Uploaded June 2019 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
http://www.egs.edu Edie Hitchcock discusses her experiences as a student at EGS.
The European Graduate School (EGS) is a cross-disciplinary institution of higher education awarding Masters and Doctoral degrees within its two divisions: Arts, Health and Society (AHS), and Philosophy, Art and Critical Thought (PACT). Founded in Switzerland, the School operates on two locations: Saas-Fee, Switzerland and Valletta, Malta.
Video and edit by Pirooz Kalayeh
http://www.egs.edu Edie Hitchcock discusses her experiences as a student at EGS.
The European Graduate School (EGS) is a cross-disciplinary institution of higher education awarding Masters and Doctoral degrees within its two divisions: Arts, Health and Society (AHS), and Philosophy, Art and Critical Thought (PACT). Founded in Switzerland, the School operates on two locations: Saas-Fee, Switzerland and Valletta, Malta.
Video and edit by Pirooz Kalayeh



![Sha Xin Wei. Synthesis Center. 2017
http://www.egs.edu Sha Xin Wei at The European Graduate School / EGS. Saas-Fee, Switzerland. June 17 2017. Public open lecture for the students of the Division of Philosophy, Art & Critical Thought.
Sha Xin Wei is Director of the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering at Arizona State University in Phoenix, USA. His research interests are essentially interdisciplinary; he focuses on topological media, visualisation technologies, intersections between mathematics and humanities, and the critical study of media arts and sciences.
Sha Xin Wei studied mathematics at Harvard University and then completed his MA and PhD at Stanford University. His doctorate at Stanford University was devoted to “differential geometric performance and the technologies of writing in mathematics, computer science, and history and philosophy of science.”[1] It already reflected the interdisciplinary interests he continues to pursue in his career.
In 2001, he founded the Topological Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. He describes it as “a fresh and unique atelier for art based research about how to make the places in which we live richer but not more complicated.”[2]
Before he became a Professor and Director of the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering at Arizona State University in 2014, Sha Xin Wei was an Associate Professor of Fine Arts and Computer Science at Concordia University in Montreal (2005-2013). He was also the Canada Research Chair in Media Arts and Sciences.
Sha Xin Wei is a co-editor of two journals: Artificial Intelligence and Society and Creative Interfaces and Computer Graphics. He is also a founding editor of the journal Transmutations and a co-editor of the Experimental Practices book series at Rodopi Press.
His most recent monograph is entitled Poiesis and Enchantment in Topological Matter. It is published by MIT Press in 2013 and inspired by various (and diverse) thinkers such as Whitehead, Simondon, Deleuze, Guattari, Heraclitus, Bergson, North, Stengers, Serres, and Badiou. Xin Wei introduces the main argument of his work in the following way: “I argue for an approach to materiality inspired from continuity, field, and philosophy of process, based on ethico-aesthetic as well as technoscientific grounds. This project investigates what could be implied by continuous, or more precisely topological , approaches to media and matter in the concrete setting of installation-events. Another motive is to explore the ethico-aesthetic consequences of topologically creating performative events and computational media, drawing from the critical studies of science and technology. This project is a philosophical investigation that is conducted in a poetic mode of installation or event-based art and technology. This project is a philosophical investigation that is conducted in a poetic mode of installation or event-based art and technology.”[3]
Together with Chris Salter and Laura Farabough, Sha Xin Wei founded Sponge art group (1997) and he is also the author and co-author of numerous art projects including: TGarden responsive environments (Ars Electronica, DEAF, MediaTerra Athens, SIGGRAPH); Hubbub speech-sensitive urban surfaces; Softwear gestural sound instruments; WYSIWYG gesture-sensitive sounding weaving (ICMC, Copenhagen); Ouija movement studies; Cosmicomics video installation (Elektra Montreal); eSea reactive wall (eArts Shanghai); and IL Y A video membrane (Rotterdam, San Francisco, Berkeley, Montreal).
