Institute of Design and Communication and Klanglicht 2025

Their projects explored the interplay of colours, forms, music, and text, inviting visitors to engage with the installations in personal and unexpected ways.

VERTIGO

Location: Antoniuskirche
For their project “Vertigo”, our master design students have been exploring this year’s festival theme: intoxication. The resulting works transform the nave of Graz’s Antoniuskirche into an immersive media experience that presents a wide range of six artistic interpretations — from the intoxication of love to the loss of control, from the tension between nature and machines to the pull of threatening forces. Light and sound are not only used as artistic tools but are also deliberately employed by students from the Media Design, Sound Design, and Interaction Design programs to create rich, multi-layered narratives.

The project was supervised by Astrid Drechsler, Daniel Fabry, Michael Kernbichler, Didi Mosbacher, and Roman Pürcher.

In addition to the Vertigo project, other students from the Institute of Design and Communication also participated in Klanglicht 2025 with their own projects:

LET GO

Location: Schlossbergstollen, Zugang über Schlossbergplatz
Information Design Student Konstantin Postl, Mattia Fiacco Mazzini, Xaver Rath – LET GO
Not every moment needs to be shaped. Sometimes profound changes occur when people decide not to shape the experience, but to observe it. That is the message of ‘Let go’. The installation by Konstantin Postl, Mattia Fiacco Mazzini and Xaver Rath explores the tension between control and acceptance in dreams and thus also in life. The audience can influence the dream they experience here via an interface: every touch changes it. But the more interaction there is, the more resistance the system offers. Chaos and emptiness follow, giving way to beauty only when control ends – and we simply let go.

THE CROSSING

Location: Schlossbergstollen, Zugang über Schlossbergplatz
Interaction Design Masterstudents Alice Zanutti & Bensu Kaya
Surface water that initially appears calm is moved by hidden currents. Warm white is constantly disturbed by aggressive red. And a carousel of silhouettes spins incessantly. There is no thought of calm – let alone safety – here. The audience watches from a distance. Intervention is not possible. ‘The Crossing’ by Alice Zanutti and Bensu Kaya is an installation of light and shadow that tells the story of migration: displacement, the illusion of safety, danger, death and, last but not least, the world’s passive view of humanitarian crises.

THE DRAGON’S CAVE

Location: Schlossbergstollen, Zugang über Schlossbergplatz
Media Design Masterstudent Joschua Hohenbrink – In his project ‘Die Drachenhöhle’ (The Dragon’s Cave), Joschua Hohenbrink tells the story of a dragon that rests deep within the Schlossberg hill. However, it does not hide itself away; rather, the hill itself is the dragon. It is embedded in the geological and cultural history of the place and remains hidden in the layers of time and nature. With growing plants that become a network of lines, which in turn form a dragon, Hohenbrink shows a cycle of transformation, life, decay and rebirth.