C.A.M. de Gaetano (Carlo)

Professional Doctorate candidate De Gaetano De Gaetano is designer and researcher at the Visual Methodologies Collective of the Knowledge Center FDMCI. He conducts research in information visualization for social research and artistic participatory research on climate imaginaries.

De Gaetano is currently working on the research project Climate Imaginaries at Sea, in collaboration with Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Amsterdam University of Arts, to explore adaptation scenarios to sea level rise through artistic participatory research. In September he will start a Professional Doctorate track in which sea level is a central theme of his practice-based research, which employs artistic and participatory research methods. De Gaetano is also working on a research project EPIC-WE, in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute of Sound & Vision and DropStuff media, and many other European cultural heritage institutions, creative industries and higher education institutions, to research game-making through cultural collections as a method to empower youth’s creative imagination in engaging with societal challenges.

De Gaetano plays with fiction in his artistic research to evoke reflections and conversations about our interconnectedness with nature and other beings. He curates and explores audiovisual collections from archives and online spaces to understand how bodies of water in the Netherlands and their ecosystems are presented. He facilitates participatory workshops where the collections are activated through participatory climate fiction-making to imagine alternative future ways of living with the more-than-human. He also specialises in digital methods of research to study how climate change is represented online, using computer vision to analyse and visualise large collection of images. He’s also interested in applications of generative AI in storytelling and what-if work.

In his practice as visual and information designer, De Gaetano is trying to unlearn some of the dogmas learned in university, by embracing in his practice data feminist principles of elevating emotion, embodiment and pluralism. With the collective, he is developing participatory practices to open up the process of analysing social issues through data, by inviting the people that produced and/or are affected by the data to respond to it in different ways.

In his recent shift toward artistic research, He is combining AI generative tools and participatory visual methods to challenge dominant narratives about the human-nature nexus. Through his work, De Gaetano hopes to offer a space to imagine alternative ways of living —among other species— in a future with a changing climate.
De Gaetano graduated in 2013 in Communication Design at Politecnico di Milano. During the final year of his Master's, he began freelancing as an information designer for international research groups. Notably, he has worked with the Digital Methods Initiative at the University of Amsterdam on studies ranging from climate vernaculars to fake news and online representation of pregnancy. He has also collaborated with design studios in Milan and Amsterdam, enhancing skills in visual, editorial and information design. After joining the Digital Society School in Amsterdam in 2018, he focused on coaching and international project leadership on climate-related issues, while also teaching data visualisation and issue mapping with the Visual Methodologies Collective.

Experience and expertise

Data visualization, visual and editorial design, digital methods for research, lateral thinking, participatory practices

Collaboration opportunities in the field of

- support research project through data visualization and academic writing;

- experimenting with generative AI for social research;

- Deepening research on climate imaginaries and climate fiction.

Want to know more? Feel free to contact via e-mail.