Kikk 2025
Kikk Festival — Personal Notes and Takeaways
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Kikk Festival is one of Europe’s leading events exploring the intersections of art, design, technology, and innovation. Every year, it transforms the city of Namur into a space for creative exchange — where artists, technologists, and thinkers share how digital culture shapes our world.
What follows are my personal takeaways from the talks I was able to attend this year. Unfortunately, with many sessions running in parallel, it’s impossible to see them all — but these reflections capture some of the most inspiring ideas and projects that stood out during the festival.
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TALKS 2025​​
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TALKS 2025​
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Matt Locke
CHRITICAL THINKING - RESEARCH​
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We start with Matt Locke as his is the first talk I followed, he is the founder and Director of Storythings, a content agency and B Corp working with clients like Lenovo, Tate, PBS, and The Gates Foundation. With over 25 years in digital media, he was previously Head of Innovation at BBC New Media and Head of Multiplatform at Channel 4. He now serves as a Governor at University of the Arts London and has held leadership roles across major cultural and science institutions, including the Science Museum Group and British Science Association.
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“Five Reasons to Be Optimistic About Digital Attention”
Matt Locke argues that despite fears of fragmented attention, we’re entering a more complex and empowering era of storytelling.
1. Attention is more diverse than ever.
People now move between micro-moments and deep immersion, giving creators new ways to design stories for different attention modes.
2. We’ve become our own schedulers.
The broadcast era’s fixed timetables are gone — audiences now control when and how they engage, turning attention into an act of choice.
3. The ‘traffic era’ is ending.
As algorithms favor behavior over social graphs, the chase for viral clicks gives way to more intentional, value-driven engagement.
4. Communities over audiences.
Success no longer depends on mass reach but on building small, loyal groups who share purpose and participation.
5. Old tech, new power.
Open tools like RSS and email fuel sustainable ecosystems — free from algorithmic control and closer to authentic relationships.
Locke closes with a call to build public spaces for attention, embracing a “post-naive internet” — one that accepts the flaws of platform capitalism but still fights for creativity, connection, and shared meaning.
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TALKS 2025​​
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Bruno Ribeiro
ART - IMMERSIVE
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Bruno Ribeiro is a media artist and creative show director, formerly at Moment Factory, known for transforming iconic spaces through light, projection, and storytelling.
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“From Churches to Cinemas: A Journey into Immersive Art”
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“AURA” – Notre-Dame Basilica, Montreal (2017)
Permanent projection-mapping show turning the basilica’s architecture into a living narrative.
Light, sound, and structure work together to reveal the story of the building itself.
“La Nuit aux Invalides” / Dome des Invalides, Paris
​Immersive show inside Napoleon’s tomb, blending history and technology.
Built in three acts (Construction, Memory, Elevation) using 3D scans, lasers, and light choreography.
“The Matrix” Immersive Cinema – Kosm Dome, Los Angeles
​Reimagined The Matrix for a 360° LED dome, merging film with real-time 3D environments.
Used lighting and scenography to extend the movie into the audience’s space — a new form of experiential cinema.
Ribeiro highlights how true immersion begins when architecture itself becomes the storyteller — when technology fades into the background, serving emotion rather than spectacle. His work shows that collaboration across disciplines is essential to craft experiences where light, sound, and space form a living narrative. Ultimately, he sees a growing movement toward shared, spatial storytelling — where audiences gather not just to watch, but to feel part of a collective cinematic moment.​​​​​​​
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TALKS 2025​​
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Miguel Espada​
AI - DESIGN
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Miguel Espada, founder of Special Guest, bridges technology, storytelling, and physical design through playful, human-centered experiments. Trained in mathematics and computer science, he approaches creativity through systems and tangible interfaces rather than traditional art-making.
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“The Essence of Design: Between the Analog and the Digital”
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He describes his work as reconciling the analog and digital worlds — merging the warmth and imperfection of the physical with the precision and scale of computation. His agency explores this through AI-driven communication, robotic installations, and speculative devices that question how humans interact with technology.
Notable examples include the automated visual identity for IBM Think, built entirely with robotic cameras and lighting; a series of “useless devices” such as an AI boombox and camera that translate AI workflows into tactile form; and a collaboration with OK Go on the music video “Love,” blending robotics, reflections, and human movement into a single continuous performance.
