Lucid Dreams 2024 – Digital Fungi Festival, 2nd Semester (2024)

The Lucid Dreams Festival 2024 revolved around the theme Digital Fungi and served as a platform for experimental and imaginative projects. It was not about depicting mushrooms in a literal way but about exploring their otherness, their hybrid qualities, and their potential as metaphors for transformation. Within this framework I presented three different works, each highlighting another perspective on digital design: a 3D landscape titled Dream Meadow, an interactive prototype of Reading Kandinsky, and an animated motion poster created specifically for the festival identity.

Motion Poster – Animated Visual for the Festival, 2nd Semester (2024)

The first project was a motion poster that introduced the atmosphere of the festival. It was realized entirely in vvvv gamma and began with a three-dimensional mushroom model. The model was broken down into individual points and reconstructed with small boxes, forming a structure that resembled a dynamic point cloud. This shifting visual constantly oscillated between abstract geometry and recognizable form.
The mushroom rotated slowly around its axis, creating a rhythm that felt steady yet fragile, as if the shape could dissolve at any moment. Behind it, an animated gradient in violet, blue and pink echoed the festival’s branding and added a dreamlike quality. The poster did not merely advertise the event but visually embodied the theme of Digital Fungi, presenting growth and transformation as poetic digital motion.

Dream Meadow – 3D Mushroom Landscape, 2nd Semester (2024)

Dream Meadow extended this theme into a fully immersive 3D world. Created in Blender, the landscape was inspired by the diversity and strangeness of fungi. The mushroom forms were sculpted from freehand sketches on a graphics tablet, which gave them unique, expressive morphologies. Some looked fluid, as if melting into the ground, others crystalline, bioluminescent or mutating into unfamiliar organic shapes.
The use of intense colors, exaggerated textures and playful materiality produced an environment that floated between natural and artificial. Rocks, soil and vegetation anchored the scene, but the surreal mushrooms shifted it into a digital dreamscape. Rather than aiming for biological realism, Dream Meadow created a microcosm of imagination, inviting viewers to wander through a world where nature and technology fuse seamlessly.

Reading Kandinsky – Interactive Prototype, 2nd Semester (2024)

by Lena Gattinger & Mascha Lebedew

The third work, developed with Lena Gattinger, was an interactive prototype inspired by the principles of Kandinsky’s abstract compositions. A Launchpad served as the input device: pressing its buttons activated or deactivated graphic symbols that appeared in the projection. Each action changed rhythm, density and balance of the composition in real time.

The system responded instantly, turning every decision into a visible transformation. Visitors could add or remove elements, shifting the overall structure into harmony or chaos. In this way the work turned Kandinsky’s static abstract language into a living, participatory composition. It highlighted how art and design can become playful and collective, inviting audiences to experience visual decision-making firsthand.

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