Jerusalem Stone/ Even Yerushalmit/ Hajjar Maqdissi. Flurin Bertschinger, 2019
The program’s starting point
Visual media are everywhere – individual citizens, users, communities, public and private organizations as well as entire societies, create, collect and circulate images, interacting via audiovisual media. Interconnected digital technologies deeply influence people's lives. The resulting convergence of a great variety of media constantly alters the cultural meaning of images and media. Thus, the use of networked visual media and visual communication changes into a social currency in the visibility economy.
Images communicate and inform, but they are also ambiguous and unstable. The production and consumption of image media by amateurs and professionals alike includes aesthetic, social, cultural and political choices, within local and global contexts. All of these practices and cultures amount to the construction of a credible version of reality – by anyone involved, individually and collectively.
Using image and media technologies available to everyone, visual media professionals examine current social issues and develop appropriate representation strategies and formats. As visual storytellers and curators of content, photographers and media designers should have a keen eye for the relevance of their communications for their fellow citizens.
Visual media professionals are invaluable partners in addressing and discussing the myriad urgent questions of a complex and ever-changing world. Developing innovative narrative formats for interpretation, translation, transfer of knowledge and alternative perspectives is a key task for today’s visual storytellers as essential catalysts in democratic societies.
Announcement of public lecture by Laia Abril, 2015
Transmedia Storytelling, Post-Photography and Theory
The bilingual and internationally oriented BA in Visual Communication – Camera Arts, offers students an education in applied image practices and transmedia storytelling. Students explore various visual technologies such as photography, post-photographic media, moving image and film, the interaction between image, text, sound, animation and interaction design for screen and mobile media as well as print and spatial formats.
Photography as an independent medium is part of a wide gamut of intertwined visual media practices. Post-photographic technologies and new tools such as scanning, data visualization and image construction using "seeing machines" are new tools for making the invisible visible. Photographic and visual media production is becoming more and more data- and software-based and thus increasingly flexible, both conceptually and operationally. This challenges "media makers" to develop content-driven, rather than technology-oriented, transmedial narratives for all kinds of themes and issues.
In addition to the practical skills needed to realize photographic and visual media projects, an editorial understanding and media literacy are particularly important for knowledgeable media professionals. Students learn how to use a combination of conceptual and creative craftsmanship effectively in the development of visual communication formats. This essential competence enables students to use their ideas across media.
In the course of the study, theory, reflection, the ability to abstract, language and argumentation are practiced and applied as central elements of the production of meaning. These skills, required in our 21st century knowledge society, are just as important as practical knowledge and experience.
Curiosity and interest in people, situations and different social contexts are an important motive for students and teachers to successfully advance their investigations and projects. They question their own assumptions, look beyond the usual horizon and develop critical professional positions within selected topics.
Through interactive creative processes, students learn to translate their themes into visual communication that is comprehensible and relevant for people and target groups involved.
Facial recognition experiment. Media Lab, 2016
Media Lab
During their three-year studies, students are encouraged to test their technical, creative and conceptual skills with the latest visual media technologies and to acquire additional skills. They learn to combine technological, aesthetic, social and cultural questions and translate these into prototypes. They are supported by a transdisciplinary team of lecturers, tutors and guest experts – and especially by their fellow students.
The Camera Arts study program is located in the university campus, the former laboratory building of the Viscose factory in Emmenbrücke-Luzern, in and around the Media Lab. This not only concerns spatial location, but also reflects the spirit and ambition of the program, as a place for creative experiments, collaborative intelligence and the exchange of professional and academic discourse.
"Studying at BA Visual Communication – Camera Arts"
The study is meant for persons with a (design) Matura and/or recognized pre-course qualification (Vorkurs).
Those interested in studying at Camera Arts can find all the information on these web pages. You are cordially invited to visit the Infodays (each year in November) and to follow the program on social media.
For more information on registration, see admission page.
