Twist, Shift x Shake - Diversabilities for Art and Design
Project Leader: Florian Sametinger
Project Team: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Karin Harrasser, Univ.-Prof. Elke Bachlmair, Univ.-Prof. Mag. Mario Zeppetzauer, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Martin Kaltenbrunner (University of Arts Linz), Ass.-Prof. Dr. Katta Spiel (TU Vienna)
Project Partners: Prof. Dr. Kathrin Gerling (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), Dr." Monika Sommer (House of Austrian History), Dr. Daniel Wessolek (Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg), Mag. Horst Ganitzer (Bundes-Blindenerziehungsinstitut), Vera Rosner-Nógel (Danceability), Rua M. Williams, Ph.D. (Purdue University), Assoc. Prof. Dr. DI Ingrid Graz (JKU Linz), Prof. Dr. Jürgen Tchorz (TH Lübeck), Thomas Tajo (Vision Inclusive), Martí Sánchez Fibla (Artificial Intelligence Research Institute Bellaterra), and many more.
Type of Funding: FWF Emerging Fields
Project Duration: October 2026 to September 2031
Institut: Institut für Design / Institut für Institut für Bildende Kunst und Kulturwissenschaften (Kunstuniversität Linz) ; Institut für Informatik (TU Wien)
People who perceive and feel the world outside established norms or move creatively within it are often not taken into consideration in design and art. Design and art often implicitly assume that they already know how people see, feel, hear and move. Anyone who deviates from this norm is catered for at a later stage, if at all. A ramp here, an audio description there.
The project does not start with adapting, but with thinking and designing. We ask: What can design and art know when diverse skills are used as a method, not as a special case?
A blind researcher brings more than a perspective on blindness. Their way of thinking and questioning visual culture becomes an important tool in its own right. A deaf designer who perceives spatially and tactilely more sharply asks questions about sound-centered design that hearing people can't even ask.
We want to encourage people with disabilities in their research. This is the core of the project: For us, skills that lie outside the usual norms are not problems that need to be solved but starting points for new ideas.
The project is supported by a coordinating hub and four specialized research laboratories: three at the University of Art and Design Linz, one at the Vienna University of Technology. They work both side by side and in exchange: in teams with mixed skills, in joint workshops and public events where research, art, and activism come together. This results in new artefacts, new methods and new theories – but also in new ways for people with diverse skills to research and design themselves.
This is not a small shift, because for centuries design and art have been built on a narrow image of imagined normality. The project aims to show that another starting point is not only fairer, but also more productive for science, art and design.
This research is funded in whole by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) EFP1789125 9/20
10.55776/EFP
