The Hmm is proud to present the participants of the Emerging Digital Makers Program. The group is from different backgrounds and have various specialisations. Take a look at their projects and expertise!

Ål Nik

Ål Nik (Alexandra Nikolova) is a mixed-media artist, graphic designer, and facilitator who  experiments with various mediums such as visual, digital, and sound art. She recently finished her master’s programme in Fine Art and Media Design: Experimental Publishing at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. In the context of her master’s research, she aimed to find accessible entry points for other visual makers to use sound in their research and artistic work. Her practice explores the relationships between artistic research, making and facilitating experiences for practitioners to collaborate, as well as addressing today’s societal challenges.

André Brocatus

André Brocatus is a designer and artist from Utrecht, the Netherlands. He works in digital media, often using  existing digital images, mostly fashion photos and famous artworks. He uses computer code to  analyse, simplify, and combine  these into new pictures. In doing so he examines how pictures are constructed, what their relation to the ‘original’ is, and how they are connected to all other pictures and subjects. With seemingly simple ideas and minimal images he is looking to reveal a mystic truth about art and reality.

Ekaterina Konovalova

Ekaterina Konovalova is a media graphic designer and visual artist with a passion for storytelling. She crafts a visual language that is both collective and personal, using sociological narratives to invite inclusivity. She enjoys working with various tools such as printed materials, code, video and animation, and type design. Her work is a dialogue rather than a monologue, fostering exchanges of ideas and perspectives with the audience. Believing that art is a participatory journey, she creates works that engage and are shaped by collective consciousness. After graduating from ArtEZ in Graphic Design, Ekaterina founded her own studio, Studio Konek. 

Gizem Öz

Gizem Öz is an electronic music composer and sound artist based in Amsterdam. Her work is inspired by our sensory-being in the world; the feelings and emotions that are evoked by listening, smelling, seeing, touching, and tasting. In her installations and performances, she seeks to create conditions that open up our senses to new experiences, emotions and aesthetic sensations. She creates soundscapes, installations, music for dance, and deep listening by using processed field recordings, acoustic and electronic instruments.

Martina Janickova

Martina Janickova is a researcher and dramaturge based in Rotterdam. She has recently obtained her master’s degree in Contemporary Theatre, Dance and Dramaturgy at Utrecht University. As part of her master research, she aimed to form an understanding of introspective theatre, building upon themes of post-human spirituality in contemporary theatre. She is interested in the intersections of post-anthropocentric care, technology, and spirituality. Currently, she explores memes as a research tool and artistic medium.

MULTIFEMALE MEGAMIX

MULTIFEMALE MEGAMIX (MFMM) is an independent artistic research project founded by Michelle Parrott and Killian Butler in 2021. MFMM’s research is broadly based on a shared interest in hyper-consumable media, media culture, contemporary spectacle aesthetics, the construction of celebrity, internet driven cultural trends, and how these are all influenced by emerging and established digital technologies. Our work is multidisciplinary, spanning podcast/radio, graphic design, keynote presentations, video, and visual art. Our members, Killian Butler and Michelle Parrott both graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and have backgrounds in graphic design, film, and visual art. 

Silke Bellefleur

////****<<>Silke Bellefleur is a multi-media artist. ***<> She is fascinated by the following themes: //**<<>Meta bold\\\\\***<>> &. Conceptual folklore*****\\|||/ And interested in identity in a mediated society; Communication, why and how do we share information? ~~~ ***Her latest projects are: 1) Tijdschrift ASO –associations around 1 theme– for whom she created three alter ego’s: Doris Fritzi Mathilde: “Lovely to be introduced here.” Hansje. De bijzondere Schrijver. “I feel so awkward.” & Baby Vizion: “NO COMMENTt” each with their own online and offline platform >>^^~.2) Colorful tents, drawings and projections. \\_*She is fond of confetti and spaghetti, to name a few. ~~**

Kaja Cichocka

Kaja Cichocka is a Polish visual artist and designer, exploring the intersection of photography, artificial intelligence and fashion. Her fashion education background echoes in her work through the sartorial and corporeal motives, which are woven into her practice. She is most interested in creating digital video work, which doesn’t aim to capture reality, but searches for an exaggerated reflection. Her solo as well as commissioned work have been featured in Der Greif and Kaltblut Magazine. She graduated from Amsterdam Fashion Institute and is currently based in Amsterdam.

Te Veo

Te Veo is an artist-design duo formed by Nikola Scheibe, alias Nika de la Loncha and Lukas Völp. They are particularly interested in the ways in which algorithms and (viral) pop cultural content are involved in shaping the identities and opinions of their consumers, and in the formation of stereotypical roles and body images. They work on projects with cultural institutions such as MU Artspace and ArtEZ, regarding education in digital and physical literacy. Both graduated from the Design Academy in Eindhoven in 2022. Their works have been exhibited in places like the Dutch Design Week, MU Hybrid Arthouse, Ars Electronica or KONTEJNER.

