2MVD

Valerie Messini

is an independent digital artist and a registered architect, as well as a senior scientist at the Peter Weibel Research Ins-tute for Digital Cultures at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.
She graduated from the University of Applied Arts (studio Prix) in Vienna in 2011, with disinction.

She worked for International architecture firms (i.e. Coop Himmelb(l)au [AUT], Snohetta [NO], Flying Elephant Studio [IN]) as design architect and realizsd several large-scale installations for the artist Eva Schlegel.
In 2012, she received the Tische Scholarship from the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts and Culture. She went on to receive the Hilde-Zach art scholarship in 2014 from the city of Innsbruck and the Hans Hollein project scholarship in 2016 for architecture and design, also from the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts and Culture.

In 2018, she co-founded 2MVD, an artistic collaboration with Damjan Minovski that focuses on combining architecture with innovations and advances in the field of digital art and technology.
Their virtual reality (VR) project “head in a cloud”, which was supported by funding for artists in the province of Bolzano, was shown in galleries and at festivals (i.e., Angewandte Innovation Lab [AIL], Vienna Design Week in Vienna, aut. architektur und tirol in Innsbruck, and GIFF – Geneva International Film Festival) repeatedly throughout 2018 and 2019 as well as recently in Italy at Transart21 (together with Laurie Anderson’s “chalkroom”)

From 2013 to 2017, Messini was a research assistant (Univ. Ass.) at the ./studio3 – Ins-tute for Experimental Architecture, University of Innsbruck, where she taught multiple design courses at both the bachelor’s and master’s level. During this -me, she supervised master’s theses and organized multiple excursions and events, ranging from students’ exhibitions to lecture series and symposia (i.e., 15 years Tangible Utopias). From 2018 to 2019, she was a senior lecturer at the ./studio3 – Ins-tute for Experimental Architecture, University of Innsbruck, teaching VR seminars and novel digital artistic strategies.

Valerie has been a senior scientist at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna since 2019, where she is currently working on her PhD “void set – about emptiness in virtual space” supervised by Peter Weibel.

2MVD

Valerie Messini and Damjan Minovski graduated from the University of Applied Arts (studio Prix) in Vienna in 2011. They have been working since as independent artists in the fields of architecture, visual and digital art. They both worked for renowned architecture firms, VM as design architect and DM as freelance visual artist.

Since 2013 they are also active in the academic field, both in teaching and researching. Currently VM is working on her PHD and DM is part of the research project “Co-Corporeality”.

Since 2011 VM and DM repeatedly collaborated. They realised several large-scale installations for the art - ist Eva Schlegel and founded the collaboration 2MVD in 2017 which focuses on connecting architecture with innovations and advances in the field of digital art and technology.