Surveillance art, dying phones, and fake likes

In this engaging talk, Dries Depoorter delves into his world of his art, blending the boundaries between technology and creativity. Attendees will be taken on a journey through Depoorter’s recent and upcoming projects, offering insights into the conceptual and technical processes behind his works. Dries will showcase live demonstrations of his art in the form of giving away likes or followers. This lecture offers a unique opportunity to learn more about the projects that have brought him worldwide recognition.

Belgian creative technologist and artist Dries Depoorter, based in Ghent, creates thought-provoking work about technology, surveillance, AI and social media in a playful way that makes people laugh while delivering serious messages in an accessible way. His projects explore digital culture that can inspire marketers: privacy challenges, artificial intelligence applications, surveillance and authentic social media projects.

With his unique background in electronics and digital innovation, Dries has become a voice for forward-thinking brands and marketing professionals looking to navigate today’s complex digital landscape. His artistic approach can directly inspire brands to think differently and develop original marketing concepts that stand out. Through his work, Dries demonstrates how combining creativity with technological insight creates viral moments.

His award-winning “Die With Me” app, accessible only when a user’s phone battery drops below 5%, demonstrates how scarcity and unique user experiences can create powerful engagement. On Black Friday, he doubles the price of his app instead of offering discounts, showing brands how breaking marketing rules can create attention.

In his viral project “The Follower” Dries leverages open cameras and AI to reveal the reality behind curated Instagram moments—offering marketers an unfiltered look at consumer behavior and content creation.

Meanwhile, ”The Flemish Scrollers” uses AI to automatically identify politicians using smartphones during parliamentary sessions, highlighting how technology can create accountability and transparency in public spaces.

Dries has exhibited at prestigious venues including the Barbican in London, Art Basel, Mutek Festival in Montreal,ZKM, Bozar, WIRED and Ars Electronica.

20 Years in Design
Across nonprofit and for profit, startups and scale, on boards and in residence, in print and with AI, as a writer, designer, teacher, and leader — Rob’s career has spanned a wide range of projects at the intersection of design, culture, and technology. This talk will share some recent work from Notion as well as work from Google and MoMA, connected in their uses of strategic inquiry, brand-focused storytelling, and multidisciplinary human-centered design to convey unique stories and experience to global audiences.

Rob Giampietro is a designer based in New York, where he is Head of Creative at Notion, a productivity tool celebrated by Forbes’ “AI 50” list in 2024. Active across worlds of design, art, and technology, Rob has held creative leadership roles at Google (Material Design, Research & Machine Intelligence, Search/Assistant) and MoMA, where he was Director of Design during the museum’s historic 2019 expansion.

Rob taught for over a decade in RISD’s MFA Graphic Design program and has served as VP of AIGA/NY. In 2024, he was a jury chair for AIGA’s 100th Annual 50 Books 50 Covers awards. A graduate of Yale, Rob has had fellowships at MacDowell and the American Academy in Rome, along with recognition from the National Design Awards for his work at Project Projects. Rob has been an Advisor to the Aspen Ideas Festival and is a trustee and board member of the Aperture Foundation.

Notion is the connected workspace that allows teams and individuals to easily share documents, take notes, manage projects, and organize knowledge—all in one place. Users can create and customize beautiful documents, roadmaps, knowledge bases, and more, helping them work smarter and faster.

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Today, we can fabricate anything. Digital fabrication now functions at both the micro and macro scales, combining multiple materials, and using different materialization processes. Complexity and customization are no longer impediments in design. 

While we can fabricate anything, design arguably appears confined by our instruments of design: we can only design what we can directly represent. If one looks at 3D-printed artifacts, there is oftentimes a discrepancy between the wonder of technology, and the conventionalism of design. We appear unable to exploit the new freedom that digital fabrication offers us.  In short: we can currently fabricate more than we can design.

What is needed is a new type of design instrument. We need tools for search and exploration, rather than simply control and execution. As of yet, we have countless tools to increase our efficiency and precision. Why not also create tools that serve as our muse, that inspire us and help us to be creative? Tools to draw the undrawable, and to imagine the unimaginable.

What we stand to gain are entirely new spatial and haptic experiences. A playful design that stimulates the senses, elicits curiosity, and invites interaction. A design environment that simultaneously allows control and surprise, and that embraces and celebrates the unforeseen.

Michael Hansmeyer is an architect and programmer who writes algorithms to generate and fabricate architectural form. Recent work includes the design of a 3D printed concrete tower in the Swiss alps, an installation of a forest of columns at Grand Palais in Paris, and the fabrication of a muqarna for Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. Michael taught architecture as visiting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and at Southeast University in Nanjing, and as a lecturer at the CAAD group at ETH Zurich. He previously worked for Herzog & de Meuron architects, and holds an architecture degree from Columbia University.

