WS#1 — Making the Invisible Visible: Designing Systems from Natural Processes

Marijke De Vuyst / Head Visual Design Lab / Department Media, Design & IT / AP University of Applied Sciences & Arts Antwerpen / BEL

Room: AP152.01.107

Many processes that shape our world are difficult to see: growth, cycles, dependencies, rhythms and interactions between different elements. Yet these processes structure the environments we live in. In this workshop, you explore how graphic design can reveal these invisible dynamics. Through observation, research and experimentation, you translate natural or systemic processes into visual rules, structures and graphic systems.

Instead of illustrating nature directly the focus is on understanding how systems work and how relationships between elements can become visible through design. You begin with quick analogue experiments and gradually develop visual systems that can evolve into printed or digital outcomes.

Along the way, you document your observations, sketches and experiments in your sketchbook, making both the system and the development process visible.

Within the context of Post-Human Resources, the workshop invites you to reflect on how design can visualize connections between humans, environments and other living systems.

About Marijke De Vuyst

Hello, I'm Marijke, a graphic designer and lecturer at AP University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. Alongside teaching, I work as a designer for different clients. In my courses on graphic design and typography, I encourage students to question their design decisions and reflect on why they make certain choices. I'm interested in experimentation and in exploring how design systems and processes can lead to unexpected visual outcomes.

WS#2 — Future Rhymes. Audio-Visions of the Post-Human World

Katarzyna Figat and Kajetan Zakrzewski / Assistant Professors / Department of Sound Engineering / The Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz / POL

Room: AP152.03.307a

"History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes" (Mark Twain).

The concept of the workshop is based on the assumption that the reality in which we live is created mainly according to human needs — e.g. cities consist of residential buildings that serve to satisfy the needs of accommodation, safety and protection from the cold; the food production and supply chain makes it possible to satisfy hunger. During the workshops, we want to consider how reality will change if humans cease to be the dominant factor shaping it and create visions of an alternative future. If we accept Twain's statement, we can assume that the world in 100 or 500 years will not be radically different, but it will arise from the world we know today. So: how does the future rhyme with present?

The answers to these and other questions will be the starting point for creating a kind of collage: an artistic combination of the present state rhyming with the selected future vision.

About Katarzyna Figat

Katarzyna Figat, Ph.D. in music arts (film sound engineering). Works as an assistant Professor at the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz, as well as the lecturer at the National Film School in Łódź, where she teaches sound in film to students of film editing as well as coordinates the new film sound engineering degree. Film sound engineer and passionate film expert. She is engaged in intense academic activity, taking part in conferences and academic projects, as well as publishing. She works as a music supervisor and sound editor for feature films, documentaries and TV series.

About Kajetan Zakrzewski

Kajetan Zakrzewski, Ph.D. is a sound designer specializing in film post-production and VR productions. He works as a lecturer at the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz. Over the past 10 years, his work on VR projects, films, and series has been presented and awarded at international festivals such as DOK Leipzig, Helsinki Biennial, Slamdance, and the Grand Video Awards. Since 2015 he has also been a member of the comedy group Niplodram, where he writes and produces short films and performs as a theatrical improviser.

WS#3 — Live after life (Infographics Beyond Use)

Maaike Hamelynck / Lecturer Graphic & Interaction Design, Coordinator Department of Design / Minerva Art Academy, Hanze University of Applied Sciences / NLD

Room: AP152.02.209

A hands-on workshop about turning data into visual stories. Instead of presenting dry facts, students learn to create poetic and experimental infographics that explore live after life of things such as garbage, leftover energy, memory, and digital traces.

Starting with basic infographic skills, students research post-human resources and transform their findings into visual narratives. They create tactile zines using paper, folding, and sequencing, then develop these into clear, public poster designs.

By the end of the course, students can turn data into visual concepts, use infographics for storytelling, and combine research with graphic design and illustration.

About Maaike Hamelynck

Maaike Hamelynck is a graphic designer with an MA in Brand, Design and Reputation Management. She runs a design studio and teaches. Next to designing media, her interests are visualizing stories behind people, products, and institutions through infographics, preferably in collaboration with students.

WS#4 — Expanded Cinema

Hanan Kaminski / Head of Master's Program in Design for Technological Environment / Faculty of Design, Holon Institute of Technology / ISR

Room: AP152.02.203

This 3-day workshop merges the rigor of traditional filmmaking with the disruptive potential of Artificial Intelligence. The goal is to produce a 30-second short film (animation or live-action) while exploring the birth of a new narrative and cinematographic language. By blurring the lines between human intent and algorithmic generation, we will define what "Expanded Cinema" means in the age of AI.

The project explores the mutation of creative labor. By positioning the students as the curators and conductors of algorithms, we examine the human role within a "workforce" extended by machines. This "Expanded Cinema" becomes a post-human collaboration where the digital "resource" actively reshapes the storytelling process.

