BIOGRAPHY

Cross-disciplinary artist, designer, researcher

Guus Vandeweerd is a designer and researcher based in Brussels. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Arts and Humanities, where his research focuses on non-human avatars and the construction of ecological environments for more-than-human presence in digital space.

His work examines processes of digital translation: how material, relational, or embodied phenomena are restructured through computational tools and systems. Using design as both method and critique, he studies what is lost, altered, or produced when physical realities are rendered into digital forms.

Guus holds two master’s degrees. He completed a Master in Graphic Design at PXL-MAD School of Arts in Hasselt, Belgium, where his early research centered on virtual embodiment and avatar design. He later earned a Master in Research in Design at BAU College of Arts & Design in Barcelona, where his work expanded toward digital translation, posthuman theory, and the politics of computational perception. These trajectories now converge in his doctoral research.

His writing has been published in journals such as Collateral and the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, and he has presented his research at iMAL (Brussels), London College of Fashion, and PXL-MAD’s FRAME gallery. Notable talks include “Let’s Get Phygital,” exploring phygital embodiment, and his co-authored paper Mirrored Dwellers, which reflects on digital-material entanglements in collaborative design practices.

Guus’s work includes What if I Was a Stone (2024), a speculative avatar performance exploring nonhuman embodiment and machinic framing, and Can You Be My… (2022), a VR project examining how identity and relational dynamics are translated through digital embodiment. Through installations, writing, and experimental prototyping, his practice addresses the epistemological conditions embedded in digital tools and questions how design structures what can appear, act, and exist within computational systems.

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