Aqua Nostra Master – Giulia Papaleo

AQUA NOSTRA
💧
THE DYING GIANTS

AI & INNOVATION
M.A. THESIS DESIGN & FUTURE MAKING

AI images of Aqua Nostra :

A Manifesto were generated through an AI-based process
that merges scientific data, photographic material, and
extensive interdisciplinary research.

editorial book + exhibition +projection mapping + experience

2022-2024

A.K.T;

AQUA NOSTRA — THE DYING GIANTS
A MANIFESTO | M.A. Design & Future Making 2022

Design as reflection. Art as resistance.

AI & INNOVATION | RESEARCH | EDITORIAL DESIGN | VISUAL STORYTELLING

ABOUT
AQUA NOSTRA — The Dying Giants is an editorial book project I developed as an extension of my master thesis AQUA NOSTRA — A Manifesto. The project continues my research on the silent disappearance of glaciers, the global water crisis and the fragile systems that shape our future. In my original thesis, I created a multidisciplinary project between science, design and art. I combined scientific research, photographic material from my glacier expedition to Iceland and AI-generated visual worlds, translating them into an immersive installation with projection mapping, space, light, sound and editorial design.

CONCEPT
The starting point of the project was my glacier expedition to Iceland in 2022. Observing and documenting the melting landscapes around Jökulsárlón became a central moment in my work. The glaciers were no longer an abstract symbol of climate change, but a physical experience of time, loss and fragile beauty. This experience shaped both the conceptual framework and the visual language of the project. It grounded my speculative design process in a real landscape and became the foundation for the book’s visual and narrative direction. With AQUA NOSTRA — A Manifesto, I explored design as reflection and art as resistance — not through shock, but through stillness, atmosphere and emotional proximity. I wanted to ask how an ecological crisis can not only be explained, but felt.

SERVICES:
Creative Direction
Concept
Copywriting
Iconography
Editorial Design
Storytelling
Information Hierarchies
Research
Text
Exhibition
MotionDesign

CLIENT:
Self-Indipendent Project

YEAR:
2022-2024

BOOK
With AQUA NOSTRA — The Dying Giants, I expanded this question into the format of a book. I look at glaciers as dying giants: natural water reservoirs, fragile ecosystems and archives of time, climate and memory. At the same time, I connect this natural disappearance to the growing digital storage landscapes of our present — AI systems, server farms, cloud infrastructures, data centers and technological networks.While natural memory disappears, digital memory expands. While glaciers melt, data streams accelerate. While landscapes lose their archives, technology produces new ones. Through this contrast, I investigate the relationship between nature and technology as an entangled system of resources, images, desire, control and ecological dependency.

EDITORIAL APPROACH
I am currently in exchange with a publishing house to explore the publication of AQUA NOSTRA — The Dying Giants as a printed book. The project is being developed as a carefully produced editorial object that expands my artistic research into a physical, collectable format.

RESEARCH
EXPEDITION
ICELAND 2022 | 2023 | 2026

Glacier Expeditions
The glacier expedition to Iceland was a central component of the master thesis Aqua Nostra – A Manifesto. Observing & documenting the melting landscapes of Icelands glacier Jökulsárlón provided direct insight
into the fragile state of glacial ecosystems worldwide.

The experience shaped both the conceptual framework and the visual language
of the project, anchoring speculative design in physical reality.

multidisciplinary project that drifts between science, design, and art—reflecting on the silent disappearance of glaciers and the unfolding water crisis through a quiet, atmospheric narrative that transforms research into experience, media into reflection, and urgency into a gentle yet powerful call to feel, to rethink, and to respond.