Postdigital Ecologies is a Research Track within the MA Design programme at the Faculty of Design and Art, HSBI. It offers a thematic and research-oriented framework for students working across artistic research, critical making, postdigital ecologies, and technological experimentation.

Digital Media & Experiment is a field of study discipline in the uncanny valley between media design and media art. We advocate for an anti-disciplinary approach that does not shy away from breaking traditional boundaries between design, theoretical discourse and art. The emphasis is on experimentation and we encourage practise based processes. We believe that this hybrid approach is necessary in preparing ourselves for futures with unclear labor divisions, fragmented by artificial intelligence.

We use a broad spectrum of tools, such as audiovisual media, film- and motion design, generative design, 3D-modeling, interaction design, 3D printing or Installation Art. However we welcome any approach that critically looks at media in a broader sense and does not confine itself to digital approaches only. The teaching areas are Creative Technologies, Immersive Environments and Motion Design.

Through rigorous research and critical thinking our Master program aims to prepare ourselves for futures yet unimaginable and ideas yet unthinkable. We support creators from diverse fields like CGI, sound design, and mixed reality, focusing on interdisciplinary innovation and ethical media creation. Our goal is to nurture creative thinkers who explore new perspectives and shape the future of digital art.

The idea of a specifically post-digital MA major program is rooted in the belief that technological advances are not a linear development but rather a field of possibilities – a landscape that holds so many advances but also regress and collapse. We have to incorporate de-growth and the looming, or already ongoing, social and ecological collapse in our thinking. We do this by looking at technology with a critical lens and by incorporating contemporary philosophy like object oriented ontology in our thinking and creating.

The ecology of ever-changing cyber markets demands us to be critical of technology and investigate its role in capitalist structures as well as in power imbalances in the great digital divide. Through rigorous research and critical thinking our Master program aims to prepare ourselves for futures yet unimaginable and ideas yet unthinkable.

Besides the technological criticism we believe that transcending our default human perspective an way of looking at the world is necessary in order to make transformation possible and to adapt to to the challenges we face now and in the future. We believe that culture making plays a crucial role in creating the right conditions for change and transcendence, because what we experience, becomes thought and becomes ultimately reality.