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Research Projects of the Institute Digital Communication Environments (IDCE)

Research at the IDCE examines diverse forms of visual communication in digital environments and with analog media through practice-based research. With our research projects we strive to gain insights into the potential and limitations of visual communication, its channels of dissemination, as well as the processes and tools of creating visual messages. We use these insights in practice-oriented projects together with cooperation partners from academia, civil society or public authorities with the aim of social participation, inclusion and diversity, as well as to strengthen democratic societies and ecological sustainability. Moreover, we investigate design practice and the design processes themselves. We historically examine how they continue to change in shifting technological, social and cultural contexts and conduct research into the history of Swiss graphic design and its digital transformation. At the same time, we explore the question of what future design processes might look like and how new tools such as generative AI’s in particular will change professional design and visual culture.

Current research projects IDCE

Incubator for Design Cultures (swissuniversities)

Funding program for the FHNW mid-level

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Inklusion von LGBTIQ+ Studierenden an Schweizer Hochschulen

Cooperation project with Bern University of Applied Sciences and PHBern as part of the swissuniversities program P7 "Diversity, Inclusion and Equality of ...

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Emerging Practices in Modular Synthesis: Towards a Virtual Ethnography for Mixed Realities

The study aims to identify the conditions necessary to translate the unique feeling and aura associated with physical modular synthesizers into virtual and ...

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Research Colloquium

The research colloquium of the Institute Digital Communication Environments of the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW discusses research projects from the perspective of image practice, art science, philosophy, and psychology with the aim of putting relevant questions about image design and image perception up for discussion and differentiating them. The definition of practice-led research is thereby further advanced. The examination ot the design process forms the overarching theme of the colloquium. Historical research, theoretical positions or practical approaches allow to gain access from different perspectives on this fundamental act for design. The colloquium offers a framework for discussion within the institute as well as for exchange with external researchers in order to deepen specific topics such as semiotics, production aesthetics or historical methodology.

Publications/Symposia

In the form of conferences and publications, the Institute Digital Communication Environments and the Research Colloquium's engagements with selected research topics become publicly available and contribute to the current discourse on image design, image perception, and issues of visual communication.

Publikation Visible Language

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Completed research projects

The interdisciplinary research projects of the Institute of Visual Communication deal with the role of images in participatory processes in urban planning, examine the use of images in therapeutic means of communication or historically analyze graphic design education in Switzerland in its international context.

Visuelle Kommunikation in partizipatorischen Stadtplanungsprozessen

to Visuelle Kommunikation in partizipatorischen Stadtplanungsprozessen

Seeing & Knowing (Teaching Fund FHNW)

to Seeing & Knowing (Teaching Fund FHNW)

Adaptation of OpenSoundLab for autonomous learning

to Adaptation of OpenSoundLab for autonomous learning

COCODING Classroom (Teaching Fund FHNW)

to COCODING Classroom (Teaching Fund FHNW)

Social work

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Research Responsible ICDE

Dr. Arno Schubbach
Dr. Arno Schubbach

Leiter Forschung IDCE, Dozent für Theorie

Telephone +41 61 228 41 11 (central office)

Dreispitz Basel

FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland Basel Academy of Art and Design Freilager-Platz 1 4142 Münchenstein near Basel
More information about the location