SOFT TOUCH, a project by jüngerkühn, explores the potential that sensitive machines hold for craftsmanship. The studio for product design, design research, and digital crafting uses the latest technologies and experimental production processes to rethink the fundamental properties of material, objects, technologies, and processes. In the process developed specifically for SOFT TOUCH, pre-formed, dried ceramics are machined. Sensors scan the object's surface and responsively guide tools along it. Unlike conventional processing methods where the object is shaped after a digital template, the overall image emerges symbiotically, combining pre-programmed patterns and tool shapes in response to the machine's sensory inputs. Returning this soft touch to the robot is more than a play of technology; it is a conscious change in the premise of machine-assisted production: a rejection of standardization. Instead, it hints at a new form of material-led digital production that adapts to available conditions rather than simply creating a virtual ideal and is, in doing so, drawing from the richness of handcrafted objects.

SLOW PATTERNS is a collection by Meyers & Fügmann, a studio specializing in textile and product design. Their work combines craftsmanship with industrial processes and follows approaches that take into consideration not only the qualities of the end product but also its material origins, cultural value, and long-term environmental impact. The belief in slow consumption, as seen in SLOW PATTERNS, is often transformed into innovative deceleration. From the undogmatic approach of combining different yarns dyed with both, natural and synthetic dyes, emerges a poetic textile collection that visualizes its own lifecycle: when exposed to sunlight, meticulously composed color gradients become visible over time. As natural colors fade, synthetic ones retain their color fastness over extended periods. The material becomes a conscious testament to time lost and regains emotional, mnemonic qualities in an industry marked by ephemeral, affective gimmicks.

SPRWOOD by Sofia Souidi aims to alter the material foundations of a widely used material in architecture and design: unlike conventional fiberboards, she does not employ the carcinogenic environmental toxin formaldehyde in the manufacturing process, but instead uses a specially developed binding agent on organic basis. Souidi works at the intersection of design and material science. Balancing micro and macro perspectives, she develops objects and materials that reflect production processes and associated systems, opening new perspectives on manufacturing techniques. Her work focuses on contemporary solutions beyond purely pragmatic functionalism, often unlocking new design potential: SPRWOOD's sustainable approach allows unprecedented emphasis on the visual properties of wood fibers, breaking industrial production standards, and creating recycled materials with unexpected visual versatility.

The video installation by ZEITGUISED, whose visual work focuses on calculated forms, presents a dynamic setup in a simulated three-dimensional space. ZEITGUISED explores unstable forms, liminal forms of transition, forms of becoming, and those that defy final definition. Constant visual transformation is used as a design element referencing the specific momentousness of reality. The setup of EMERGING consists of a few basic elements interconnected through a minimalist rule set, resulting in a complex, constantly changing form that is calculated in real-time during the exhibition. EMERGING creates an adaptable, intelligent presence, capable of altering its behavior: a dynamic cloud, a kind of adaptive swarm, but without inherent programmed swarm behavior – an elemental digital entity pointing to the radical paradigm shift in human conceptions of intelligence and with whom we share it on this planet.

Behind the objects of PARADREAM, that are perpetually rising and gliding back down, stands Adrianus Kundert, a designer specializing in product and spatial design. His overall approach is, just like the formal language of his objects, characterized by joyful aesthetic play, a willingness to experiment, and an unexpected approach to source(d) materials. His works often attempt to replicate specific gestures or physical states from a standpoint of craftsmanship or technology – an act of translation from utility object to toy, from concrete object to idiosyncratic apparatus. PARADREAMS aligns with this approach, allowing to pause in a contemplation of the slow descent and providing this ephemeral aesthetic experience in a continuous loop, continually replayed and made perpetually available. From a desire to capture this state of gently gliding flight and make tangible the childlike joy in this ultimately futile resistance against gravity, emerges an apparatus, an installation, an experimental play with expectation and result. In this repetition the state ultimately becomes a gesture, an act of object-based storytelling, through which Adrianus Kundert creatively explores new or seemingly lost experiential horizons of the past.