Espada’s philosophy centers on making technology feel human again — designing interfaces, stories, and tools that connect the precision of machines with the emotional imperfection of people.
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TALKS 2025​​
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Mick Champayne​
ART - DESIGN
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Mick Champayne, designer on Google’s Delight Team, explores how embracing imperfection and play can reignite creativity after burnout. Drawing from her own experience of exhaustion and loss, she reframes the creative process around “happy accidents” — small, messy experiments that reconnect us with joy and curiosity.
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“The Anatomy of a Happy Accident”
Her talk follows five rediscovered “breadcrumbs” that rebuilt her creative energy: trying new things, exploring unfamiliar mediums, collaborating with AI as a playful partner, practicing daily through small acts of observation, and giving herself permission to play.
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She illustrates how these habits led to some of Google’s most whimsical Easter eggs and campaigns — from hidden search animations to projects celebrating Snoopy, Taylor Swift, and Ozzy Osbourne — proving that delight emerges from looseness, not control.
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Champayne closes by comparing creativity to a Rube Goldberg machine: a chaotic chain of small, joyful moments that, together, power the real work. Her message is simple — perfection doesn’t sustain creativity; curiosity and play do.
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TALKS 2025​​
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Mortiz Simon Geist​
AI - CRITICAL THINKING - RESEARCH
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Moritz Simon Geist is a musician, roboticist, and media artist who creates sound installations and performances using mechanical instruments instead of humans. His work asks a provocative question: can machines replace human performers on stage — and if not, why?.
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“Automating Empathy”
In his Kikk talk, Moritz Simon Geist explored “automating empathy” — how machines might one day perform with emotional awareness. Through projects like Don’t Look at Me, a robot that resists attention, he questioned what makes a performance truly human.
He explained that for robots to create art, they need agency, skill, and empathy, yet even advanced systems like Boston Dynamics’ robots still lack the emotional depth that connects audiences to human performers.
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TALKS 2025​​
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Aurelia de Azambuja​
BRANDING - CRITICAL THINKING
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Aurelia de Azambuja is a senior designer at Base Design, a global creative studio with offices in Brussels, New York, and beyond. With a background in editorial and visual identity design, her work bridges strategy and emotion through strong conceptual storytelling.
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“How to Make the Logo Bigger When the World Is Burning”
In her Kikk talk, she explored the existential tension of being a designer in times of global crisis — how to create meaning when the world feels overwhelming.
Drawing on projects like Paris Théâtre du Châtelet and the LGBTQ+ NGO Le Refuge, she reflected on how design can remain a tool for empathy, activism, and joy. Her main message: even when everything seems to be burning, creativity can still bring beauty, balance, and purpose.
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TALKS 2025​​
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Niccolò Miranda​
XR - CRITICAL THINKING - DESIGN
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Niccolò Miranda is a creative technologist and founder of Rebellion, a design lab exploring the intersection of AI, mixed reality, and human emotion. With a background in digital art direction and computational design, his work blends technology and storytelling into deeply sensory experiences.
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“Notes from the Future”
In his Kikk talk, Miranda explored how AI and spatial computing can transform memories, art, and data into living, emotional environments. Through projects like AI-Shaped Brains and real-time 3D reconstructions of paintings such as Vermeer’s Milkmaid, he showed how digital tools can turn the invisible — thoughts, memories, feelings — into spaces we can step inside.
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His message: the future of design isn’t about sharper pixels or faster hardware, but about creating technology that feels like magic — experiences that move people, not just impress them.
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TALKS 2025​​
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Portrait XO​
AI - SOUND DESIGN - ART - CREATIVE CODING
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Portrait XO is a musician, researcher, and data activist working at the intersection of AI, sound, and ethics. Her practice explores how we can translate complex data into emotional, sensory experiences that foster understanding and empathy.
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“The Cost of Connection: Why Sonify Data?”
In her Kikk talk, she presented her ongoing work in data sonification — turning datasets about climate change, electronic waste, and AI impact into sound. By converting temperature anomalies, methane levels, and other environmental data into melodies and rhythms, she creates music that makes abstract crises audible and human.
Her main takeaway: technology and art can build bridges between science and feeling. Through sound as data storytelling, she invites us to listen differently — to use empathy, not just analysis, in shaping how we respond to the accelerating world around us.
