art, tech
&
fun
Media Art Festival with Expo during Dutch Design Week from 18-26 October 2025 and longer @Veem Eindhoven. Curious about Virtual Worlds? Visit them here.
Well-stocked with young talent & thought-provoking projects, the exhibition once again promises to be the most talked-about part of Dutch Design Week. This year physically and online.
Scroll to under on this website, and watch the videos.
With projects operating at the intersection of art and technology, Manifestations asks you how far technology defines your world, thinking and acting.
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Theme 2025:
happy
end?
All artists, designers and projects specially selected for Manifestations.
This page is updated weekly.
1. Technological Slavery and Power Systems
This sub-theme explores the impact of technology and power structures on our daily lives.
How have we, consciously or unconsciously, become slaves to systems we created ourselves?
This ranges from the influence of big tech companies and automation to the ever-increasing reliance on machines.
Artworks in this line reflect on the boundaries between man and machine and whether we can still control these systems or whether they now control us.
artist: LAURA A DIMA
The Alien Between Us
Interactive installation in which two people experience each other's heartbeat, breathing and temperature through responsive, wearable sculptures. Intimacy here arises precisely through separation. Without words or looks, direct contact becomes palpable through the rhythms of the body.
The installation removes external features such as age, gender or ethnicity. What happens when you don't meet a 'person' but purely a presence? The work invites you to experience empathy beyond appearances and social scripts.
When boundaries are crossed, the sculptures respond with a defensive gesture. Thus, the work explores the ethics of consent, responsibility and care - both for each other and for the technology that mediates between us. Technology is like porous skin that enables new intimacy without judgement.
Artist: Goro Modic
Off Limits Toys TM
What happens when children are given toys that are normally "off limits"? Think weapons, cigarettes or drugs, packaged as happy toys. This toy shop is based on trust and transparency. With toys that push the boundaries of play. After all, why do we want to protect children from such topics, when they encounter them online every day? Freedom begins with curiosityWhat happens when children are given toys that are normally "off limits"? Think weapons, cigarettes or drugs, packaged as happy toys. This toy shop is based on trust and transparency. With toys that push the boundaries of play. After all, why do we want to protect children from such topics, when they encounter them online every day? Freedom begins with curiosity!
Kiki Meiland
Spread the Bread
How much privacy do you have left in your online conversations? Big tech companies are reading and storing more and more messages. The toaster printer offers a playful alternative. You burn your message into toast, read it, eat it and the proof is gone. What would you put on your toast?
Even in World War II, bread was more than food. Bakers and bakeries formed an important network: maps were hidden in hollowed-out loaves and secret messages were carved into crusts.
artist: ietsnut
MPC: My Personal Computer
Today's personal computers are anything but personal. We use them daily, but their insides remain hidden and are too complex for most people to understand. The MPC invites you to look at technology anew: not as a distant machine, but as an open organism you can get to know, influence and care for. Built with robust electronics from the 1970s, it responds like a living body. Factors such as sleep, movement and rhythm influence its well-being. Play with the input and discover how his health changes.
Artist: Zhenyi Zhou
GU SPIRIT
Gu Spirit connects ancient Chinese folklore with speculative design. Inspired by the myth of the Gu (蛊) witch - who breeds poisonous insects in a sealed vessel until one remains - the work embodies resilience and strength. Sculptural fashion creations of 3D-printed bone structures, silicone membranes and biomorphic textiles envelop the body like scars, relics or alien exoskeletons. The work invites reflection on survival, transformation and the merging of organic and synthetic worlds. At its core, Gu Spirit is about bearing pain, transforming it into strength and unashamedly embodying scarring and evolution.
Artist: Marjolein van der Wal
Paradise
"This moment is all there is. Paradise is not a physical place; it is a state of consciousness." - Rumi
Paradise is a temple-like work of art, a magical place where everyone is welcome. A 'charging station' where you connect with yourself. Here, we feel each other and no words are needed.
What is paradise for you? Join us on a journey beyond time and space. Use all six of your senses and reconnect with your inner spark, nature and the world around you.
2. Apocalyptic Dystopias and Survivalism
This theme revolves around the fear of an impending end and how that affects our actions.
Artworks that fall within this line focus on our fascination with the end of times, whether due to climate change, political instability, or technological collapse.
They explore how we deal with the destructive forces around us and our attempts to survive, often dancing on the edge of the volcano as depicted by Joep van Lieshout.
