachmodul* consists of a series of practical artistic and design research experiments. Together we will explore what generative art + design have to do with regenerative practices, such as renewable energies, recycling materials, permacomputing, and overall doing art and design in the context of ongoing ecological crises. Especially within the current trend towards increased energy and resource consumption of big corporations' generative AI, this seminar aims to develop sensitivities together to be able to respond to that in critical, creative and alternative ways.

Starting with a research phase into traditions of generative visual and sound-based art and design classics to contemporary positions, each student or group develops their own research question. Throughout the semester we will practically develop artistic and design prototypes that are able to respond to these research questions.

In the beginning of the class, we will do some practical and conceptual exercises. These are some initial questions that we will try to work out to get started:

What are the implied poetics, gestures and temporalities of doing something over and over again? (And what does this have to with life, ecology, sustainability, etc?)
How can we write a code/protocol that can be executed with our bodies? (For example to take a walk or generate a performance?)
How can we design systems that are affected by generative forces that lie outside of our human control?

The syllabus is partially student-driven, so after the first few sessions we will conceptually and practically steer the content *Fachmodul* together towards the directions of what we find interesting.

Suggested project formats may range over installations, performances, sculptures, (public or private) interventions, audio/visual, designed systems, writing, machines, net art, experimental setups, eco-feminist action, workshops, photographs, protocols, self-hosted solar servers, DIY printed electronics, and lastly: what other formats make sense to you!

Keywords: renewable, matter, energy, recycling, feedback loops, small data, interfacing with environments, symbiogenesis, permacomputing, emergence theory, [artificial photosynthesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_photosynthesis), autopoiesis/sympoiesis, post-anthropocentrism, hacking, flows, trash, parasitism and symbiosis, hybridity, speculative fiction, etc.

Tools: Processing, material research, qualitative research, custom electronics, PCB manufacturing, recycling, circuit bending, OpenSCAD + 3D printing, etc.

"The world is not populated with things that are more or less the same or different from one another. Relations do not follow relata, but the other way around. Matter is neither fixed and given nor the mere end result of different processes. Matter is produced and productive, generated and generative. Matter is agentive, not a fixed essence or property of things." (Karen River Barad in: *Meeting the Universe Half-Way: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning*)

Certificate of achievement

Presence, and consistently active attendance and participation
Participation in the intermediary and end presentation (including exhibition)
Submission of the documentation (until end of semester)

Re/Generative Art + Design

Description

Further reading for those that are interested

Certificate of achievement