Academy of Media Arts Cologne

The KHM logo looks like a black square. And that is what it is. But that is not all that it is: there is much more to it! When the designers Uwe Loesch and Michael Wichelhaus created the newly founded academy's logo in 1990, they chose a form that offers many possibilities to draw connections.
The history of art over the last century has been full of obsessions for the square: one thinks of Kazimir Malevich's Black Square, Hans Richter's early experimental films, Samuel Beckett's television play Square, John Baldessari's photo series Throwing four balls in the air to get a square, etc. Squares have the advantage of being neither ornamental nor directional. As a neutral straight shape, neither portrait nor landscape, they illustrate the importance of each artistic decision concerning format (we are not limited to the big screen!).
If you look at the logo more closely, it also becomes clear that it differs significantly from Malevich's Black Square. It does have two sharp and two blurred edges. The black seems rich in contrast on the sharp edges but diffuses on the blurred edges. From this perspective, the KHM logo turns out to be a test image for questions of perception. And there is more: one knows, since Goethe's Theory of Colours, that color phenomena can appear at the border between black and white under certain light conditions (this can be tested on the edge of a window frame in the light of morning).
Our black square is, therefore, not only black but also virtually colored. Thus, the KHM logo touches on questions of design, art and film history, of format and perception. And if you enter the KHM address Filzengraben Köln in Google Earth, you will discover the following text written on a flat roof: WHITE GROUND BLACK SQUARE. Next to it is a square made up of smaller squares. It is the KHM's QR code. So the logo returns technologically. The black square has arrived in the Information Age.
On October 15, 1990, with 25 students on the postgraduate "Audiovisual Media" diploma course 1994, expansion of the course offering to include the undergraduate "Audiovisual Media" diploma course since 2004 doctoral program 2010 renaming of the two diploma courses to "Media and Fine Art."
According to § 1 paragraph 2 of the Kunsthochschulgesetz (Art Colleges Act), the KHM is a corporation under public law and an institution of the federal state of NRW. The responsible authority is the Ministry for Innovation, Science, and Research of the Federal State of NRW. Current agreements on goals and performance are agreed upon for respective periods of four years.
The Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) offers the demanding, project-based "Media and Fine Art" course, which gives each student the chance to choose between and individually combine various artistic emphases. The particularly experimental climate at the KHM facilitates independent artwork.
The "Media and Fine Art" diploma can be attained via a 9-semester (undergraduate) or 4-semester (postgraduate) course. The cornerstone of the "Media and Fine Art" course is the individual development of artistic projects.
The KHM accepts 70 to 80 new enrolments per winter semester, with an average of around 320 students in total, of which approximately one third are international students.
The Academy of Media Arts Cologne diploma is comparable internationally to an MFA (Master of Fine Art).