The visualisation uses eight cultural theme pairs from around 400,000 articles in the New York Times archive to show how the relevance of social themes changes over time, which visual and structural transitions become visible and what the past can tell us about the future.

›All past is but prologue.‹ This quote by William Shakespeare describes the eternal interaction between what we experience as past, present and future – and is at the same time optimistic speculation that there will always be a future. Speculating into the future requires an engagement with the past as well as with the question of the scales at which we think about and understand interrelationships. 400,000 New York Times articles from 1971 to 2021 serve as indicators to illuminate these questions. By manipulating the timeline, the visualisation tells the story of the pairs of topics and transforms into an increasingly immediate past. When the timeline reaches the present, the work reduces to a grid of eight arrows that formulates the cumulative development of hundreds of thousands of data points as a strikingly simple speculation into the future. The visualisation ends in a diffuse outlook on the future: Individual forms dissolve and interweave into colourful possibilities based on the past.

With the AR object Dynadome, you can playfully explore imaginary working and learning environments from different times digitally and interact with them. A learning space from the year 1971, 2021 or 2071 is loaded at random and is available for exploration.

By shaking the viewing device, selected objects in the respective learning space are dynamically set in motion, flying around in the object like snow in a snow globe. This creates a new, individually influenceable experience each time. The work is inspired by Richard Buckminster Fuller’s ideas on the design of dynamic learning environments that were intended to enable structurally disadvantaged educational classes to teach themselves. Among other things, Fuller developed small learning cabins – boxes made of cardboard, called »little paper houses«. In addition to a desk, a chair, a typewriter and a globe, the equipment of each cabin included a telephone to contact the supervising teacher if necessary. In this way, the boxes made it possible to learn and work largely undisturbed and isolated from environmental influences, while enabling the teachers to look after many students at the same time. These ideas for democratic and location-independent learning are more present today than ever before. For this reason, the AR object is intended to encourage people to consider how to set up and optimise their individual learning space.

Biographical
Till Finke studies Graphic and Communication Design and works as a freelancer. In addition to designing classic communication media, he is involved in generative design and the development of three-dimensional objects and environments. He is particularly interested in the question of how these digital ideas can be transformed into objects that can be physically experienced.

Julian Nida-Rümelin’s envisaged reform university of the future is to form the »centre of national culture«. In Nucleus Futuro, this reform university stands as the centre of the search for truth.

Autonomy, balance and unity of research and teaching define the basic principles of science. In this way, they shape and promote the formation of personality and thus also economic success. A changeable building structure is created as a dynamic campus on whose terraces science is conducted and broadcast to society. Fed by the fusion of teaching and knowledge, of light and technology, an energy source of knowledge is created inside this architecture, inside the mixing chamber. An autonomous object rises and dissipates until it is spiritualised in the unity of teaching and research.

Biographical
Sonja Mense lives, draws and works in the heart of Münsterland as a designer and illustrator. Her special interest lies in the translation of visual forms of representation within various disciplines such as Communication Design, Digital Art and Science Communication. She experiments and works both in free projects and in close discourse with other creatives and researchers at the interface of design, art and nature. Her conceptual approach combines scientific research with analogue drawings and new technologies to create visual experiences that are both intellectually and technologically accessible. Henry Schaper, a freelance graphic designer and illustrator from Hamburg, has always been enthusiastic about the exchange within and between disciplines. From the general to the detailed, his conceptual design approach always focuses on penetrating the medium in its facets and developing an individual point of view. His great concern is to link new developments with what has gone before, questioning recognised media boundaries – whether digital or analogue, painting or drawing in VR, in free projects or collaborative processes.

The visualisation contrasts the CO₂ content of the atmosphere with Adobe’s corporate profits – as a proxy for an economic and thought system that fuels the climate crisis with its growth ideology, threatens biodiversity, endangers the survival of humanity. 50 years after the ›Limits to Growth‹ report, a lot of hot air, advertising images and greenwashing are also being produced in North Rhine-Westphalia, but a stop to the burning of lignite is being delayed.

The ›Keeling Curve‹, which shows the CO₂ content of the atmosphere in ›parts per million‹, visualises the central indicator of the climate crisis, which has been rising continuously for 50 years. It correlates exemplarily with the economic and thought system in which we live and in which economic growth takes precedence over the preservation of global livelihoods and global equity in resources. With promotional visualisations and visual ›greenwashing&apos‹, this is often underlined by (us) designers with tools from the company Adobe, which with its commercial business model is here exemplarily set against the CO₂-data.
›Adobe‹, the ›air-dried clay brick‹, is a recyclable building material. The Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences is also researching, creating knowledge (or rediscovering it?) that enables the transformation to a circular economy, such as solar supply chains and resource-efficient building materials. It is questionable whether societies fixated on ›novelty‹ and consumption are even capable of implementing such solutions to the problems they create fast enough. It is up to all of us to put pressure on many levels so that the future – instead of catastrophe – becomes plausible.

