The aim of this department is to develop an individual visual language through engaging creatively and productively with contemporary and historical forms of photography, typography and graphic art, as well as the discourses associated with them. An openness which encourages experimentation, including experimentation which involves the many connections between writing, images, the moving image and objects in 3-dimensional space is characteristic of this department.

Students' learning and research in this context are structured by their own artistic development intentions, and an individual artistic approach emerges through the interplay between practical and conceptual work and in relation to contemporary artistic movements and theoretical discourses. This will involve developing the ability to analyse and define one’s own artistic position, to understand it in relation to the wider context of culture, and to contribute to altering this context itself. As well as the realization of artistic work, this subject area also deals with presenting and mediating art in the context of the various institutional and social fields available within the art business system. As well as gallery visits and annual exhibitions, the university’s own gallery also offers an opportunity to explore and discuss matters relating to presenting art and images in general and to their reception. The accompanying academic/scientific training gives additional depth to the artistic questions and experiences, and offers historical and theoretical knowledge and practical methods that help to advance students' artistic understanding of themselves and of history. 

Taking the artistic intentions of the student as the starting point, a wide range of approaches to typographical and graphical production will be discussed. The question of what position is occupied by typography and graphic art in the context of the different artistic disciplines and the corresponding discourses will be explored. Research and experimentation will give students the opportunity to develop their own typographical and graphical ways of expression which can be appropriately integrated into »non-typographical» and »non-graphical« projects. The difference between this and a conventional practical introduction to typography or graphic art is primarily that the person or persons posing the questions about the creative process is/are also the person or persons who must answer them. When author and compositor are the same person, then composition can surpass its secondary nature (»In certain circumstances, typography can be art«). The most basic task of students will be to engage with analogue and digital media. In order to gain experience in the different areas of work – such as lithography, printing techniques, interface and web design, students will be encouraged to make use of the university’s interdisciplinary approach to study.  

The photograph as an image – in the history of the image and in the context of other art forms – is the starting point for instruction in the subject Artistic Photography. The properties of photography as a trace and an imprint and at the same time an abstraction and a construct of reality offer a wide spectrum of approaches open to artistic concepts and concepts for artistic work. In the choice of forms of media, processes and ways of presentation and in the ways they are combined, the limits of one’s own medium can be questioned in a productive way and expanded, for instance through the appearance of photography outside the subject, in installations, projections, film montages or art concept books.