REFRESH Keynote & Opening Night: Worldbuilding – Liminal Bodies
How and why do immersive productions affect our perception of the everyday, and what if machines begin to sense and actively start configuring our world? The opening night of REFRESH 2026, a 4-day festival, brings together two perspectives on immersive experiences that reflect on the shifting definition of "body" and "mind" — on perception, presence and agency — in the digital age.
REFRESH 2026 is a 4-day festival featuring keynotes, masterclasses and an exhibition running until April 12, bringing together acclaimed designers, artists, and researchers from Switzerland and the US to envision possible futures and new fields of action for design and the arts.
Discover all REFRESH Festival events:
REFRESH Luma Calendar - Register here for all Festival events
REFRESH Festival Overview - Read more about the artists and artwork
Program
6:00pm // Doors Open
6:30pm // The Arts and Politics of Immersion: Sensing, Bodies, and Machines
Keynote by Prof. Dr. Christopher Salters, Professor for Immersive Arts and Director of the Immersive Arts Space at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)
The interest in immersion as a model for aesthetic experiences that involve «walking into artworks» rather than observing them at a distance has gained interest from creators, curators, and audiences over the last decade. Yet, the issues brought up by the immersion understood as digital-technologically mediated experiences, have remained unresolved.
In particular, questions of absorption/saturation versus reflection/critical distance and how immersive environments produce knowledge and experience based on the role and presence of audiences’/participants’ bodies, continue to shape discussions among art historians, anthropologists, sociologists of science in addition to practitioners.
This keynote explores the question of why artworks that «forego history in the name of a kind of intensity of experience» (as Rosalind Krauss once wrote) have become so popular in an age of increasing loss between fiction and reality, the physical world and its digital doppelgänger.
7pm // Sensing Machines
Keynote by Yasaman Sheri
As computation gains perception, the infrastructures of knowledge and understanding become increasingly legible through sensors, outsourced and infrastructural conditions of contemporary life. From machine vision to environmental sensors, sensing systems determine what becomes visible, actionable, and governed. Airborne Particles, Biological Exposure, Meta Data & Datasets and Planetary Infrastructure, are just a few examples of modern life’s imperceptibility without technical mediation. Within such a condition, sensing apparatuses operate simultaneously as tools of understanding and instruments of power.
Through examples from machine sensing, material science, and ecological monitoring, the talk examines sensing across practices and histories as sites of critical inquiry for technological and ecological entanglement. Machines, materials, and environments co-define new knowledge and ecological relationships. The talk speaks to the increased dependency on technical mediation, carrying political, cultural, and ethical questions. Drawing from design, science, and critical ecology, Sheri argues that sensing technologies do not only reveal the world, they actively configure it.
7:30pm // Networking, Drinks & Appetizers
8:30pm // Doors Close
Speakers
Prof. Dr. Christopher Salter, Professor for Immersive Arts, Director of the Immersive Arts Space, Co-Head of REFRESH at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)
Yasaman Sheri, Designer, Researcher, Writer, and Principal Investigator of the Synthetic Ecologies Lab at Serpentine Galleries and is Associate Professor at Media Design Practices at Art Center College of Design
About REFRESH 2026
REFRESH 2026 is a partnership between the Department of Design and the Immersive Arts Space of the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), and Swissnex in San Francisco.
The festival is an initiative of the Department of Design and the Immersive Arts Space of the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), and is traveling to the US for the first time.
This 7th edition of REFRESH focuses on “Algorithmic Entanglements”, reflecting the impact of digital technologies on society and the planetary well-being. The line up highlights the crucial role of creative practitioners and thinkers engaging critically and responsibly with digital transformation.
Identity / Motion Design: Abhash Mittal. © ZHdK
About Swissnex in San Francisco
Swissnex in San Francisco is an initiative of the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). Our vision at Swissnex in San Francisco is to connect tomorrow by empowering the next generation of innovators to collaborate and create futures where the planet and society thrive.
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