Design & Computation

Apply now for the Master Design & Computation to be part of the next cohort in WiSe 2026/27. The application period is open from April 1st – May 15th! D&C is Berlin’s interdisciplinary master program that is tightly entangled with the research platform New Practice in Art and Technology (@new__practice ). Both find their space for research, exchange, and transfer in the DC-Studio at TU Berlin, where projects are developed, funded grants come to realization, conferences take place and exhibitions show what can be possible at the intersection of art, science, society and technology.

Are you interested in studying the interdisciplinary master program Design & Computation at the intersection of Art and Technology? The application period starts today, April 1 - May 15, to apply for the upcoming Wintersemester 2025/26! You can submit the application with the help of the guides on the TU Berlin Website here, where you will find a step by step application process and the TU Portal: Guide for Applicants with a Bachelor degree from a German University: https://www.tu.berlin/studierendensekretariat/bewerbung-einschreibung-master/bewerbung/bewerbung-fuer-absolventinnen-deutscher-hochschulen Guide for Applicants with a Bachelor degree from a foreign University: https://www.tu.berlin/studierendensekretariat/bewerbung-einschreibung-master/bewerbung/bewerbung-fuer-absolventinnen-von-auslaendischen-hochschulen Additionally you have to upload your Portfolio through a separate Portfolio Upload Form: /forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScVkg6AOv5WuwutrieG3QkQLyLb5Xw5Da0nYmpK7UGtdCt69Q/viewform?usp=dialog If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at [email protected] or visit our website for a full overview of the application process. /application. Applications may also be considered conditionally if the final language certificate is not yet available at the time of application. We’re excited to receive your applications!

“UNIversalräume – Dynamische Systeme in Lehr- und Lernraumarchitekturen” is one of the Raumlabore funded by the Dieter Schwarz Foundation and the Stifterverband (@stifterverband ). This space, created in collaboration between TU Berlin and UdK Berlin, serves as a versatile environment, functioning as a lab, studio, exhibition space, and conference room. In this context, our research associate, Johannes Pointner, serves as a Learning Architecture Agent, exploring the possibilities of this dynamic environment through a participatory experiment with students here at New Practice.  A special thank you goes to Christian Schröder, Vice President for Studies and Teaching at TU Berlin, Lara Kolbert, Program Manager for Learning Architectures, and David Joshua Schröder, Research Associate in General Sociology, for their invaluable support, as seen in the video. We would also like to extend our gratitude to the Stifterverband team: Volker Meyer-Guckel, Oliver Janoshka, Matthias Winde, and Carlotta Esser.

Final reminder to send us your application for the interdisciplinary Master’s program Design & Computation! We want to thank everyone for the great interest in Design & Computation this year. It was really nice getting to know so many of you during the application period and having lots of interesting conversations with prospective applicants. Now we’re excited to take a closer look at all of your portfolios and see the work you’ve been preparing. Thanks again for all the time and effort you put into your applications and hopefully see you in the next round for the interviews!

Archival Fever was a three-day workshop held in the studio and led by @jonnybixbongers , exploring contemporary digital archival practices and the politics of collective memory. The workshop combined introductions to archival theory and digital memory infrastructures with collaborative group work, where students developed counter-archive prototypes. It concluded with final presentations and discussions, offering students a foundation for the upcoming project phase starting next week. ___ Data archives are not passive repositories. They are sites where memory is collected, organized, and filtered. What they contain is therefore not simply our past, but the material from which the present and the future are imagined. Under the title Archival Fever, this three-day workshop explores how digital archives shape what and how we remember. If the internet can be understood as “the world’s largest archive,” the question arises: Who organizes this archive? Who determines access? Which stories become visible — and which disappear? Because the way we archive today determines how we remember tomorrow. While discourse around AI often oscillates between dystopian fears and utopian promises, there is still a lack of closer examination of how data-driven infrastructures shape our collective memory. Digital collections, datasets, and online repositories are increasingly structured, scraped, and repurposed by automated systems — often controlled by a small number of profit-driven technology companies. The workshop approaches these questions from a critical and practice-oriented design perspective. Together, we will examine artistic interventions, activist strategies, and alternative models of access, ownership, and community infrastructure. Through short inputs, discussions, experimental tools, and best-practice examples, we will investigate how archives can be read, questioned, and reimagined. Between Reverse Archaeology, Synthetic Historiography, and Counter Archives, this seminar offers an introduction to contemporary digital archival practices.

