It is with these insightful reflections from the booklet accompanying one of the 2021 Bauhaus project on the great Plague that ravaged the world between 1346-1353, that I bring to my esteemed visitors the Bauhaus 2021 vintage of artworks designed by my Masters students in the autumn of 2021. It was fun to return to face-to-face classes after three lockdowns in 2020. About sixty one Master students took part in this year's Bauhaus arts projects, which yielded 17 beautiful exhibits. The projects artfully captured information and communication theories in action in everyday historical, contemporary or fictitious contexts. Below you will find a selection of some of the most stunning projects. The rest are presented briefly in a slide show at the bottom of the page Hope you like it! En marche for Women's rights |
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This very creative and immersive multimedia exhibit was designed as the first French Museum of Women's History. The three female students who (wo)manned this exhibit used four media to convey their message : a chronological frise showing the march for equality of sexes which sought to pay tribute to women who have fought for women’s rights in France; a video in which the students role acted situations of verbal and physical abuse against women; a map on the wall displaying statistics on the violence against women in different parts of the world and lastly, a black gowned mannequin used to engage visitors in interaction to gather feedback on the exhibition. These four media formed the four stages of the visit to this museum.
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Truth Party and Two moons theory
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This beautiful exhibit was designed as a political party campaign called the Truth party which was peddling the conspiracy theory of the existence two moons.
Going from the sobering observation that our contemporary era easily designates as opinion leaders people who do not have the knowledge or capacity to be so, the three female students who designed this artwork wanted to highlight what they saw as the "culture of emptiness". Their exhibit demonstrated that a well organised communication campaign could, through well-executed propaganda and pseudo-scientific discourse, produce spectacular results. They thus staged an election campaign built on lies and on manipulation. They put forward the absurd theory that there are two moons, a theory that has already been challenged by numerous scientific articles. To win people over, they claimed that the second moon has been hidden for ages because it is used by governments to spy on the population. |
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The Black plague
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This visually stunning and incredibly creative artwork consisted of beautifully drawn cartoon characters of rats framed and mounted on the walls of the exhibition room as well as carved lifelike figures of rats. The entire sequence of drawings and carvings were done and framed by the students for the sole purpose of this Bauhaus exhibition. The question raised by this artwork is: Why are conspiracy theories prevalent in crisis times? Using as backdrop the Plague that swept through Europe in the middle ages, and leveraging Wiener’s Cybernetics theory and in particular his conception of entropy, the students showed how information and communication disorders in a pandemic situation give rise to propaganda and fake news which in turn have ripple effects such as the targeting of vulnerable and discriminated groups. This exhibit is obviously a nod to the different theories (conspiratorial or not) swirling in the media about how, where and who might be responsible for the current Covid19 pandemic and what its possible cures might be. The controversies generated by various theories have pitted governments promoting vaccines to anti-vaxxers with grave consequences.
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Cybernetics of the Ant colony
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This equally stunning artwork was done by four female students. Inspired by the creativity and originality of the bees communication artwork of 2018, the students wanted to make an impression on the day of the exhibition with something equally original and visually stunning and they sure did! After an internet search, they found that ants behave like a super-organism and their lifestyle perfectly illustrates the cybernetics theory. From an artistic point of view, they wanted an exhibition that would be eye-catching but understandable to everyone while also creating the “360° exhibition surround” effect which reminiscent of the Bauhaus artistic movement, as deployed by the Committee for National Morale (1941-2) under President F.D. Roosevelt. The students did a lot of background research about the scientific knowledge on ants communication. They then wrote their scripts, drew and painted the large life sized drawings of ants on canvases as a series of cartoons and framed them. Further, they made larger than life-sized ants using cardboard and painted them and also perfumed them with different scents to illustrate the pheromones that ants use to communicate information to each other. They also videoed themselves designing their exhibit. The whole exhibit is a a delight to watch!
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Gynoids. The era of Singularity
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The idea for this artwork was inspired by the pervasive nature of of AI in every sector of life and especially by the existence of the Henna Hotel in the Hamamatsucho district of Tokyo, a metropolis often referred to as the "smart" city or the "capital" of the world" or the "technology capital". This fully automated hotel opened its doors in 2018 and has been the subject of much debates, raising many societal issues and questions such as:
Isn't an establishment run solely by robots a danger to humans? For the economy? For employment? Is it dangerous to sleep in a hotel where everything is automated? The students recalled that these fears and questions were not new. They had been evoked by Wiener’s theory of cybernetics, in which the notion of the Golem recalls the God-like ability to make humans out of inert matter (sand, clay) which is likened by Wiener to his ability to make intelligent machines. Wiener was beset in his later life by fears that machines that he had helped to create will take control of things and make humans obsolete. |
Cyber-TikTok
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Based again on Wiener's cybernetics theory (decidedly the most captivating communication theory for all my students), this exhibit sought to highlight the risks of social media addiction using as case study the application with over 3 billion downloads worldwide: TikTok. Its success is due to its powerful algorithm which to date, appears to be the most advanced of all social media networks. Like most recommender systems, TikTok’s algorithm learns from the actions of its users in order to provide them with personalised content. To convey this atmosphere of enclosure and of filter bubble, the exhibit consisted of a large black tent within which students placed various devices (laptops, cell phones) and visitors were led into this large sombre tent and exposed to a constant barrage of tiktok-ish emissions in order to capture and retain their attention throughout their visit.
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Slideshow of the other exhibits
2018 Vintage |
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