[1] https://graycenter.uchicago.edu/experiments/alternate-reality-a-pervasive-play-project/sha-xin-wei
[2] https://artsmediaengineering.asu.edu/content/sha-xin-wei-named-director-school-arts-media-engineering
[3] Sha Xin Wei, Poiesis and Enchantment in Topological Matter, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2013, pp. vii-viii. Sha Xin Wei. Synthesis Center. 2017](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Yz15LCzQGio/mqdefault.jpg)



![Philip Beesley. Design methods for Public Space. 2018
http://www.egs.edu Philip Beesley, Professor of Philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS. Saas-Fee, Switzerland. June 24th, 2018. Public open lecture for the students of the Division of Philosophy, Art & Critical Thought.
Philip Beesley was born in Westcliff-on-Sea, UK and is now based in Canada. Beesley is an architect and sculptor whose experimental work traverses and transcends proscribed notions of architecture, digital media art, technology, design, biology, fashion, and engineering.
Holding a Bachelor of Fine Art from Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada), a Diploma in Architectural and Mechanical Drafting/Machining from Humber College (Toronto), and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Toronto, Beesley has held positions at several universities and institutions, including the University of Nottingham, the Bartlett School of Architecture/University College London, the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture/CITA of the Royal Danish Academy, the Pratt Institute of Design, and the University of Dalhousie (Canada). In 2011, Beesley was appointed Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo (Canada), where he is also the Director of the Integrated Group for Visualization, Design and Manufacturing as well as the Director of Riverside Architectural Press.
He is the founder of Philip Beesley Architect Inc. (PBAI), a Toronto-based, cross-disciplinary design firm and collective that is associated with the University of Waterloo’s School of Architecture, whose “design methods combine the durable crafts of heavy machining and building with advanced digital visualization, industrial design, digital prototyping, and mechatronics engineering.” Recent installations include Aerial Well Study (Microwave International New Media Arts Festival, Hong Kong, 2014), Epiphyte Membrane (Photography Playground, Berlin, 2014), Epiphyte Chamber (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, 2013), Epiphyte Spring (Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, 2013), Radiant Soil (Espace EDF Fondation, Paris, 2013), and Epiphyte Veil (VIA Festival, Maubeuge / EXIT Festival, Créteil / Lété à Saint-Sauveur Festival, Lille, 2013).
In 2010, Beesley’s Hylozoic Ground (designed with, among others, Rob Gorbet and Rachel Armstrong) was selected as Canada’s entry at the Venice Biennale for Architecture. The piece forms part of the Hylozoic series, initiated at the Musée Des Beaux-Arts in Montréal in 2007, it has since been presented at numerous venues, among them the Lexus Hybrid Art Show (Moscow, 2011), City Gallery Wellington (2012), and, with Sibyl, the 2012 Sydney Biennale. As “responsive architecture,” these installations of Beesley’s answer to a reciprocal relatedness.
Following, or rather preceding this, Beesley asks in the introduction of his book, Near-Living Architecture: Work in Progress from the Hylozoic Ground Collaboration 2011-2013 (edited by Philip Beesley, Riverside Architectural Press, 2014): “Can architecture feel, and know, and respond to their occupants? Might buildings begin, in primitive ways, to come alive?” Convinced, in accordance with the old idea of hylozoism, that “all things are potentially animate,” the “recent progress in the science of artificial life and information technology” seems, for Beesley, to point to “an increasingly diffused line between organic and inorganic matter.”[1]
The author and editor of several books, as well as the author of numerous book chapters and articles, Beesley has also received many prestigious awards, such as the Prix de Rome for Architecture, VIDA 11.0, the Far Eastern International Digital Architecture Award (FEIDAD), the Architizer A+ Award, the ACADIA Award for Emerging Digital Practice, and the Canadian Architect Award of Excellence, to name but a few.
[1] “Philip Beesley: Being responsive,” Interview with Timothy Moore, Architecture Australia, September 2012 (Vol 101: No 5), http://architectureau.com/articles/being-responsive/ (last accessed June 5, 2015) Philip Beesley. Design methods for Public Space. 2018](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZpT6gvk6FGM/mqdefault.jpg)