Memento Mori – Selin Bekcekaral (@slkaral ), Jack Conwell (@cons_well ), Daniel Donovan-Achi (@danieldonovanachi ) Student project from the course ​​Perspectives in Design Memento Mori is an interactive game design project dealing with digital identity, surveillance and the persistence of data traces after death. Players explore a digital space, encountering real data fragments and embarking on a search for their own data records. The framing of the game centres around the real world, militaristic data analysis company, Palantir, raising awareness to the immediacy of data application while observing how people react when confronted with their digital selves. The project draws on theoretical perspectives that frame digital culture as a regime of representation, extraction, and control. Guy Debord’s notion of the society of the spectacle describes a shift of the public into spectators, as network platforms intensify the use of representation as a mediator of lived experience. Outlining the alienation of being a spectator, Gilles Deleuze’s concept of societies of control introduces the idea of the “dividual”, a fragmented data subject continuously modulated by digital systems. These ideas are complemented by analyses of surveillance capitalism, digital labour, and knowledge extractivism, which conceptualise data as a key resource of contemporary infrastructures. The spatial logic of the game is particularly influenced by Vladan Joler’s mapping of New Extractivism, revealing how planetary-scale technological systems translate behaviour and cognition into quantifiable assets. Emerging from a constellation of theory and artistic research, Memento Mori adopts a design-research approach that translates abstract datasets into embodied spatial experience. Procedurally generated environments based on Google Takeout archives position players as digital archaeologists navigating landscapes shaped by movement histories, search queries, and media consumption. The project hypothesises that confronting users with their digital double can reveal hidden infrastructures of control and provoke critical reflection on digital legacy.

On May 11th at 19:00 (Berlin time) we will host the last Portfolio / Info Session with students, research associates and Prof. Albert Lang. This is your chance to join us for final questions regarding the Portfolio and the application process of the M.A. Design & Computation, the joint master’s program of the University of the Arts Berlin and the Technical University Berlin? We are looking forward talking to you one more time and are otherwise excited to receive the final Portfolios for this year’s application period. To join the event, please register through the link in bio. Application is still open until May 15th 2026!

Last week we had the first Loops of this summer semester 2026! It was a pleasure talking to Tatiana Bazzichelli (@tati.bazz ) and Anna Leander about the topic of: Art as Evidence What counts as evidence today? When everything can be recorded, exposed, and circulated, evidence is no longer simply found. It is produced, staged, and made to resonate. For this session, we brought together Tatiana Bazzichelli and Anna Leander for a conversation on art, evidence, and the politics of epistemic authority. Tatiana discussed how artistic practices can investigate, expose, and inform about social and political wrongdoing. Drawing on the concept of art as evidence developed with Laura Poitras, she connects it to whistleblowing and highlights the importance of building networks of trust across fields to make systems of power visible. Anna spoke about art as evidence of alternative futures. Grounded in the ongoing violence in Norte de Santander, Colombia, she reflects on how artistic practices can produce credible evidence, not only of harm, but of the possibility of a future beyond it.

