Emerging Technologies
The transversal research theme Emerging Technologies at PXL-MAD explores the role and impact of cutting-edge technologies within artistic practice, research in the arts, and higher art education. Through transdisciplinary collaborations—both across programs and with external partners—we generate and share knowledge about the meaning, roles, and implications of emerging technologies in graphic design, fine arts, and object and jewelry design.
Our focus lies on fostering artistic experimentation, critical reflection, and provocative questions around technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and robotics. Artists are often among the first to experiment with new technologies—creating works with generative AI, bio-art, or immersive VR/AR installations. They approach technology not merely as a tool but as a field of expressive possibilities and potential risks: hacking systems, seeking glitches, imagining speculative scenarios, and envisioning alternative futures.
Rooted in the context of art, design, and crafts, we investigate how artistic practices can offer new and valuable insights for contemporary debates on emerging technologies. This includes exploring the skills needed to consciously navigate and shape technological developments from an artistic perspective. We also examine the role of the arts—and of artists and designers—in questioning and rethinking cultural, social, ecological, and political narratives surrounding technological progress. Technology is not treated as an end in itself, but as a phenomenon with complex socio-political implications related to accessibility, ethics, sustainability, and power.
Our research promotes deeper understanding of issues such as digital equity, algorithmic bias, the materiality of digital technologies, exploitative processes linked to tech production, and more-than-human entanglements. Dominant voices often reduce technological progress to efficiency and profit—benefiting a select few at the expense of many. In a world of multiple crises and rapid technological change, we advocate for relational and solidarity-based perspectives that enable inclusive, sustainable, and diverse approaches to technology.
What we do
Drawing on artistic experience—embracing uncertainty, questioning norms, and valuing pluriversal forms of knowledge such as embodied, artistic, and indigenous—we explore complex relationships and questions around technology with respect for all who are involved or excluded. By integrating emerging technologies with traditional techniques, PXL-MAD creates a vibrant learning environment where technology becomes a shared language to inspire, challenge, and strengthen creative practices.
Through ongoing and future educational and research activities—and by engaging in local, national, and international collaborations such as exhibitions, symposia, publications, and seminars—we explore conceptual, contextual, and methodological directions for artistic and critical engagement with emerging technologies in the creation, presentation, experience, teaching, and research of art, design, and crafts.