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TALKS 2025​​
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Rebecca Fiebrink​
AI - CREATIVE CODING
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​​​Rebecca Fiebrink is a professor of creative computing who has spent nearly two decades building tools that make machine learning accessible to artists, musicians, and designers. Her work redefines AI not as an engine of prediction, but as a partner in creative expression.
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“Data as Dialogue Beyond Ground Truth in Creative ML”
In her Kikk talk, she introduced Wekinator, a software she created that lets users train machine learning models in real time — by simply showing the computer examples of gestures, sounds, or movements, and teaching it how to respond. Wekinator has since been used in thousands of creative projects, from interactive instruments and digital puppetry to VR dance pieces and adaptive installations.
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Her main idea: data isn’t truth, it’s communication. Instead of treating datasets as fixed facts, Fiebrink sees them as a dialogue between human and machine — a way to express intention, emotion, and embodied knowledge. This shift turns AI from a tool of automation into a medium for creativity and collaboration.
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TALKS 2025​​
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Robert Hodgin​
AI - NEW MEDIA ART - CRITICAL THINKING
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​​​Robert Hodgin is a digital artist and co-founder of Rare Volume, a New York–based design and technology studio known for large-scale interactive installations. Originally trained in sculpture at RISD, Hodgin’s work bridges code, nature, and generative systems, exploring how algorithms can simulate life and emotion.
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“Why Bother? Making Art in the Age of AI”
In his Kikk talk, he shared personal experiments made in Houdini, using the software as both a creative playground and a reflection on artistic process. During the pandemic, he reconstructed his entire apartment by hand, piece by piece, turning confinement into a living 3D world where he could test visual and physical simulations. He later developed a procedural river simulation, inspired by the natural meandering of waterways, generating evolving digital landscapes that mirror real geological behavior.
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Through these projects, Hodgin questioned the role of struggle and time in creativity, contrasting his patient, handcrafted simulations with the instant results of AI tools. His takeaway: the value of art lies not in speed or output, but in the process itself — in the curiosity, effort, and wonder that bring it to life.
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TALKS 2025​​
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Eddie Opara​
BRANDING - CRITICAL THINKING
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​​​Eddie Opara is a partner at Pentagram and one of the most influential voices in contemporary design. Known for his multidisciplinary work spanning branding, architecture, and technology, he uses design as a tool for social responsibility and systemic change.
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“The Responsibility of Innovation: Design’s Social Role”
In his Kikk talk, Opara challenged the idea of design as mere problem-solving, arguing instead for transformational creativity guided by ethics and purpose. He connected his projects to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, showcasing examples like Google’s Living Building Challenge headquarters — built with locally sourced, non-toxic materials — and Gush, a Singapore-based company creating air-purifying paint designed to improve indoor well-being.
He closed his talk with “Bantul,” a card game designed to help kids and parents reconnect through conversation.
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Developed with Gradient Learning, the game encourages children to express emotions, build resilience, and think critically — tackling emotional and educational gaps worsened by isolation and screen dependency. For Opara, projects like Bantul prove that design can be both playful and profound, creating tools that rebuild empathy, dialogue, and community in an age of distraction.
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TALKS 2025​​
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Daniel Simu​
ROBOTIC - PERFORMANCE - INSPIRATIONAL
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​​​Daniel Simu is a Dutch artist with a BA in Circus Arts and an MSc in Media Technology. For over 15 years, he has performed worldwide as a juggler and clown, winning the Dutch Juggling Championships in 2016. In 2022, he built the first Acrobot prototype and performed two shows before it fell apart. This success inspired him to learn 3D printing, electronics, and mechanical engineering – and so he became a robot builder.
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“Robotics, Performance, Playful discovery”
Daniel Simu, a circus artist and self-taught robotics enthusiast, makes the case for building robots simply for fun. Though not a robotics expert, he created “Acrobot” – an acrobatic robot – by applying the same playful, trial-and-error approach he uses in his circus work. Starting with a mannequin torso, windshield wiper motors, and a lot of improvisation, he built his first performing robot. It only lasted two shows before breaking, but the experience inspired him to learn 3D printing, electronics, and mechanical design from scratch.
Now on his third robot – with a fourth in development – Simu demonstrates how joy, creativity, and curiosity can drive innovation. For him, robots are not just machines but characters with identity. His journey highlights that approaching technology with a spirit of play, like in the arts, can lead to more relatable and human-centered creations. His message: We should build robots not just to solve problems, but also to explore, connect – and have fun.
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