Luddites in the Classroom: Reflections on Digitality and “Tik-Tok Traditionalism”

Breakout Session 2: Thursday, 19 June (09:30 - 11:30)
Leroy van Halen, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

This session reflects on the Me-You-Us research project, which explored new pedagogies for advancing the green transition through digitalising fashion education. While students today are more tech-savvy, they are increasingly romanticising traditional crafts and returning to autonomous practices. During the project, the team expressed a resistance towards new media and innovation, pushed by social media that romanticises craftmanship – like Twitch, Tik-Tok, or Instagram. Students prioritise the practical side of design over the theoretical and reflective, such as addressing today’s challenges, distancing themselves from the world and our current and future responsibilities. How can we address the challenge of digitising education and harness new media—such as social media, XR, and AI—to enhance education and work towards more sustainable futures without losing our students? Through the analysis of key moments from the Me-You-Us research project, methods, tips, and strategies to tackle these challenges will be offered, along with a space for an open conversation.

Creating Co-Intelligence: Changing Perceptions and Promoting Interdisciplinary Collaboration in AI-Driven Design and Architecture

Breakout Session 2: Thursday, 19 June (09:30 - 11:30)
Juraj Blasko, Kristina G. Rypakova, Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia

This workshop explores how AI can become a co-creator in design and architecture, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and challenging traditional perceptions of creativity. Drawing on the concepts of "co-intelligence" and "human-AI co-creation", participants will engage in hands-on activities that demonstrate how AI can be integrated into creative workflows as a tool for empowerment rather than competition. The session aims to shift participants’ perspectives on AI from scepticism to acceptance by illustrating its potential to amplify innovation and teamwork. Beginning with an introduction to AI-driven creativity and interdisciplinary collaboration, based on Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence concepts, the workshop will allow participants to define roles for AI personas and engage in structured brainstorming sessions facilitated by AI. Several activities are included in the session: from outdoor photography incorporating an AI persona, to using a multimodal AI tool transforming pictures into concepts, as well as workflow development with human-AI co-creation.

Welcoming the Other: AI Vision as Creative Dialogue in Arts Education

Breakout Session 4: Thursday, 19 June (14:30 - 16:30)
Daniel Kinne, Ravensbourne University London, United Kingdom

This project explores how embracing AI's fundamental otherness can enrich arts education, drawing on Levinas and Derrida's concepts of the Other and hospitality, combined with Japanese notions of amae (mutual dependence) and ma (productive space), and Norwegian dugnad (collective effort). Rather than being opposed to, the project celebrates the difference through a three-part immersive experience: a performance lecture featuring Munch's "The Scream", an experimental vision lab, and a dynamic roundtable. Participants explore ways of seeing through timed alternations between human and machine perspectives, focusing on creating embodied understanding of these distinct perceptual modes by creating a Gefühl/Empfindung (feeling/sensation). Innovatively, the project creates real-time AI analysis of movement patterns and positioning technology as a social infrastructure. Set in Oslo, the project grounds abstract concepts in tangible experiences drawn from the local cultural context. The project creates genuine dialogue between human and machine visions, preparing participants for future creative human-AI collaboration, where difference becomes a source of strength rather than a barrier.

Designing Embodied Education in the Arts

Breakout Session 4: Thursday, 19 June (14:30 - 16:30)
Caroline Ribbers, Fontys Academy of the Arts, Tilburg, The Netherlands

Embodied Education values and facilitates the exploration of the breathing, pulsating, living body. It holds our life experiences, the body can be listened to and spoken with, deepening cultural and self-awareness, enhancing well-being, and inspiring daring ideas and resonant artistic practices. Serving as an inner compass, it guides life, learning, and artistry. However, due to the Cartesian body-mind split, much of Western education and society has long overlooked embodied inquiry and ways of knowing. As a result, students often struggle to engage with Embodied Education, having lost touch with their inner lives. In the format of the Embodied Education Lab, participants will collaboratively design a fertile ground for connective, regenerative, and life-integrated education. This session acts as a laboratory for creative, experiential, and participatory educational design, drawing on both individual and collective insights.

When the "Image" becomes our new reality

Breakout Session 4: Thursday, 19 June (14:30 - 16:30)
Otto Banovits, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest, Hungary

Living in an era dominated by the "image", we create and manipulate images of ourselves that we present to the world, constructing the reality accepted as truth. In this interactive presentation, participants are invited to reflect on the failure of primary experience, where the photograph or film becomes the reality instead. Recalling on Roland Barthe's theories of studium and punctum, this session seeks to analyse contemporary society. Crossing themes such as art and reality in the age of generative AI and its impact on the human psyche, the session explores the meaning of being human today, in a world saturated by superficial images. Learning how to understand, accept, and select from the tsunami of images that are targeting us every second of our lives becomes one of the most powerful forms of knowledge we can possess as humans.