Interaction Design

Amphibious Humanity || IAD at Ars Electronica || 09 – 13 September 2026

Amphibious Humanity
9 – 13 September 2026
Ars Electronica Festival, Campus Exhibition
Linz, Austria

The Amphibious Humanity exhibition challenges and extends our terrestrial mentalities by drawing on the human experience of underwater ocean ecologies. Five interactive projects translate personal immersion experiences from the Mediterranean Sea into terrestrial settings and speculate on the futures such encounters might open. Permeable merges the terrestrial and the aquatic into a unified environment, where defined boundaries dissolve into the immersive, volumetric nature of mist. Inspired by underwater spaces where co-presence unfolds as turbid patterns of motion, Turbid Encounters translates the movement and proximity of surrounding bodies and objects into vibrations that can be experienced through an unusual face mask. In A Bubble, visitors observe a suspended kinetic sculpture that moves above them through the water column, featuring field recordings, volume renderings and live buoy data from the Bay of Valsaline in Croatia. Aquaoism proposes a speculative scientific religion set in a future shaped by climate crisis and the unlimited exploitation of resources. Drawing on the long-standing belief that animals sense natural disasters before humans do, it gathers animals, microorganisms and environmental processes in a living altar, where these distributed forms of non-human intelligence are interpreted as a new source of wisdom. Additionally, the video essay Attunement to the Ocean follows an underwater workshop in which a group of designers, artists, biologists and anthropologists reflect on practices of attuning their bodies to alien marine surroundings, marine species and the ocean on a planetary scale.

These projects have been developed as part of the Master of Interaction Design program and the Swiss National Science Foundation research project Interfacing the Ocean (2023–2028).

Artists: Antoine Bertin, Karmen Franinović, Luke Franzke, Carlo Hatke, Alex Jordan, Roman Kirschner, Wangqing Li, Lin Hsin-Yi, Gaëtan Merminod, Dominik Näf, Anthea Oesterreicher, Samantha Pan, Silvan Roth, Rasa Smite, Luca Somm, Dominic Sutter, Cristina Tarquini, Rasa Weber, Dingyue Zhang

Curating: Roman Kirschner & Karmen Franinović

Coordination and Design: Duy Bui

Turbid Encounters || Carlo Hatke & Wangqing Li || Turbid Encounters translates the movement and proximity of surrounding bodies and objects into vibrations across the face. A wearable mask suspends visual orientation, shifting perception into air as a dense relational medium where co-presence unfolds as turbid patterns of motion.
Turbid Encounters || Carlo Hatke & Wangqing Li || Turbid Encounters translates the movement and proximity of surrounding bodies and objects into vibrations across the face. A wearable mask suspends visual orientation, shifting perception into air as a dense relational medium where co-presence unfolds as turbid patterns of motion.
Permeable || Gaëtan Merminod & Dominik Näf || Permeable merges the terrestrial and the aquatic into a unified environment, where defined boundaries dissolve into the immersive, volumetric nature of mist. Through experimentation with light and water, the work explores the threshold between two worlds, making the invisible tangible.
Permeable || Gaëtan Merminod & Dominik Näf || Permeable merges the terrestrial and the aquatic into a unified environment, where defined boundaries dissolve into the immersive, volumetric nature of mist. Through experimentation with light and water, the work explores the threshold between two worlds, making the invisible tangible.
Aquaoism || Dingyue Zhang & Hsin-Yi Lin || Aquaoism is a speculative scientific religion set in a future shaped by a climate crisis due to human's unlimited exploitation of resources. A living altar, where multiple species meet, representing a collection of non-human intelligence as a new source of wisdom.
Aquaoism || Dingyue Zhang & Hsin-Yi Lin || Aquaoism is a speculative scientific religion set in a future shaped by a climate crisis due to human's unlimited exploitation of resources. A living altar, where multiple species meet, representing a collection of non-human intelligence as a new source of wisdom.
A Bubble || Samantha Pan & Luca Somm || A suspended kinetic sculpture that invites visitors to lie beneath a bubble that moves through the water column and beyond. Field recordings, volume renderings and live buoy data from the Bay of Valsaline in Croatia allows everyone to breathe freely underwater.
A Bubble || Samantha Pan & Luca Somm || A suspended kinetic sculpture that invites visitors to lie beneath a bubble that moves through the water column and beyond. Field recordings, volume renderings and live buoy data from the Bay of Valsaline in Croatia allows everyone to breathe freely underwater.