Sebastian Gatz and matt lambert: two new doctoral students in design and craft

Konstfack's doctoral research group has expanded with Sebastian Gatz (design) and matt lambert (craft). Gatz's doctoral thesis project is about creating a new aesthetic language that incorporates large data sets relating to humans, animals and plants, where he blends digital and analogue design processes. lambert, using the language of jewellery, unpacks the potential of different forms of history that are buried in what already exists.

Sebastian Gatz is the new candidate for the doctoral position in Design. His BA is in architecture, at the Münster School of Architecture, and his MA (also in architecture) was completed in 2017, at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.

Sebastian’s work is rooted in his investigations into digital design production, the human body and architecture, and within the context of climate change. He lists fiction-based speculative art installations and architecture, mechanics, electronics, digital fabrication, coding, machine learning and AI, as all being important to his practice

His planned research project is about creating a new aesthetic language that incorporates large data sets relating to humans, animals and plants, where he blends digital and analogue design processes. In the abstract, Sebastian sums up his doctoral proposal like this:
"The project’s overall objective is to develop and explore new non-anthropocentric design workflows and aesthetics for digital fabrication, which are specialized for the production of cohabitational multi-species Architectures."

He contextualises this by explaining that:
"New holistic workflows are needed, as resources and urban spaces become sparse assets in a world of climate change. The proposed workflows are based on various data sets related to humans, animals, and plants while using machine learning methods as a tool for aesthetic and relational data exploration and materialization. Using both digital and analogue production methods, fragments, process drawings, data sets and prototypes will be evaluated."

matt lambert is the new candidate for the doctoral position in Craft. They have an MFA in metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and have just completed a Masters degree in Critical and Historical Craft at Warren Wilson College.

One of matt’s central interests is in using body adornment as a framework to push the preconceptions and possibilities of jewellery, as it's traditionally understood. They also approach jewellery as a mode through which, as they describe it, to blur the fields of design, craft, fashion, and art — and, they have described their interest in exploring the queer and liminal spaces of jewellery.

matt points to their academic training in craft theory, art history, psychology/human sexuality, and cultural studies as being important to their proposed research, and argues — in relation to their own practice, and their doctoral proposal — that:

"The significance of jewellery as it relates to cultural theory and queer theory, as well as its ability to visually represent these concepts, is an important, even urgent, conversation that needs to take place, both within the craft and design realm and in larger cultural contexts and communities."

matt sets out that:
"The aim of my research is to unpack the potential of different forms of history that are buried in what already exists. Using the language of jewellery, I create objects of protection from heteronormative systems … I am proposing to examine contemporary jewellery through a queer theoretical lens to produce alternative methods of making, displaying, and representing the body."

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Konstfack is Sweden’s largest university for arts, crafts and design. Since 1844, we have educated a diverse range of professionals within these fields as well as art and sloyd teachers. We conduct both artistic and scientific education/research and currently have 900 students and 200 employees. www.konstfack.se