Artist: EXOOT (Tristan Kruithof)
Animal Love
A mobile carousel invites you to take a critical look at today's meat industry. Whichever way you look at it, it remains an animal-unfriendly business with far-reaching consequences for nature.
Excessive nitrogen emissions have disastrous effects on ecosystems. There is a nasty reality to livestock feed production. Animals are kept in too large numbers in too small stalls. Etc
Modernisation and innovation are producing increasingly impressive barns, but is this really the solution for the future? What if that innovation involves a completely different way of producing meat? Let's make a case for cultured meat and efficiently equipped laboratories for meat production.
EXOOT develops installations and objects, depicting an urgent theme. A combination of mechanics, electronics and recycling.
At home and abroad, we show this work in public spaces; at art and technology-related festivals and events, exhibitions and art routes.
Artist: Darja Gladkaja
Touchy-Feely
What happens when something feels so solid yet fragile? Touchy-Feely is less about the object itself and more about how it reacts to your presence. The steel buzzes, vibrates and seems to breathe, as if it has a body of its own.
The work invites you to look and feel slowly: to experience the subtle shifts in the tension between space, material and yourself. This creates a dance with uncertainty, seductive and unsettling at the same time.
Behind that experience is a critical question: who keeps systems running, and who defines the limits of our freedom in a world where technology increasingly seems to have a will of its own?
Artist: Anaida Melivia
Dream Big
Human-like creatures remain recognisable, yet strange. Their puffy, dripping skin and crooked yellow teeth evoke emotions that often remain hidden: shame, guilt, fear and desire.
In the performance Dream Big, dreams keep returning. The dreamer seeks contact with her family, but encounters rejection and distance. In three repetitions, the emotion shifts from hopeful, to angry and guilty, to a liberating confrontation that leads to self-acceptance. Giving these emotions a body reveals what normally remains hidden. Do you recognise something about yourself?
Artist: Maria Laura Van der Velde
Shiny Object Syndrome. (Photo censored thanks to Google Grant)
What do I see here? What you see are AI nudes of the artist himself. I trained a Stable Diffusion model with my own face and used it to generate pornographic images.
In my work, I AM PUBLIC DOMAIN, I use AI to create prints of myself, diving into questions of identity, authorship and how society sees me in a world where technology multiplies and reshapes our bodies, images and desires. I explore where I stop and technology takes over, using AI-generated versions of myself to discover what happens when my image circulates independently and creates meaning without my consent.
I have always believed that the most valuable thing we can have is a wide range of impressions-moments, images and ideas that shape us in countless ways. I don't feel the need to impose one narrative on my work. Instead, I let the world around me-the chaos, the influences-determine what I create. For me, art is a form of reproduction, a parody of the power structures we live in. I see my work as a playful negotiation with those dynamics, as if I am a parody of Angelina Jolie and art is a parody of power.
My art also explores how people react to women making work about themselves. When a man makes self-referential art, it is often seen as daring or visionary, but when I do it, it is labelled as vanity or self-objectification, and the critics pour in. With my AI prints, including optimised sex clones of myself, I wonder why society is so comfortable with images of violence but shy away from nudity, intimacy or fetish. Why is the "male gaze" taken for granted when it determines how I am seen and even how I see myself?
Living in a time when technology offers me endless impressions-from social media to AI-feels like a golden age for artists like me, collecting and digesting the world from my computer. But I worry about how corporate censorship limits our ability to critically process these impressions. When platforms ban intimate images, like "kissing girls," but allow violent content, they create a sterile culture that selectively protects corporations and exploits artists who generate the public domain. I want to know why gun violence is normalised while my exploration of identity is seen as "dangerous".
With I AM PUBLIC DOMAIN/Shiny Object Syndrome, I invite you to rethink originality, the female voice and censorship in a world where technology and desire converge, and ask you to critically engage with the flood of images and ideas that surround us.
Artist: Thies Mensink
Simulacra Physis
What happens when the boundaries between humans, nature and technology blur? Simulacra Physis shows hybrid creatures: part machine, part organism. Their rhythms, fragility and reactions are reminiscent of natural systems, but powered by robotics and sensors. The work evokes wonder and invites us to rethink what life, beauty and autonomy mean at a time when biology and technology are increasingly intertwined.
Artist: Janneke van der Meiden
Breathing New Energy
How can technology help us be more caring towards each other? This garment helps people with lung COVID breathe better. Gentle vibrations in the fabric provide a gentle rhythm to follow. The idea is that breathing becomes less strenuous and allows more relaxation.
