Category: Alumni

Alumnus Lukas Valiauga on Fabrica residency and work after graduation

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Lukas Valiauga graduated from the BA Design course at Goldsmiths in 2015, and he is currently a resident at Fabrica, the Benneton Group-financed communications research centre based in Treviso, Italy. Lukas tells us a bit about his work on the residency and his other projects since graduation:

What kind of work are you doing as part of your residency? 

Personally, the residency is an amazing opportunity to work developing research into how technologies shape our modern living, culture and communication.  Part of the work (and freedom!) is in experimenting with ideas, theories and research-led assumptions as well as specific technology.

Fabrica is at a unique intersection between worlds of art and commerce. Rather than as briefs, projects come as partnerships open to every resident to pitch their idea for; that way shaping and defining what an overall project will be like. A lot of personal research materialises into tangible output this way.

For example, for an exhibition at Milan Design Museum, I’ve presented an installation measuring Milan’s sky colour comparing it to the colour called ‘sky blue’.
Also, together with Jonas Eltes we made a painting which grows its value depending on its popularity with gallery visitors.  We are currently working on a several of web-based information experience projects.Read More »

MA alumna writes about her experience as artist in residence in Taipei

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Alumna Wendy Lau (MA Design: Critical Practice 2017) recently spent six weeks as artist in residence for the Guandu International Nature Art Festival in Taipei, alongside several international artists. Wendy wrote to us about the experience and its significance to her life and career:

“I have learned and experienced so much in this residency, in both aspects of my profession and personal philosophy. Designing creations for a nature park was a new challenge for me, because I had to consider artwork existing in an outdoor context as well as using on-site materials which should not be harmful to that environment. There were limitations at the beginning, but then I managed to turn them into my inspiration, and re-directed my initial approach to a more explorative one.Read More »

Goldsmiths Design Festival 2017: Ingvild Augestad explores identities and labels

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Ingvild Bjertnæs Augestad’s graduation project from the MA in Design: Critical Practice aims to spread knowledge about gender identity by telling stories of transgender people, through an organisation called LABELLED:

“I have designed a platform for communication about a non-traditional perception of gender. I created different examples of communication tools through the strategy of telling and gathering stories from all kinds of people, with a focus on transgender people. LABELLED is the organisation and it is supposed to publish, for example, postcards with facts about a non-traditional gender perception, engaging you to write down your own story and send it back to the organisation. There are also school-kits for collecting information from children, which put them in a situation of thinking about differences and identity, and how unique they are, because everyone is different. There are also the LABELLED talks, seminars where the organisation has set up a frame for what kind of subjects are important to different audiences, such as nurses or doctors. There are the posters, which are telling stories of gender fluid people through pictures and text. The aim of the organisation LABELLED is to keep a positive attitude, and to make people feel engaged and surprised.Read More »

Goldsmiths Design Festival 2017: Maurizio Detomaso investigates air pollution in London

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For his graduation project from the MA in Design & Innovation, Maurizio Detomaso designed a device that maps the user’s exposure to air pollution:

“The concept is a wearable air quality sensor which can track your personal air pollution exposure. The aim of the project is to raise awareness about the impact the over polluted environment has on human health, and to empower people to collect and map air quality data in the urban environments. The portable device can allow people to have an accurate assessment of their daily exposure to air pollution and it can improve the London air monitoring system network at the same time. Making this “hyper-object” more tangible is the key to influencing strong political and individual actions for a cleaner and healthier environment.”Read More »