Dr. Daniel Wessolek is an artist, designer and researcher. His work focuses on tangible interaction design, light animation, Do-It-Yourself (DIY) and Do-It-Together, collaborative technologies, open source hardware & software, assistive technologies, sustainability strategies and design research. He has headed the Media Lab at the AdBK Nuremberg since October 2023. The focus here is on teaching creative coding, microcontroller technologies, media installations and artistic research.
Before Daniel Wessolek came to the AdBK Nuremberg, he co-founded the Prototype Fund Hardware (2021-2023) at the Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland e.V. to strengthen the funding landscape for open source hardware. He was a research assistant in the EdgeAgriCulture project (2023) at the Department of Business Informatics at HTW Berlin, where he was also active as a lecturer, as well as at the Berlin University of Applied Sciences (BHT) in the Mechatronics program. In the EU-funded Horizon 2020 projects OpenNext (2019-2022) and Careables/Made4You (2019-2021), he was project manager and researcher for Prototypes for Europe e.V. in Berlin. OpenNext focused on medium-sized companies and open source hardware product development. At Careables, he organized and co-developed the Open Health HACKademy format, among other things. In the MatchMyMaker project of be-able e.V., he supported the development of a platform to bring people with disabilities and specific needs and makers together. He set up the Fab Lab as a co-design consultant at the Futurium Museum of the Future (2016-2018). Previously, Daniel Wessolek was a postdoctoral researcher (2015/2016) at the Singapore University for Technology and Design (SUTD) in the Augmented Human Lab (Prof. Dr. Surranga Nanayakkara) in Singapore. As an Artistic Associate (2008-2011) in Interaction Design, he taught product design students at Bauhaus University Weimar. His courses focused on creating awareness of technology and its underlying principles, utilizing open-source design, hardware hacking and DIY approaches, and incorporating repair and reuse strategies to promote critical and self-reflective thinking.
Daniel Wessolek grew up in the Black Forest. He completed his doctorate in Art & Design at the Bauhaus University Weimar on the subject of Simple Displays under Prof. Dr. Ute Holl (University of Basel) and Prof. Wolfgang Sattler (BUW) (2016).Daniel Wessolek also holds an MFA in Media Art and Design from Bauhaus University Weimar (2008), an MA (Master of Literature) in Art Theory from Tongji University in Shanghai (2010) and a BA in Digital Media from the University of the Arts in Bremen (2006).
Study and research stays have taken him to Montréal (2005/2006, Concordia University), where he worked for Hexagram (XS Labs/xModal) and studied in the fields of computational art, intermedia cyberarts and animation, to Singapore at NTU (2007, Nanyang Technological University) and Tongji University Shanghai (2007/2008), to the MIT Media Lab (2013/2014, Fluid Interfaces) and as a guest researcher at the Kunstuni Linz (2014, Interface Cultures).
As a speaker, Daniel Wessolek presents at conferences such as re:publica, the Chaos Communication Congress, FOSDEM, FOSSASIA, ISEA, TEI and others and is active as a reviewer and in program committees for conferences such as ACM Augmented Human(s), NIME, ACM TEI, ACM CHI and ISMAR.