About Albert Hanan Kaminski

Albert Hanan Kaminski is an acclaimed director whose animated feature films, including The Legend of King Solomon, The Real Shlemiel, and the Pettersson and Findus saga, have captivated audiences in over 60 countries. A master storyteller, his work spans iconic TV series such as Sesame Street and The Wumblers. In 2015, his global impact was honored with the prestigious Pulcinella Career Award at Venice's Cartoons on the Bay. Today, he bridges cinematic artistry and academia as a Professor at HIT – Holon Institute of Technology, heading the Design Master program for Technology Surroundings.

WS#5 — Delta · Common City

Playing and designing non-verbal graphic systems for post-human cities

Melani Lleonart García & Álvaro Sanchis Gandia / Professors, Painting Department / Universitat Politècnica de València / ESP

Room: AP152.03.303

Delta · Common City explores graphic design as a non-verbal visual language capable of operating within spatial environments. The workshop is framed through a speculative post-human scenario: after a global climate emergency, participants design a self-sufficient city inhabited by diverse populations without a shared spoken language. Communication, orientation, and coexistence rely entirely on visual systems.

Through a playful, game-based world-building process, participants collaboratively define the city's structure, resources, and social dynamics. Graphic design is approached as a critical infrastructure that mediates between human, non-human and environmental systems.

Participants then develop a text-free visual communication system using symbols, color, form and graphic rules, applying it to spatial contexts such as signage and environmental graphics. The workshop positions graphic design as a resource that organizes space, behavior, and meaning within a complex post-human ecosystem.

About Melani Lleonart

Melani Lleonart holds a PhD in Art and Design and is Vice-Dean for Professional Development and Industry Relations at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Universitat Politècnica de València. She directs the Bachelor's Degree in Design and Creative Technologies and coordinates the Master's Degree in Design and Illustration. Her teaching and research focus on visual identity, editorial design, design theory, inclusive design and sustainability. She is co-director of the research journal EME Experimental Illustration, Art & Design and co-founder of Pedra Design Studio.

About Álvaro Sanchis

Álvaro Sanchis holds a PhD in Fine Arts and Design. He is Deputy Director for Teaching at the Department of Painting and Director of the Diploma in Interface Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Universitat Politècnica de València. He teaches graphic design, UX and interface design in the Bachelor's Degree in Design and Creative Technologies and in the Diploma in Interface Design. His research focuses on visual communication, digital interfaces and graphic systems. He is co-founder of Pedra Design Studio.

WS#6 — PLAYS!

Post-human Legacies Activating Yielding Systems

Emilio Lonardo / Lecturer and Research Fellow / Design Department / Politecnico di Milano / ITA

Room: AP152.01.105a

PLAYS! explores play as a form of knowledge shared by humans, animals and more-than-human systems. Rather than aiming at predefined outcomes, the workshop activates a system of tools, rules and constraints that allow ideas, groups and projects to emerge through interaction. Participants work with conceptual devices such as cards, roles and speculative resources that introduce human and non-human actors and create dynamics of negotiation, care and conflict to generate draft ideas. Group formation happens through an investment session where participants allocate symbolic budgets to ideas they want to pursue. The process follows the ABCoDE framework developed within Design Open Spaces, supporting an open, relational and transformative learning environment where design becomes a living system rather than a sequence of tasks.

About Emilio Lonardo

Emilio Lonardo is a designer, researcher and educator working on the relationship between people, space and more-than-human systems. He holds a PhD in Design and teaches at Politecnico di Milano. He is founder of D.O.S. – Design Open Spaces, a design operating system exploring gentle technologies, relational design and experimental methodologies such as ABCoDE. His work combines research, design practice and speculative approaches to create new ways of imagining collective futures.

WS#7 — Mutual Aid Communication Toolkit

Ana Matić, Professor and Miloš Nikolić, Teaching Assistant / Faculty of Fine Arts Cetinje, University of Montenegro / MNE

Room: AP152.02.210

Let's imagine an ideal future cohabitation – the post-human era, where humans, technology, and nature are interconnected and coexist. What happens when one of them collapses? How society functions in the times of crisis. The workshop places participants into a fictional scenario, set in moment, a city which loses electric power on a regular basis.

Participants will investigate a Post-Human Society suffering infrastructural collapse, how graphic designers can rethink communication when screens go dark, the internet is unavailable, and electricity is limited. How can we use low-tech, non-digital methods to reshape communication? What form does the concept of a social network take, once there is no internet or electrical devices? What could we, as designers, do for our local community?

The aim of the workshop is to rethink communication tools, design and cooperation methods and infrastructure in times of limited resources.

About Ana Matić

Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts Cetinje, University of Montenegro. She has 30 years of experience in design education. In the last 20 years, she organized and participated in many exhibitions, conferences and workshops in the country and abroad. She is initiator and coordinator of FLUID Design Forum Montenegro since 2013. Founder and President of NGO FLUX, since 2018.