The 3D scene shows a utopian interaction between nurse, patient and a modern nursing robot.

The robot takes over heavy and redundant tasks. It lifts the patient, whereupon the bed linen changes itself. Assisted in the physical activities, the nurse’s potential is freed up. She can talk to the patient to distract him or make him feel comfortable. In the social interaction with the patient, the nurse now fulfils her actual role. Last but not least, human presence creates communication and emotional support that can positively accompany the healing process.

Biographical
Finja Salzwedel works with 2D and 3D animation and is particularly interested in experiments with digital manipulations of analogue representations of reality. As part of her studies, she presented video collages for the Bielefeld UAS fashion show and remix animations for the typography festival ULTRAFETT, among others. She has been studying Digital Media and Experiment since 2019.

The visualisation is an ironic commentary on the trend: Digital is replacing analogue. The exaggerated juxtaposition of banal everyday problems and a completely digital daily routine is intended to address what is essentially a serious issue. The depiction changes parallel to the real, steadily growing proportion of people with access to the internet – the symbol of digitalisation.

The visualisation points out that advancing digitalisation does not only bring advantages and simplifications. Likewise, it may also lead us humans to adapt to the possibilities and circumstances of technologies rather than questioning whether technologies should not adapt more to us. The exemplary ›activities‹ of a resistant to unpleasant nature depicted in the visualisation belong to the necessary spectrum of human experience, but hardly take place in the digital realm.

Since its foundation, the Bielefeld UAS has wandered through numerous buildings in Bielefeld, Minden and Gütersloh. The AR illustration traces the movements of the faculties located in Bielefeld. A speculative staging of the future is simulated in the form of a network of former, current and yet-to-be-built buildings.

In her text, Beate Rennen-Allhoff chronologically illustrates the emergence of the universities of applied sciences and, in particular, the Bielefeld UAS and its faculties. The possibilities that presented themselves and the hurdles that had to be overcome become clear. At first, the locations of the Bielefeld UAS were spread out over different parts of the city and none of these buildings had been erected for the purpose. The large-scale spread disappeared from Bielefeld’s cityscape when the newly constructed building in Interaktion 1 could be occupied in 2015. This faces the CITEC building of the University of Bielefeld and thus becomes visible as a unit of the Bielefeld UAS.

Biographical
In her work, Serafima Rayskina moves at the interface of drawing, painting and animation. She experiments with the transfer of analogue media into the digital. In her intermedial works, she often uses found footage, existing photographs and films as a basis, which are sometimes supplemented by her own material. Cooperation and exchange with other artists and cultural workers is particularly important to her. Serafima found this in the collective Naturtrüb e.V., which she co-founded in 2019. Naturtrüb is a feminist collective of artists and academics that publishes magazines on current topics.

The visualisation shows how the gender distribution among students at the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences has developed since 1971. Only in 2018 did the picture change with the introduction of the third option ›diverse‹. In the future, you can see how more and more options are taken into account and ultimately merge into a spectrum.

Gender equality is a present topic at universities in Germany. In the meantime, the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences has been able to create a balance between the genders of its students. The visualisation is located exactly at this apex. In the speculative part, the visualisation deals with the question of the extent to which the boundaries of gender roles can be overcome in the future, and what will happen if we add more and more categories to the existing ones. Each time, new scenarios are generated that represent a different future development.

Pac-Man’s maze is a visual metaphor for the utopia outlined by Al-Ani, in which a lifelong dynamic learning path will replace the »award economy«. A societal break from meritocracy is necessary to acquire individual and lifelong relevant competencies with the breakout into free, unstructured space.

Marbles roll through a maze that illustrates the learning paths and credit system of the current education system. A marble can be moved by the viewers by tilting the smartphone. In search of credit points and certificates, the marbles leave a trail that allows no deviations or wrong turns. In order to now enter the utopia after Al-Ani, the smartphone must be jerked upwards, causing all the marbles to fly into the air and now move freely in three-dimensional space. The AR object abstracts a vision of free and lifelong educational paths in the form of simple geometric figures locked into an outdated and inflexible two-dimensional system. Only breaking out into three-dimensional space will enable a constantly changing living network of knowledge.