Technology thus offers support and comfort. It makes this illness palpable and invites reflection on recovery and attention, even long after a crisis is out of the picture. This work is still in the concept phase, exploring new possibilities for caring technology.
3. Invisible Enemies and Social Blindness
This sub-theme is all about the forces and influences that we are unwilling or unable to see.
From invisible threats such as environmental pollution and social injustice to the indifference of onlookers in times of crisis.
Artworks in this line confront us with our inability to engage and show how we often choose denial or alternative realities to avoid uncomfortable truths.
It also explores the ethical question: whose interest is really being served?
artist: Lou Elie Dit Cosaque
Ostreoidea
Listening show: Ostreoidea is a fictional island that serves as a mirror to look at Caribbean histories. Born of soft earth and moist air, shaped by colonisation, amnesia and survival. The island itself resists domination: roots tear down towers, cities are taken back by greenery. With hand-dyed fabrics, screen printing and embroidery, erased stories are reimagined. This living tapestry is at once memorial and dream, in which imagination fills the gaps of history.
It invites listening: what can imagination restore that is missing in the archives?
Artist: Yael Dafna-Mirhal Schuster
What Memories Will This Moment Leave Me With
What does grief mean to you? Grief Soup explores themes of grief, nostalgia, resilience and decline. Our stories are unique but similar. In that recognition lies comfort: even when you feel alone, you never really are. This installation invites you to reflect on what connects us. How much are we really alike and what happens when we dare to really feel that?
We are not alone, but part of a whole.
Artist: Iris van Kalsbeek
Men's Milk - The Land Where the Animals Kiss
What does ultimate sexual freedom mean? This erotic film challenges you to look differently at the porn industry. No fixed patterns or quick gratification, but new perspectives through moments of confusion and perhaps recognition. The work breaks the taboo around porn and invites conversation: how free are we really in our desires and intimacy?
Artist: Mozes
Many Ways to Pee
In a public toilet, you feel vulnerable. This is especially true for many people - think of trans people who don't always know which toilet they are 'allowed' to use. These ceramic urinals are reminiscent of toys or sculptures, but also make you think about something very mundane: the toilet.
The glazes show stains and patterns you would normally never want to see on a toilet. Beautiful and diverse, but also a little uncomfortable. This plumbing shows how toilets shape us, and how they determine what we consider clean, normal or dirty. Could your toilet look a bit different too?
Artist: Mattie van Bergen
To-think: Commemorative objects
How do you keep a memory? Remembrance objects offer the chance to cherish the loved one in a personal object. Old crafts are reimagined with modern techniques such as lasering. This creates a tension between erosion by time and innovation, between what remains and what disappears.
The works are fuelled by personal stories and emotions, as well as symbolism, orphaned materials and religious references. Memories are given three-dimensional form, so that grief and mourning need not be hidden but allowed to be visible and tangible.
Artist: Iceylithe Bintong Wang
Crystalline Layer
Crystalline Layer follows a cosmic language: the traces of a "mother tongue" sounding in earth and stars, in dreams, geological layers and rhythms of the universe. The result is a landscape, a multisensory universe in which you may wander and dwell.The installation interweaves film, sculpture and objects from everyday life. It captures wondrous moments, transforms them and invites you to reconnect with the world. What do we leave behind in the layers of time?
Artist: Edith Bootsman
The Social Sister
What do you do in a waiting room? The Social Sister invites you to relive that everyday situation. Together with her sister team, she mans a rotating sister station: a place where stories and connection come together. A gentle resistance to individualistic society. What happens when you don't hide away in your screen, but allow the discomfort, or even enter the conversation?
How often do you choose the safe bubble of your phone? Here, that silence is transformed into encounter. The experience is playful and light, but at the same time exposes something we usually hide: our tendency to withdraw, look away or remain silent. The Social Sister confronts and amazes. Step out of your bubble!
artist: Summa College x Fontys X Anouk Wipprecht
Like Insects
Fashion and technology seem like two completely different worlds. But not when you bring together engineering students from Fontys and fashion students from Summa under the guidance of fashiontech designer Anouk Wipprecht. Then an extraordinary fashion collection emerges in which boundaries blur. And through which hopefully more women will want a taste of technology. "Not all girls like making cars or drones, but they often enjoy designing a robotic dress, for example. That way, you can very easily introduce them to programming or coding and thus give them a taste of engineering."
