Introduction

The core element of the teaching is exploration of the fragile relationship between the object and pictorial representation thereof, incorporating information technology and computer-based image-processing methods. Investigation of visual phenomena in their socio-cultural and technological context is the basis of this engagement. Encouragement of subjective perception is the first key building block in the teaching concept; the second is the imparting of creativity strategies and experimental composition techniques, and the final component is the promotion of digital expressiveness via development of an expanded computer-aided vocabulary of expression.

In addition to the teaching of various digital image-processing techniques, as well as the development of digital visual strategies, visual approaches and aesthetics (which go beyond striving to implement photographic representation as precisely as possible and can also be abstract, model-like or exaggerated, such that they reformulate the question of how to differentiate between reality and image), the imparting of experimental techniques for design and composition is of particular importance in the teaching. Here, the focus is on (visually) combining and rearranging the supposedly incompatible, creating visual constructs in which everyday objects are interwoven with architectural, urban and landscape fragments – and placed in new contexts in terms of both of image and meaning. These visual constructs have little to do with reality: With regard to content, they are utopias. The process of their creation can often begin with play, chance, intuition and humour, so the creative individual is basically also granted the necessary elasticity and autonomy when creating – and this is all the more important in our environment, which is set to be permeated more and more by rationally working computers and machines. 

The semester courses, each comprising a lecture block and a practical exercise block, are thematically divided into various teaching modules, in which each student develops a final visual work, often in the form of a series of images. Depending on the thematic orientation of the teaching module, media such as drawing, graphics, photography, modelling, montage, rendering, video and animation are used: In most cases, these are digitally generated and processed.