About Maurer

Luna Maurer is a multi-facetted designer and artist.Throughout her career she focuses on digital technologies and their impact on our daily lives. These insights she translates into various media, such as installations, performances, web experiences and films. Her work often combines the digital and physicality in search for human characteristics.

In 2012 Luna co-founded the well known studio Moniker together with Roel Wouters and Jonathan Puckey with the same focus. With Moniker (2012-2023) she developed many participatory projects (online and offline), as well as other web projects, films and performances.

Clients and commissioners are mostly cultural institutions such as Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, M+ Museum Hong Kong, Fondation Beyeler Basel and technology oriented companies, such as Mozilla Foundation, Unity 3D, Google and Google Arts & Culture.

Luna is currently developing a new outlook and perspective on digital technology, sparked by recent rapid developments in the field. She co-authored the Designing Friction manifesto, a call for friction in digital culture, that serves as a new basis for self-initiated projects.

In 2010 Luna also authored the Conditional Design Manifesto (together with Edo Paulus, Jonathan Puckey and Roel Wouters) that has still world wide impact.

Conditional Design focuses on the notion of designing conditions and rules of play that invite collaboration within a 'regulated' process towards an unpredictable design or result.

Meanwhile the manifesto has been embraced by design educators around the world. In 2013 the Conditional Design Workbook, including several articles and many workshops, was published by Valiz and quickly sold out. Now is available again in a digital edition.

Originally from Stuttgart (Germany)  she completed her studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam.

Luna Maurer has been teaching media courses at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, the Sandberg Institute, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, HfG Karlsruhe and at Yale University School of Art and giving workshops and lectures internationally.

Her work has received many awards and nominations under which several Dutch Design Awards, the Golden Calf nomination, a Webby and the Amsterdam Prijs voor de Kunst.

More: https://lunamaurer.com

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Emoticons Don't Have Wrinkles

In a world saturated with seamless digital experiences, mixed media designer and performer Luna Maurer, with her yellow emoji face, advocates for reintroducing friction to foster resonating relationships and connections. Through her provocative performance, Luna inspires us to rethink our digital futures, offering an alternative techno-optimist perspective that encourages a paradigm shift in how we design and interact with technology.

‍"Emoticons Don’t Have Wrinkles" is based on her 2023 work "Designing Friction," co-created with Roel Wouters. "Designing Friction" is a techno-optimistic counter-argument, calling for connection in our increasingly technologized society. https://designingfriction.com

‍Digital technology has long aimed to eliminate friction, striving for seamlessness while attempting to predict our behavior. Instead of our whole bodies, we use our fingertips to swipe screens, promising a frictionless world. In an era dominated by seamless experiences, Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters challenge the status quo. "Designing Friction" reimagines the role of friction in digital culture, advocating for its intentional integration into the design paradigm. With a burning desire to revive human connection and engagement, Luna and Roel disrupt the prevailing narrative of convenience at any cost.

In "Emoticons Don’t Have Wrinkles," Luna Maurer delivers a 17-minute theatrical monologue while standing inside her signature yellow emoji face, projected large before the audience. Digital tears occasionally appear over the projected image as she discusses "Designing Friction." Luna wears a self-developed helmet that holds her mobile phone (camera) in front of her face, recording her emoji face as she speaks.

During the performance, viewers witness a monologue where pleasure, self-assertion, and vulnerability alternate. Real emotions seep through the emoji makeup, challenging her authority in the digital world, and perhaps even her roles as designer, filmmaker, and performer. The emoticon becomes filled with the complexity and subtlety of real-life emotions that digital technology cannot reach.

Link to the manifesto: https://designingfriction.com

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