About Miloš Nikolić

Teaching assistant at the Faculty of Fine Arts Cetinje, University of Montenegro. Currently pursuing a MA degree at the same institution. He works as a graphic designer, focusing on projects that relate to the cultural sector. He is a member of the organizing team for the FLUID Design Forum, and various other, student initiated, projects.

WS#8 — Embodied Algorithms: Bodies as Sensors and Interfaces for natural and man-made signals

Carla Molins-Pitarch / Lecturer & Researcher / Digital Design and Multimedia Technologies (CITM) / UPC BarcelonaTech / ESP

Room: AP152.EG.002

The workshop focuses on designing sensing-based human extensions that read, translate, and respond to patterns present in natural systems, human bodies, and man-made systems. Rather than speculating on future cyborgs, participants work with existing signals, such as biological rhythms, environmental conditions, and behavioral patterns, to develop tangible interfaces that foster awareness, coordination, and care of our surroundings.

Through experience design, electronics, and sensor-based data, students prototype wearable or spatial systems that make otherwise invisible patterns perceptible and experientially accessible, positioning humans as active participants within larger algorithmic and ecological systems rather than isolated operators. This workshop frames sensing as a design method for understanding interdependence between humans, technologies, and environments where participants design interfaces that translate complex systems into lived, experiential feedback.

About Carla Molins-Pitarch

Carla Molins-Pitarch, PhD, MFA, is an experience designer, creative technologist, and researcher working at the intersection of design, technology, and science to bring a tangible instance to complex concepts. Currently, researcher at the Image Processing and Multimedia Technology Center, UPC (DiCode: digital culture and creative technologies research group). Her practice has been centered on visualizing scientific concepts through haptic and interactive experiences, creating immersive experiences, including kinetic-robotic and award-winning creative technology projects. Her work and research have been presented and exhibited since 2013 in Spain, Finland, Switzerland, the USA, the UK, Belgium, Germany, France, Malta, and Austria.

WS#9 — Designing Post-Human Storyworlds: Interactive Audio Narratives

Niklas Rönnberg / Senior Associate Professor / Division for Media and Information Technology / Linköping University / SWE

Room: AP152.01.116

Step into a near-future in this workshop, where you'll explore storytelling beyond the linear by creating interactive, location-based audio narratives that adapt, branch, and respond to listeners' movements.

You'll prototype branching storylines and multi-perspective plots, learning how to map narrative structures that shift with each decision. At the same time, you'll dive deep into sound design, combining field recordings and foley sound with film and narrative music to build immersive sonic worlds. You will also explore using AI for sound design, trying different tools for creative use, while reflecting on AI from different critical perspectives. Using mobile phones, web interfaces, GPS, microphones, and various audio editing software, you'll craft stories that unfold through movement, turning physical space into part of the narrative system.

Workshop website: niklasronnberg.github.io/graz2026

About Niklas Rönnberg

I am a Senior Associate Professor in Sonification and Sound Design at Linköping University in Sweden, with a background in Media and Communication Studies. I teach Sound Technology and Procedural Sound Design, Music and Film Production, Visual Storytelling, and Physical Interaction Design and Prototyping. My research interests are in sonification, sonic interaction design, and speculative/critical sound design. I love music and sound design, and enjoy tinkering with synthesizers, sound technology, computers, and music electronics.

WS#10 — Collaborative Intelligence Workshop

Nitzan Waisberg / National Head of Design (Visual Communication) / JMC Academy / AUS

Room: AP152.03.302

The ideologies governing the exploitation, control and distribution of resources have run their course. Just as industrialisation allowed western societies to see the abomination of slavery as unacceptable exploitation of "human resources" — stimulating a profound reorganising of society from agriculture to civil rights — so AI models offer an opportunity to reexamine the exploitation, control and distribution of resources in our time and the ideologies that have normalised these.

The underlying assumption of the workshop is that change requires not only understanding the problem but developing and communicating an alternative. The workshop begins with an alternative preliminary concept: Collaborative Intelligence. AI technologies might be designed as part of symbiotic mutually supportive ecosystems modelled after the Mother Tree and mycelium networks in a forest system. This — not free markets, states or military might — will regulate resources for optimal thriving.

The goal of the workshop is to make Collaborative Intelligence tangible to allow ordinary people to engage with an alternative vision, develop it or propose better alternatives.

About Nitzan Waisberg

Nitzan is a human-centred design expert and former Consulting Professor at Stanford University's d.school. She is currently National Head of Design (Visual Communication) at JMC Academy in Australia. Educated as an industrial designer (Bezalel) and design historian (Royal College of Art) she is interested in the interplay of human needs and motivations with emerging technologies and social structures. She is co-founder the Delta pre accelerator program which launched startups that raised over $68M and has advised NGOs, multinationals and startups, some of which reached unicorn status.