Research Projects of the Institute Digital Communication Environments (IDCE)
Research at the IDCE examines diverse forms of visual communication in digital environments and with analog media through practice-based research. With our research projects we strive to gain insights into the potential and limitations of visual communication, its channels of dissemination, as well as the processes and tools of creating visual messages. We use these insights in practice-oriented projects together with cooperation partners from academia, civil society or public authorities with the aim of social participation, inclusion and diversity, as well as to strengthen democratic societies and ecological sustainability. Moreover, we investigate design practice and the design processes themselves. We historically examine how they continue to change in shifting technological, social and cultural contexts and conduct research into the history of Swiss graphic design and its digital transformation. At the same time, we explore the question of what future design processes might look like and how new tools such as generative AI’s in particular will change professional design and visual culture.
The research colloquium of the Institute Digital Communication Environments of the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW discusses research projects from the perspective of image practice, art science, philosophy, and psychology with the aim of putting relevant questions about image design and image perception up for discussion and differentiating them. The definition of practice-led research is thereby further advanced. The examination ot the design process forms the overarching theme of the colloquium. Historical research, theoretical positions or practical approaches allow to gain access from different perspectives on this fundamental act for design. The colloquium offers a framework for discussion within the institute as well as for exchange with external researchers in order to deepen specific topics such as semiotics, production aesthetics or historical methodology.
In the form of conferences and publications, the Institute Digital Communication Environments and the Research Colloquium's engagements with selected research topics become publicly available and contribute to the current discourse on image design, image perception, and issues of visual communication.
The interdisciplinary research projects of the Institute of Visual Communication deal with the role of images in participatory processes in urban planning, examine the use of images in therapeutic means of communication
or historically analyze graphic design education in Switzerland in its international context.
