ATLAS OF HABITATS | INTERSPECIES SCENARIOS

The Atlas of Habitats is an evolving digital archive, documenting animal habitats within forests across Austria, Poland, and Liberia. Emerging from intensive fieldwork and employing techniques such as 3D scanning, imaging, and film, the project offers a sensorial and analytical entry into hidden worlds—mapping intricate patterns of ecological entanglement that remain largely imperceptible to the human gaze.

This term, students will expand the research through the activation of already developed chimeric characters—hybrid entities that blend features of multiple species, embodying the interconnectedness of life beyond human-centered perspectives. These characters are taken into a primeval forest in Poland—both physically and digitally—where students are tasked to situate them by narrating and designing speculative situations, scenarios, and sets. These will continue to explore interspecies interdependencies and lead toward new interpretations of habitat, imagining alternative worlds and spatial translations.

A mid-term video exhibition, scheduled for the end of October, will showcase the videos created by the students. Serving as a platform for dialogue and reflection, the exhibition invites diverse audiences to engage with the multispecies imaginaries and ecological insights developed in the lab.

Following the exhibition, the lab will shift the medium of expression, from smart phone video reels to collages —reverse-engineering the processes and narratives developed during fieldwork and video production. This stage draws from the situated knowledge generated through embodied practice: on-site investigations, digital reconstructions, and speculative storytelling.

Through collective reflection and contextual embedding, the course opens a wider discourse on how ecological systems, behaviors, and habitats can be interpreted, translated, and reimagined—challenging dominant paradigms of design and representation.

Baerbel Mueller, Philipp Reinsberg

This course is a continuation from the previous semester and includes work conducted over the summer of 2025; therefore, no new students can be accepted at this stage/term.