Jaakko Myyri

Jaakko Myyri is a Finnish Artist based in Amsterdam. After graduating from Gerrit Rietveld Academie his works have been presented in places like Linz FMR 21 in Austria and many online and physical exhibition spaces internationally. In 2022 he received the Artist Start Stipendium from the Mondriaan Fonds. His mixed-medium sculptures and digital works seek to become extensions of ourselves similarly to the technologies we use with hybrid-properties, speculating on our subjectivities and affects they produce. 

Kexin Hong

Kexin Hong (b. China) is a multidisciplinary artist and designer working with video, installation, and digital fabrication to explore psychosocial and political forces in the digital realm. She investigates the increasingly blurred lines between reality and virtuality, the real and the fictive, truth and post-truth. Kexin does this particularly in relation to the self and how it responds to bodies of power in the digital age. She investigates the ways in which propaganda exploits a symbolic ‘other’ to achieve its political objectives, specifically in the context of the post-truth era and social media. 

Sarah Saleh

Sarah Saleh is a visual artist and DJ from Lebanon currently based in Amsterdam. Sarah holds a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design and Art Direction from Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan, Italy, and completed her master’s degree at the Disarming Design department at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. Her practice revolves around the intersection of sound and moving image in relation to identity and belonging. Due to her experiences of living in different countries, migrating from one place to another, Sarah’s work is full of longing, questions, memories and noise. She works with personal archives and field recordings to create multichannel and multilayered installations.  Her works have been featured in L’Orient le Jour and Selections Art Magazine. In her free time she performs together with Claartje Barkhof as a DJ duo ‘Saar and Claar’ as monthly residents at Radio Tempo Não Pára where they host the “Chill Out Room”. 

Yujin Joung 

Yujin Joung is an Interdisciplinary designer, researcher, and artist based in the Netherlands. Her work shows a deep interest in the equality and justice issues we face today and offers a unique perspective. She achieves this by approaching socio-political controversy with empathy and sensitivity. Yujin works with performance, ceramics, interactive prototype and installation, and film as design tools to deconstruct and reconstruct the society we are living in.

Alexander Jermilov

Our present times are defined by a prevailing sense of vertigo and disorientation caused by the rapid acceleration of digital technology. The emergence of the attention economy, driven by social media platforms and their addictive design patterns, Artificial Intelligence generating images, texts and social interactions that feel uncannily real, algorithms threatening the sense of control we have over our own choices, are examples of technological forces that fracture and destabilise our perception and comprehension of the world and reality. Alexander Jermilov’s art reflects on the complexities of a rapidly evolving world, and the impact they have on our identity and sense of belonging.

Diana Gheorghiu

Diana Gheorghiu is a Romanian artist living and working in The Hague, The Netherlands. Her output comprises computer-generated characters, which are framed within static images, videos, and installations. The characters are usually taking care of themselves in a detached manner, their bodies contorting, deforming, and performing. Their dissociated selves illustrate a form of personhood that has subsumed the body to a regimes of control in the face of an uncertain world. She uses these computer-generated characters to explore the topics of self-care, new food, and the wellness industry. Diana graduated in 2019 from the Photography department of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. 

Fillip Groubnov

Filipp Groubnov is an interdisciplinary artist. He was born in Belarus in 1995, where he lived until moving to the Netherlands in 2015 to pursue a career as an artist. Filipp’s work is informed by his background in science (having studied in the physics faculty of Belarusian State University), his fascination of the biological systems and their relation to the human symbolism. 

Flavie Liu

Flavie Liu is a research-based artist and designer working in Eindhoven. She sees herself as a link and mediator between the human and more-than-human worlds, crafting speculative narratives to reimagine the power dynamics and modes of coexistence between humans, plants, AI, and technologies challenging prevalent human-centric biases and binary oppositions. Flavie employs various media to materialise her vision, often resulting in installations that include sculptures, videos, and images. She recently completed her master’s degree in Social Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven. 

Léa Cadieux

Léa Cadieux explores digital technology as a medium for spaces and creates new typologies of virtual experiences. Her designs respond to the transformation of social dynamics through digital technology, and explore communication and engagement between humans, non-humans, and objects. These days, she works on building cross-disciplinary networks for collaboration and teaches how to design hybrid environments at the Design Academy Eindhoven, where she got her master’s degree. She hopes that her work as an educator, performer, and designer promotes the queering of our virtual environments.

Deniz Kurt

Deniz Kurt (Turkey, 1988) is a media artist and creative technologist based in Amsterdam. After completing her bachelor’s degree in Linguistics, Kurt obtained her academic background in Media & Cultural Studies (MSc), and Creative Industries (MA). In her dissertation “Artistic Creativity in Artificial Intelligence”, Kurt explored the field computational creativity, by defining how creativity works in human intelligence as a cognitive ability, and if and how we can mimic this ability in machine intelligence. As a programmer and designer, she is working on the synthesis of technology and art as a medium. Kurt’s works addresses the applications of data visualisation, machine learning, and algorithmic aesthetics, while exploring the speculative scenarios around future design, generative art, bio-design, creative coding, and audio-visual installations, exhibited in spaces such as NDSM Fuse, Ars Electronica, IMPAKT and Dutch Design Week. She applies a variety of artworks in her new media studio Warpglaze, and works as a Creative Technologist in Dentsu Creative Amsterdam.