Transform 2025 – Conference on AI, ARt, Design and Society

The Design Campus at Trier University of Applied Sciences invites you to attend the “TRANSFORM 2025 CONFERENCE ON AI, ART, DESIGN AND SOCIETY” from September 24 to 27, 2025. The event is also the closing conference of the KITeGG research network, in which five universities are investigating the role of artificial intelligence in design education.

KISD is widely represented as a project partner: alumni Alina Bertacca and Maayan Reiter will give artist talks, and KISD students Luiz Siquera, Nils Heubaum, and Maximilian Schmalenbach will give a presentation in the AI for Societal Benefit cluster, as will Lucía Diaz. Moritz von Lauffenberg will give a lightning talk in the AI in Design Education cluster. KISD alumna Dzennifer Zachold is presenting in two panels.

KISD teachers Matthias Grund and Lasse Scherffig are presenting together with project partner Tomas Hawranke in the AI in Design Practice cluster. Ben Drusinsky, PhD student supervised by Lasse Scherffig, is giving a lightning talk in the AI for Design-Driven Research cluster.

In addition, KISD students Henrike Hof and Moritz von Lauffenberg are curating an exhibition featuring projects created as part of the KITeGG project at KISD. The exhibition will showcase final projects by Dzennifer Zachold and Johannes Growe, as well as zines from academic seminars dealing with AI-generated images.

A reel shows video works from courses and final theses by Laura Wagner and Lisa Marleen Mantel, Dzennifer Zachold, as well as Aikaterini Sideri, Alina Bertacca, Anna Sokolova, Eva Matzerath, Henrike Xenia Hof, Jana Hartmann, Jule Marie Pickel, Klara Theresa Luna Grüsgen, Kyriaki Deligiannidou, Levon Gabriel Javaheri Kopai, Luka Jacke, Malte Maximilian Kern, Manuel Meyer, Marie Gerda Backhaus, Maximilian Dirk Schmalenbach, Phillip Schulz, and Isabelle Herrmiene Fritsch.

The conference addresses the profound changes that design practices, education, and society are undergoing in the face of evolving AI capabilities, the direction and significance of which remain uncertain. The four-day closing conference will explore questions such as:

How can designers navigate this changing landscape? When does AI promote human creativity and when does it restrict it? How can AI-supported design address urgent sustainability challenges without succumbing to technological solutionism? And above all: Who benefits from these technologies and who is excluded from them?

The aim of the lectures, workshops, and exhibitions is to explore the complex intersections between AI, art, design, and society with nuance and critical awareness, to foster connections between diverse practitioners, researchers, and communities, and to develop practical solutions that address pressing ethical and practical questions in AI-driven design.

The conference is free and open for all.

Please click to find the full programme

Project partners:

Hochschule Mainz, Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach, Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd, Köln International School of Design (TH Köln), Hochschule Trier