Lucid Dreams ´24
Two individual projects presented at Lucid Dreams 2024 during the 1st semester (academic year 2023/24)
Dream Meadow
Short animation was created as part of the Digital Fungi theme and presented at Lucid Dreams 2024
A surreal 3D landscape was created for the festival, inspired by the rich diversity and otherworldly aesthetics of the fungal realm. Drawing from both biological reality and imaginative speculation, the digital scene explores the visual and symbolic complexity of fungi. The entire environment was modeled and built in Blender, with particular emphasis on a distinctive visual language. The organic mushroom forms were shaped through freehand drawing using a graphics tablet, resulting in highly expressive and gestural structures.
The design intentionally plays with exaggerated colors, unusual textures, and playful morphologies. Some mushrooms appear soft and fluid, as if melting or flowing, while others take on crystalline shapes or resemble hybrid creatures that blur the boundaries between plants, animals, and imagined beings. Their forms are ambiguous yet captivating. The surrounding landscape merges natural elements such as rocks, soil, and sparse vegetation with these fantastical growths, creating a spatial collage that drifts between natural realism and digital dreamspace.
The work invites viewers to explore a speculative microcosm that does not aim for recognizability, but rather for the expansion of imagination. There is no clear sense of scale or orientation, and no object is fully defined. The scene unfolds as an open environment where digital design becomes an organic language. This mushroom landscape is envisioned as a poetic experimental space in which the natural and the artificial, the real and the imaginary, dissolve into one another. It exists somewhere between digital fantasy and speculative biology, offering an immersive experience that stimulates curiosity and wonder.
Reading Kandinsky Prototype
by Lena Gattinger & Mascha Lebedew
The interactive prototype of Reading Kandinsky invited visitors to actively engage with the visual composition and become part of its evolving form. Instead of presenting a fixed sequence, the installation offered a responsive system that reacted to each action in real time. Using a launchpad, visitors could trigger, modify, or remove various graphic symbols. Every input had a direct impact on the projection, altering the visual structure and influencing the interplay of shape, rhythm, and surface.
This interaction produced dynamic patterns, shifting forms, and evolving relationships between elements. The symbols did not follow a linear path but appeared at random, with their behavior shaped by the choices of the participants. In this way, the audience became co-creators, continuously transforming the visual language of the piece. The system responded instantly, creating a direct feedback loop between input and image.
By combining intuitive controls with a clear visual vocabulary and a musical structure, the work offered an immersive experience in which design decisions were not only visible but tangible. Reading Kandinsky became an open space for experimentation, challenging conventional boundaries between art, participation, and digital composition.
Motion Poster
Motion poster for the Lucid Dreams Festival 2024
For the Lucid Dreams Festival 2024, an animated motion poster was created that explores themes of transformation, abstraction, and atmosphere. The entire piece was developed using vvvv gamma, which allowed for real-time animation and detailed control over form and movement. The process began with a 3D model of a mushroom, selected for its symbolic and visual connection to the festival’s theme. This model was deconstructed into individual points and replaced with geometric shapes, primarily cubes. The result was a structure reminiscent of a shifting point cloud that moves between abstraction and recognizability.
The mushroom rotates continuously around its vertical axis, generating a calm yet persistent sense of motion. This gentle rotation draws the viewer in and enhances the meditative quality of the piece. The simplified geometry stands in contrast to the organic complexity of the original shape and encourages associations with digital transformation and reinterpretation.
The background animation builds on the festival’s visual identity. Soft gradients in violet, blue, and pink create a dreamlike atmosphere and situate the poster within the broader aesthetic context of Lucid Dreams. The flowing color transitions support the poetic tone of the piece while maintaining a strong visual presence. Together, movement and color create a digital composition that is both technically precise and emotionally evocative. Rather than serving only as a promotional tool, the motion poster becomes an artistic extension of the festival’s imaginative world.