• Professional Swiss and international artists, emerging and established, with proven career paths or clear potential, who are interested in harnessing science and technological interventions in their artistic endeavors. Applicants should outline the specific contribution they believe the residency would make to their artistic practice.
  
  
• We welcome projects in diverse fields: visual and media arts; film, digital, mixed media, and imaging; sound and experimental forms of music; experimental design; literary, critical, and speculative writing.

• Travel costs and accommodation in Lausanne. Preferably, applicants will reside in the city during their residency. Offered by the City of Lausanne, accommodation is located in the housing cooperative La Meute, where various cultural practitioners and artists reside. It includes access to a shared studio space, allowing an exchange with Lausanne’s rich cultural scene and local community.
  
  
• A monthly flat fee for living expenses (of CHF 1500).
  
  
• A production budget (of maximum CHF 15000).
  
  
• Curatorial mentoring and supervision for the duration, including the final presentation of the project at EPFL Pavilions.

This path is open to artists and designers who aim to explore techno-scientific possibilities using diverse approaches, with no restrictions in terms of media.

Previous resident artists’ projects included: working on AI and museology as a form of techno-heritage and as decolonial practice; using robotics to restate and question notions of empathy in synthetic intelligence; undertaking material research in the field of exoplanets; and exploring nanooptics and light, the visual potential of AI, unnamed colors that exist beyond visible frequencies, kinesthetic and visual relays between body and environment, and non-linear time. This call thus leaves applicants free to suggest their path of investigation, strongly encouraging them to identify specific laboratories they would like to work with. It aims to span digital practices, artificial intelligence, material explorations, and scientific topics with no restrictions.

We welcome projects in various fields: visual arts; media arts; film, digital, mixed media, and imaging (VR/AR/MR); experimental forms of music; performing arts; design; critical and speculative writing; and fashion. Projects should preferably involve one or more EPFL laboratories or entities, embracing an interdisciplinary approach. Applicants are invited to indicate the scientific directions and the EPFL entities they would like to collaborate with. If such specifications are not made, the curator of the program will assess the potential scientific collaborations that can be established within the framework of the submitted project.

> EPFL website

Previous partner labs and facilities include, among others: Laboratory for Experimental Museology (eM+), Reconfigurable Robotics Lab (RRL), Biorobotics Laboratory (BioRob), Optics Laboratory, Crystal Growth Facility, Laboratory of Applied Photonics Devices (LAPD), Laboratory of Integrated Performance in Design (LIPID), Center for Imaging, Brain Mind Institute (BMI), Laboratory of Quantum Physics (LQP), Advanced Quantum Architecture Lab (AQUA), Earth and Planetary Sciences Lab (EPSL), among many others.

> Link to previous call for selected and funded projects

In collaboration with the EPFL Center for Imaging, this path prioritizes artists familiar with imaging technologies, CGI, digital practices, and visual arts more broadly.

Imaging is fundamental to the digital humanities. It is also a key strategic axis for EPFL, which created the EPFL Center for Imaging in 2021 to strengthen its position as a world-leading institution in imaging science. Interdisciplinary at its core, imaging requires the convergence of numerous skills and types of expertise, with huge potential for new developments that draw on all aspects of science and engineering. Over ninety groups perform world-class research in imaging at EPFL, ranging in scale from the atomic to the cosmological, and spanning a broad range of applications. The mission of the Center for Imaging is to capitalize on this diversity of academic strengths by encouraging interdisciplinary collaborations between imaging labs with complementary fields of expertise.

We invite artists whose practice already manifests an interest in emerging imaging technologies, CGI, digital practices, and visual arts more broadly to submit a project proposal to be developed in collaboration with the EPFL Center for Imaging. We encourage projects that aim to explore this unique repository of transdisciplinary and cross-scale scope, and to investigate its scientific aspects as well as its aesthetic and visual potential. Resident artists may access some of the technical equipment and facilities linked to the center.

> EPFL Center for Imaging

CLIMACT (the Center for Climate Impact and Action) is a joint center undertaking by EPFL and University of Lausanne (UNIL) designed to promote interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research and implement initiatives that address the social, scientific, and technological challenges of climate change mitigation and adaptation.

The climate crisis has and will continue to have an impact on all aspects of society, including cultures, economies, and ways of living. At the same time, the shifts caused by the significant environmental changes currently unfolding on a global scale offer an opportunity for new actionable thinking about sustainable, ecological, and inclusive societies. Through collaboration with CLIMACT’s social and natural science community, this call invites artists and designers to propose alternative societal visions and ecological futures. They are invited to imagine purposeful perspectives for societies of tomorrow that can compete with visions of a dystopian future.

We will gladly consider projects that address the urgency of environmental research and seek to offer alternative models, looking constructively at sustainable futures in reaction to climate change and how societies can rise to the challenge. Projects that imagine a world where climate and social injustice, biodiversity loss, and disparities between the Global North and Global South are replaced by inclusivity, experimental interspecies, Indigenous, and post-colonial approaches to climate change are especially welcome.

> CLIMACT

Hosted by EPFL’s Geometric Computing Laboratory (GCM), this track invites artists, designers, and makers to engage in an intense collaboration with researchers and fabrication experts at GCM.

We welcome project proposals that leverage the scientific research at GCM to explore new geometric and material expressions, aiming to create a sculptural artwork, kinetic installation, or functional application prototype. The resident will have access to GCM’s latest research technology, and computational design tools, as well as a fully equipped fab lab including machines for laser cutting, CNC milling, and 3D printing, standard hand tools, and various custom-built machines. In collaborating with GCM’s team, the resident will receive hands-on support on in-house design software and digital fabrication technology.

Fully supported by the Geometric Computing Laboratory as part of its academic agenda, this residency must take place in Spring (March–June) 2024 or Spring (March–June) 2025.

For more information on GCM’s research activities and past projects in art and design, please refer to:  Geometric Computing Laboratory (GCM)