ur trash – Fionn Heron (@heshhound ), Stefan Milic (@krommefanger ), Linus Ziegler (@_zglr ) Student project from the course Perspectives in Engineering ur trash is a speculative waste receptacle that turns discarded objects into persistent digital artifacts. What appears to be a technologically enhanced trash can is an intentionally unnecessary improvement - another gadget added to an already saturated landscape of smart devices. By scanning each discarded object and converting it into a 3D model, the system preserves what was meant to be thrown away, allowing trash to accumulate again in a digital archive. The project reflects on the growing presence of IoT devices and automated systems that promise optimization and convenience while simultaneously introducing new layers of technological infrastructure. ur trash deliberately embraces this logic by using state-of-the-art hard- and software to generate digital objects that have little practical function beyond their existence as data. The resulting archive becomes a growing pile of digital waste. By turning physical trash into digital objects, ur trash exposes a paradox of modern technology: systems designed to make life easier often create new, hidden forms of accumulation. While our devices promise convenience, the problem of material waste remains unresolved. In this way, ur trash works both as a functioning device and as a subtle reflection on the hidden material and computational costs of the technologies we rely on every day. Disposal does not remove waste from existence. It simply relocates it.

Program Update #2: Screening + Aftertalk We are very happy to introduce the next event within the Reclaiming Data series, and it is a great pleasure to present „Afterlives“ by @alsolikelife . The film is one of Kevin B. Lee’s powerful desktop documentaries, which premiered at @doclisboa.iff last year and was nominated in the New Visions section 2025. The film engages with the historical traces of extremist propaganda and with the efforts of those who confront its violent effects. It asks how we might respond to the violence embedded in such media and how these images remain entangled with structures of power, from colonial legacies to the digital present. We are also very honored that Prof. Orit Halpern will join Kevin B. Lee for a conversation following the screening. Together, they will open up the film’s questions toward the contemporary data landscape, synthetic image cultures, and the politics of memory today. Screening: Afterlives by Kevin B. Lee 🗓 12 June 2026 🕢 19:30–21:00 Talk with @alsolikelife and @orithalpern 🕘 21:00–22:00 📍 Alter Lesesaal / New Practice TU Berlin Main Building Straße des 17. Juni 135 10623 Berlin For the full programme, check the links in bio. Reclaiming Data is a collaboration by @dock_digital_berlin , @new__practice , @designandcomputation and @ecommemoration -Supported by @technologiestiftung , @centerforliterature . Curated by @jonnybixbongers . Design by @yunkuo__ #ReclaimingData #DigitalArchives #MediaTheory #VisualCulture TUBerlin BerlinEvents

Decoding Erasure – Salma Noor Mahomed (@salmaidk ), Antonia Mühleck (@_nii.ia ), Tobias Tarnow Student project from the course Perspectives in Engineering The widespread adoption of generative AI in advertising allows companies to market an imagined reality, which in turn has the power to shape new narratives. For example, real estate companies are able to use generated images and ‘marketing speak’ to make neighbourhoods or areas more sellable. While the communities who have inhabited the land over time have their own memories, their own experiences, and ways of negotiating these areas, data can create histories that have the power to define a new imagination of the environment for commercial interests. In this explorative project we explore layers of collective memory in Cape Town, South Africa, and how real estate companies are able to advertise a supposed reality of the area of Sea Point. Built on eurocentric ideas of community and housing, the ideal target is an audience who cannot identify with the lived experience of the average South African. We explore this topic by digging through data sets, AI prompting techniques, and investigating web archives. Drawing on theories of digital memory culture, algorithmic memory, and decolonial ways of archiving we aim to explore future pathways of archiving, on both corporate and community based level. How can technology erase and/or rewrite collective memory? Does the implementation of AI technologies in processes of archiving enhance colonial practice? What are methods of countering digital and cultural censoring? In Decoding Erasure and aim to find new ways to engage with these technologies, to better reflect the world which is not included in them.

Are you thinking about applying to the M.A. Design & Computation? On April 29th at 19:00 (Berlin time) we will host an online portfolio review session with students, research associates and Prof. Albert Lang. This session focuses on the portfolio, but we will also give you more insights on the current application process. You will have the opportunity to ask questions about how to present your work, what the program is looking for, and how to manage an application for Design & Computation. To join the event, please register through the link in bio.