Berlin, Germany

The City-as-Palimpsest: Mixed-Media Techniques of Urban Interface Design

This course delves into urban spaces as layered texts via field trips, discussions, and mixed-media workshops. Participants are introduced to different practices of interface creation, such as meme-making, critical mapping, AI art and game design.

This workshop explores urban spaces as palimpsests. Cities are multi-layered texts made from entangled memories, hidden narratives, forgotten traces, enmeshed affects, and liminal landscapes. Thus, to delve in the city-as-palimpsest, one must engage with urban spaces across boundaries between past and present, individuality and collectivity, ideology and materiality, and reality and simulacra. In this course, we’ll explore how mixed-media practices of participatory design, remix culture and urban hacking uncover the layers of the city-aspalimpsest. In this mixed-media playground, participants are the players of a game in which the city’s multi-layered text become a creative stream of possibilities. This workshop proposes a unique blend of critical discussions, readings, field trips and mixed-media interface designs. Students will be introduced to different practices of multi-media interface creation, such as meme making, critical mapping, anarchiving, AI art and game design. Moreover, they will be introduced to a few theoretical tools from media studies, philosophy, psychogeography, and queer theory.

By the end of "The City-as-Palimpsest," participants will have honed their skills in mixed-media interface design, while learning to think critically about such creative processes. Moreover, this workshop culminates in the development and production of an individual mixed-media project. The knowledge, experiences and techniques acquired during this workshop invites students to produce playful interfaces to interact with the complex fabric of urban spaces.

Course leader

Albertine Thunier and Hubert Alain’s.

Fee info

EUR 660: EUR 660