Biographical
Katharina Lübeck has been studying Communication Design since 2018, but – thanks to the interdisciplinarity possible at the Faculty of Design – has also regularly taken courses in Digital Media and Experiment since the beginning of her studies. Her focus is on digital visualisations and approaches to the playful interaction of image and sound, as well as design work at the interface between the analogue and digital worlds. In addition to her studies, she works independently and has been involved in several exhibitions of the Digital Media and Experiment course, such as Real Time at the Faculty of Design, the fashion show at the WissensWerkStadt Bielefeld and an online exhibition at the Kunstverein Bielefeld.

The pen, the prototypical tool of designers, becomes a metaphor for the discipline.

When the Faculty of Design at the Bielefeld UAS emerged from the Bielefeld School of Crafts and Applied Arts in 1971, the pen was initially still an analogue pen. With the appearance of the four-colour biros, various fields of study were united under one roof. Now, with the new field of study Digital Media and Experiment, the smart pen enters the stage and the boundaries between the disciplines blur. Inspired by Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet, the pens enter into a common choreography in space. Creative excellence emerges in togetherness. In the mutual encircling, productive interfaces between the traditional and the contemporary emerge. In the future, too, the interplay of the different disciplines will be lived and carried outwards at the Faculty of Design.

Biographical
Laura Hiebert has a special preference for exciting illustrations and likes to experiment with analogue and digital techniques herself. Experiencing beyond the sense of sight plays an essential role for her. To this end, she prefers to work with structures in the picture that allow the haptics to be recognised, or allows the viewers to immerse themselves in the works themselves with the help of different realities.

Whether studying is actually permeable for working-class children, for example, always depends on the question of how student housing can be financed. This is why the Federal Training Assistance Act (BAföG) was passed in 1971: a right to support during studies from the state. After graduation, the support has to be paid back – from what is hopefully then earned. A widespread narrative promises that students are protected from precarious employment with the level of education they have attained. But is this narrative (still) true? Much of the data necessary for the visualisation has not been or is not being collected or is not public. Therefore, the visualisation is not based on facts. However, pointing out this white spot in the Big Data as well as the statement of a fairer distribution in future development speaks a clear language.

The visualisation presents a white spot in the data by juxtaposing the developments of the BAföG rate, entry-level salaries and the Bielefeld rent index. Access to housing becomes a measuring tool for social justice and the promise that access to a degree enables better living conditions is questioned.

The object shows an idea of ›Virtual Reality‹. The hands of different users interact in nested layers of reality and thus appear recursively within themselves. The cubes show all those present who are in this infinite space and can collaborate remotely.

The 3D illustration refers to the growing importance of virtual collaboration between students at the Bielefeld UAS and international students. The experience of distance learning in Pandemic already gives us a taste of working at a distance, decoupled from the body, which not only limits us but also offers new possibilities. The gloves depicted, inspired by the retro style of old video games – power gloves – are part of this utopia as a uniformed representation of the participants. As a neutral interface, these gloves allow equal access to collaboration in infinitely scalable dimensions, regardless of origin or gender.

Biographical
Aliana Steputat has been studying Digital Media and Experiment since 2019. She is involved in illustration and animation and discovered experimenting in 3D space during her studies. Already in her first semester, she was represented with animations in the media staging of the fashion show of the Bielefeld UAS.

The visualisation shows the student numbers at the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences since 1971 by faculty. Until 2021, they are based on concrete figures, after which the viewers are invited to make predictions about the further development of the range of courses offered. In the speculative part of the visualisation, generated names cast doubt on the viewers’ ideas.

Through this, visualisation deals with the phenomenon that we try to predict our future every day. This gives us the opportunity to make plans, but it also carries risks. Reading the visualisation clearly is becoming increasingly difficult. Not only the numbers, but also the visualisation is becoming more and more vague, with numbers being randomly generated and the course of history being influenced by randomly generated events. The assumptions of the viewers must increasingly be called into question.

The Oracle Drive becomes the interface between man and machine, enabling telepathic exchange for more rapid development of research and teaching. A curious approach to the object activates and influences the flow of information. The data stream progresses continuously and endlessly, reinforcing the divergent perception of unstoppable time and the sphere at rest within itself.

In order to meet the demands of demographic change in the future, Klaus Hurrelmann sees the future of higher education in the exchange and close cooperation of all important institutions. The information technology revolution is changing the content, form and pace of exchange between higher education, business and society at a rapid pace. These scientific societies could therefore »not exist without the systematic research work of universities and other institutes«. Proposed by the information technology revolution and demographic change, this retrofuturistic information console serves as a helpful oracle to withstand the pressure to innovate.

Biographical
Katharina Meyer has been studying Communication Design since 2019. With a focus on conceptual design approaches, she builds bridges between artistic drawing, painting, animation and design with digital media. She is particularly interested in exploring media boundaries and designing experiences between analogue and digital realities.