AI+D
symposium |

re shape forum @ HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd

Picture of the Aula - KITeGG Summer School 2025 at the HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd

re shape Forum 2025 Recap: Rethinking AI in Art, Design, and Beyond

On May 15–16, 2025, the re shape Forum brought together a dynamic community of artists, designers, technologists, and researchers to explore AI’s evolving role in creativity, interaction, and society. Hosted by HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd, the forum questioned dominant AI narratives, critiqued extractive systems, and envisioned regenerative futures grounded in more-than-human perspectives. Through critical keynotes, boundary-pushing experiments, and cross-disciplinary dialogue, re shape 2025 carved out a vibrant space for reimagining the intersection of AI, art, and design.

Highlights From Every Speaker:


Elisa Giaccardi presenting. Image: Stefan Eigner

Elisa GiaccardiDesign After Extraction: AI and the More-than-Human Turn

A powerful opening keynote from the Full Professor of Design at Politecnico di Milano. Elisa challenged extractive design paradigms, urging a shift toward more-than-human futures. Her talk introduced regenerative AI practices rooted in multispecies collaboration, engaging plants, fungi, animals, and bacteria, to explore AI’s potential beyond control and exploitation.


Tobias Revell presenting. Image: Stefan Eigner

Tobias RevellDesign and the Social Construction of Artificial Intelligence

Tobias, Design Futures Lead at Arup, dissected the narratives shaping AI through speculative design. His critical lens exposed how design reinforces power structures around AI, and how alternative imaginaries can subvert tech determinism, broadening futures beyond speed and consumption.


Maria Luce Lupetti presenting. Image: Stefan Eigner

Maria Luce LupettiDrawing Windows Into Better Timelines

From Politecnico di Torino, Maria Luce brought a deeply reflective critique on our current sociotechnical crises. She questioned the designer’s role amid systemic failures, environmental collapse, and media saturation, calling for practices that resist dystopia and aim for better collective futures.


Niklas Muhs presenting. Image: Stefan Eigner

Niklas MuhsHow Do We Want to Interface With AI?

Niklas, the first designer at Mistral AI and former MIT researcher, explored the mechanics of AI interfaces. By moving away from agent-centric paradigms, he proposed novel modes of human-AI interaction that are transparent, co-creative, and cognitively aligned with user needs.


Eryk Salvaggio presenting. Image: Stefan Eigner

Eryk SalvaggioFeel the Noise: Notes from an Adversarial AI Artist

Eryk, an artist-hacker-researcher hybrid from Harvard metaLAB and RIT, took an adversarial approach to AI. His provocative talk questioned collaboration as a default mode, presenting artworks that subvert, disrupt, and “remove the imagination” of what AI is, revealing its hidden logics and epistemologies.


Niko Klein presenting. Image: Stefan Eigner

Niko KleinLighting a Fire With Damp Wood

As a prototyping lead at Figma, Niko offered a grounded, hands-on perspective on design tooling in an AI age. He spoke about the changing role of prototyping when working with AI, emphasizing flexibility, process-over-output, and the importance of “designing with uncertainty.”


Sures Kumar presenting. Image: Stefan Eigner

Sures KumarReframing Creative Practice

From Google DeepMind, Sures showcased a speculative design engine fully powered by AI. Through this case study, he introduced frameworks for embedding AI meaningfully in creative workflows, stressing the importance of intentionality, context, and criticality when integrating generative tools into practice.


Iohanna Nicenboim presenting. Image: Stefan Eigner

Iohanna NicenboimDesigning-with AI

As postdoctoral researcher at TU Delft, Iohanna asked the audience to shift focus from human-centered to more-than-human design. Her talk spotlighted inclusive, ecological AI systems developed through participatory experimentation, challenging designers to listen to nonhuman voices in shaping future technologies.


Andreas Refsgaard presenting. Image: Stefan Eigner

Andreas RefsgaardBeyond Prompting – Silly Interactive AI

Copenhagen-based artist and creative coder Andreas delivered a joyful and subversive talk on playful interaction design with AI. From meme machines to musical eye-trackers, he demonstrated how absurdity and humor can be powerful tools for critically engaging with digital systems, highlighting both the delight and danger of generative technologies.


A Forum That Lives Beyond the Event

re shape Forum 2025 was more than a series of talks, it was a collective act of imagination. It asked urgent questions: What stories are we telling about AI? Who gets to design it? What kinds of futures do we want to co-create?

Poster Banner

Aula bird view

Socializing

Aula front view

Question in the audience

Pizza

The conversations sparked here will continue to resonate across design studios, labs, classrooms, and creative communities worldwide.

More info and speaker details: reshapeforum.hfg-gmuend.de