Throughout this course participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of the intersection of technology, art, and posthuman concepts. Whilst understanding the ability to critically evaluate the effects of AR might have on our present. After the course, and practically speaking, participants will have learnt how to build and produce artistic augmented works with TikTok Effect House, with hands-on workshops. They will have acknowledged how to guide their individual viewpoints and the theoretical influences, that their works can raise critical questions and opinions on where and how our post-human present is radically/ethically changing our technological understanding of our future and past.
Augmented Present: how the screen swallowed us whole.
Augmented Present: how the screen swallowed us whole.
This course welcomes students who are interested in our technological era and the concerns surrounding understanding our present crisis of hyperreality, with a specific focus on Augmented Reality (AR). Online lectures shall give the theoretical and philosophical ground for students to build their digital inspirations and concepts. Which shall be addressing how our present digital reality is evenmore today documented, manipulated, challenged and corrected, where we can see how our screens have become personal feeding machines. Not only in consuming our data, but disfiguring our connections to our current reality, in which we can no longer tell what is real and what isn't. Where the ‘entertainment’ of hyperreality is a preferred experience of the present, of which we wish to be continually connected. Critical discourses about the advancement and speed our digital lives continue to take, shall look into how our relationship to our screens is affecting our hypereal perspectives and understanding of fake news, climate crisis, identity, politics and overall our conflicts of our posthuman bodies.
In Weimar with our in-person lessons, students will practically learn and develop in-house Augmented Reality artworks that shall be showcased in group projects at the Bauhaus Spring School Exhibition. Our multidisciplinary practical lessons and workshops shall offer students the opportunity to be taught particular programming skills, where they shall learn how to experiment with Augmented Reality. Students will acquire the knowledge needed for developing AR applications in TikTok Effects House, through different workshops dedicated to various AR capabilities such as Image Target, Face Filters, and Environment tracking, to name a few. These group projects shall be workshopped also to develop their contexts before being showcased within our dedicated space, where the public shall also be able to use and immerse themselves within the AR projects.
NOTE:
This course includes an attendance phase in Weimar from March 12 to March 21, 2026.
This course is designed for those interested in critically exploring the past and future of technology, art, and design, and the concerns related to how understanding History impacts our post-human future. We welcome Bachelor's, Master's, and Ph.D, who might be interested in subjects of media, digital, hyperreality, cyberspace, posthumanism, virtual/augmented reality and artificial intelligence. If participants are keen on learning new programming skills related to AR, and are open-minded to engage in discussion about the relationship between human and machine, then this course shall be for them.
Your application should be submitted until November 2nd, 2025.
Required application documents:
- Letter of Nomination (applicants financed by the BIP scholarship from the partner universities)
- CV
- Letter of motivation or a short motivation video (max. 1min)
- Portfolio
- English language certificate (test certificate or a letter from your university stating your English language knowledge)
The course fee is 300 EURO and includes:
- Orientation & Support
- Programme according to description
- Teaching materials
- Certificate
- Free use of library
The course fee does not include:
- Travel costs
- Accommodation
- Insurance
Participants, coming from the partner universites in the framework of Erasmus BIP scholarship and BUW students don't pay the course fee.
In addition to the Spring School courses, we offer a comprehensive "Service Package", which includes participation in the excursions and social programme, free entrance to the museums, shuttle-service on the day of arrilval and lunch (from Mon - Fri) in the student cafeteria. The booking of the Service Package for €70 is optional.
Students who do not take up the Service Package are automatically required to pay a course deposit of €100. This is to protect us against costs incurred by non-participation. Since in this case, the universities will not receive any funding from the European Commission. The deposit will be refunded as soon as the participants start the course in Weimar.
Please note our terms and conditions (admission conditions, cancellation conditions etc.)
3 ECTS
BUW students: please check with the academic programme coordinator for credit recognition.
Our screens have consumed our perceptions of reality, in which we can no longer distinguish between what is real and what is hyperreal. Splitting and merging our digital lives to remain fluxed and confused. This course seeks to know how we can better understand our present hyperreal reality, to ask how we arrived here, and what it means in our posthuman identity.