ACTLab @ EGS


Digital Arts and Media – European Graduate School in Switzerland

The fascinating world of convergent media is bridging the gap between the digital world and the physical world, enabling humans new forms of connectivity and modes of traveling across geographical, social, and cultural distances. Our mission is to provide new tools for interactive experiences, methods of self expression, and the ability to document projects for greater exposure for attaining resources, research, and support in communities around the globe. We create multi-sensory interactive experiences that immerse participants in a new world. By bending your perspective through digital tools, we are able to bring back magic into the everyday experience, encourage play and imaginative problem solving, and enhance points of connectivity between artists, therapists, clients, and people of all backgrounds. Technology also grants people new modalities of self-expression. With the right training, filmmakers and multimedia artists can guide people through an empowering process of art making that creates magical results. As we take our projects into the world, proper documentation and presentation enhances our ability to reach a new audience, receive funding and support for our research or practice, and help teach others across the world how to achieve similar results. Our global village is beginning to appreciate the open source knowledge the internet provides, empowering everyone to be a teacher and a student, to share our knowledge and skills for the betterment of all. Learn to use the tools at hand, choose a project that resonates with your purpose and passion in life, and we will provide the means to achieve those goals and how to learn about yourself in the process.

The EGS Arts, Health and Society Division (AHS) offers programs in the Expressive Arts, which are arts-based, community-oriented, environmentally-sensitive and follow an adult-learning model. These programs seek to restore confidence in poiesis (the Greek word for making or shaping). Art-making stems from the human capacity to shape both self and world. Training and research at the Arts, Health and Society Division of the European Graduate School are based on that capacity and encourage students to take responsibility for shaping their development as learners in a collaborative and supportive atmosphere. The Arts, Health and Society Division offers graduate and postgraduate degrees and certificates: Master of Expressive Arts Therapy, Master of Expressive Arts Coaching, Consulting and Education, Master of Expressive Arts Conflict Transformation and Peace Building, Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies and Doctorate in Expressive Arts.

Last year, a new experimental module in Digital Arts and Media was added to the course list as an evolution to the field of intermodal expressive arts. Professor Sandy Stone, world-renown academic theorist, artist, and performer, acts as founder and facilitator of the innovative space known as the ACTLAb. Hybrid between a mad scientist’s laboratory and high end production studio, the ACTLab is a space designed to inspire personal growth and transformation through collaborative creative efforts, open discussion forums, and the ultimate goals to “make stuff, take risks, and be awesome”. We are recruiting students for this coming summer semester to ensure that this innovative program will grow strong and resonate within the global community.

By enrolling in the European Graduate School, you will be transported to another world of magical enchantment. The school is located in a wonderful mountain village high in the Swiss Alps. No cars are allowed in the streets, so the only sounds that rock you to sleep is the constant rushing of water, pouring from the glacial peaks. The school is surrounded in fields of wildflowers and directly out the door begins the trail up a fairy-land mountain. The summer climate keeps the whole area warm and bursting with life. The community of expressive artists, teachers, philosophers, dancers, poets, and painters is welcoming and loving. No one is able to enter this school without unlocking deep introspective understanding, expressing these new ideals of the self through movement, sound, and light. Though it feels like a paradise vacation on the outside, the hard work and training going on within these walls is powerful and rewarding. You will play and learn with every passing minute.

Explore the lively space where arts and digital media converge in our technology-enriched Alpine environment. Join this three week intensive to master cutting edge digital techniques at the frontiers of interactive Expressive Arts. We encourage unconventional approaches, flexibility, and transdisciplinarity: not only for their intrinsic worth, but because multiple knowledges are what you need to thrive in an era of exponential change. Join our intensive, full-immersion learning experience and our international community of award-winning researchers, entrepreneurs, performers, artists, and scholars. Come imagine with us!