Where does “AI” end and “we” begin? Artist and researcher Sougwen Chung’s ever-evolving work in human and machine collaboration builds upon a decade-long international journey. Starting with a simple line, the process has led to interdisciplinary insights, philosophical inquiry, and technological invention through pioneering artistic practice. Intertwining perspectives in art and science, Chung’s practice envisions alternative futures for the relationship of humans and machines. “Embracing contradictions in art and research can pave the way to a third path, inspired by tradition and the development of new hybridities,” Chung says.

Sougwen 愫君 Chung is a Chinese-Canadian artist and (re)searcher based in London. Chung’s work explores the mark-made-by-hand and the mark-made-by-machine as an approach to understanding the dynamics of humans and systems. Chung is a former research fellow at MIT’s Media Lab and a pioneer in the field of human-machine collaboration. Sougwen’s work MEMORY is part of the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and is the first AI model to be collected by a major institution. Recently, Chung was recognized as a Cultural Leader at the World Economic Forum, one of four recipients of the TIME100 Impact award, and named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI.

Scilicet is a studio exploring collaboration; engaging modes of sensing and mark-making between the human and machine, organic and synthetic, and improvisational and computational.

Founded by artist and researcher Sougwen Chung, Scilicet pioneers interdisciplinary collaboration between artists and robotic technologies, with a focus on experimentation, invention, and care.

By engaging technology not as a tool but as a collaborator, Scilicet develops configurations of human and machine beyond automation. We explore these ideas through installations, performances, experiences, and artefacts.

What can we learn from Ray & Charles Eames that might apply to the challenges we face today?

Ray & Charles Eames demonstrated—time and time again—design’s unique ability to address disparate clients’ needs, while finding ways to improve quality of life for all. What can we as designers and creatives learn from the Eameses that might apply to the challenges we face today?

Llisa Demetrios is the youngest granddaughter of iconic designers Charles & Ray Eames. She began her archiving career at the Mies van der Rohe Archive at MoMA in New York, and has since dedicated herself to extending her grandparents’ most important gifts to the world: their infinite curiosity and iterative design process. Her personal mission is to equip everyone with lessons of Charles & Ray so that anyone can use design to solve problems at all scales. Today, as Chief Curator at the Eames Institute, Llisa continues to share learnings from her legacy through exhibitions, events, and public tours at the new public space in Richmond.

Llisa Demetrios has spent decades caring for the Eames Collection and curating the Eames Ranch, initially alongside her mother, Lucia Eames, and now as Chief Curator alongside the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity team. Llisa loves welcoming guests, be they Eames aficionados or people entirely unfamiliar with design. Before the advent of the Institute, Llisa facilitated loans for “The World of Charles & Ray Eames” exhibition that started at the Barbican Centre in England in 2015 and continued to Sweden, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Michigan, and the Oakland Museum of California in February 2019. She is also a founding and current member of the Eames Foundation Board of Directors, which oversees the historic Eames House in Los Angeles, and also a shareholder of the Eames Office.

Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity

The overarching goal of the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity is to unpack the way that Ray & Charles Eames worked, the way they infused their designs and lives with curiosity and discovery at every turn to solve problems at any scale. “We don’t do ‘art’ – we solve problems,” said Charles. Then he added “How do we get from where we are to where we want to be?” They demonstrated—time and time again—design’s unique ability to address disparate clients’ needs, while finding ways to improve quality of life for all.

Being able to share the legacy of Ray and Charles in this way, to showcase their incredible process and wide-angled vision of design, is the dream of a lifetime. Their boundless curiosity and relentless pursuit of solving problems in furniture, film, exhibits, architecture, and textiles is in the name of the Institute. The Institute aspires to be a home for curious problem-solvers, both on-line and on-land.  I hope the Institute’s efforts will help people find inspiration for solving problems in their own world.

Making data speak human

Designers across domains must increasingly engage with data. With the rise of AI, there is an opportunity to humanise data in innovative ways. In this presentation, I will introduce recent projects that explore these possibilities, ranging from an experimental tool translating energy forecasts into proverbs, to an internal application enhancing organisational efficiency. To bridge technology and human experience and decision making, data needs to speak human.

Yosuke Ushigome (yoh-skay oo-shee-goh-meh) is a London-based designer/technologist, currently working for Normally as Lead Interaction Designer. He works across disciplines with a focus on interaction design, digital prototyping, and futures research. For over 10 years, he has been involved in various R&D and visioning projects with organisations worldwide such as the NHS, Hitachi and Swarovski. He also writes about more equitable and sustainable ways we interact with technology on design publications such as Core77 and ICON magazine.

Normally unlocks the transformative potential of AI for clients, including IKEA, Google, Panasonic, and the NHS. We have a decade of experience at the intersection of human-centred design and AI engineering, applying AI to enhance operational efficiency and growth, and deliver innovative AI-enabled products and services