Artist: Beam Contrechoc
Experimental Apocalypse Outfits
In our pessimistic age of excessive energy, nonsensical production and new knowledge, we still make a mess of things by stupidly starting brutal wars from the Bronze Age. Once again, as designers, we are going on an Odyssey: a quest in which we combine past technologies with high-tech to strengthen our existing sense of community and ultimately achieve total peace and absolute happiness.
These outfits interweave primitive techniques and stories from the Stone Age and Bronze Age with contemporary microcontrollers and high-tech materials. A layered approach connects new work with echoes of the past. Humour softens the weight of conflict. Thus, they are a mirror for how we move through the world: struggling, searching, sometimes fighting-but always imagining another way forward.
Artist: Gijs Hennen
Meat Machine
What was once a living being turns into a product behind closed doors. The Meat Machine makes that process visible, audible and tangible.
Rotating motors, chains and gears feed meat through a factory system. The installation exposes the meat industry: confrontational and mechanical. You are challenged to reflect on the impact of our meat production. What do we actually eat? And how far have we gone in it?
Artist: Casper Vorstermans
Théo the war puppet
Children and war, two words that should never go together. Yet 52 million children worldwide (1 in 23) cannot attend school due to conflict.
This work shows an alienated version of Victor Safety, in the Netherlands the symbol of child safety. For children in war zones, such safety often does not exist. They lack the freedom to play, learn and simply be children. Théo invites you to reflect on this uncomfortable fact. What does the image evoke in you? What stories or feelings surface? Start the conversation, because looking away is not an option.
Artist: Agnes van Dijk
MandarinSkin, Roots & Flowers
Nature is a superior force, full of ingenious solutions. Every plant, every animal has a role. Anyone who intervenes in them upsets the balance. Yet nature keeps adapting, but for how long?
In an age of fast fashion and disposable mentality, a radical alternative is emerging. Beauty lies in the unexpected: waste turns into a valuable raw material and perishable materials become symbols of innovation and haute couture.
Artist: Omer van Soldt
The Self at 50 Hz
An invitation to the audience to unmistakably become one with their surroundings.
The work consists of a rotating installation with a symmetrical composition of 12 mirrors. By alternating specific rotational frequencies, the sculpture can unite the viewer or make them disappear completely from view. What happens to your perception when space, reflection and yourself become indistinguishable? Do you see more - or less?
Artist: Guus Holtman
Under the Water
Spinning figures and carnivalesque characters bring to life magnified depictions of human behaviour. The colourful characters highlight the absurdity and flaws we all share, and show that we are not so different from other animals in the ecosystem.
The profusion of images, light and smoke draws you into the idiosyncratic universe of Hieronymus Bosch. Here, chaos reveals both human vulnerability and freedom, found in embracing absurdity. What is your dark side? Do you dare to embrace the absurdity of existence and take yourself a little less seriously?
Artist: Marlonneke Willemsen
Invisible Threat
This photo project shows how damaging new garden plants can be to nature.
"To feed leaf-eating insects, she had stocked up on some plants at the garden centre nearby. And then it happened: the insects that ate from it all died within a few hours."- Telegraph
Many people do not know that almost all plants in the garden centre and supermarket are sprayed with various kinds of poison. This greatly affects the insects and other small animals that eat from these plants. What grows in your garden, food or poison?
Watch project videos below!
quotes
This is what our visitors thought
Each year, Manifestations succeeds in showing what happens when art and technology meet with strong curation and surprising works. The event does so in a way unique to the Netherlands, showing what we do with technology and vice versa what technology does with us.
Erwin van de Zande Bright
At Manifestations, you see things at the edge of developments that you won't easily find anywhere else, it is edgy and needs few words to speak.
Eric van Eerdenburg Lowlands
I've been visiting DDW for years, but I got the best tour at Manifestations.
Daan De Kort Member of Parliament
Valuable press articles, invitations follow-up exhibitions.
Manifestations cemented my position in the art and design world.
Nicole Spit Studio Over There
I am impressed by the qualities of Manifestations. Technology is growing at a rapid pace, let us as Eindhoven lead the world in how we deal with it, we have that power and those people. Eindhoven365 believes in the Manifestations concept and its potential.
Peter Kentie Director Citymarketing Eindhoven365
I found Manifestions to be one of the highlights of Dutch Design Week for me!
One reason for that is the diversity you manage to bring together in a story!
Balance in the broadest sense.
Ronald Ramakers Glow
