A stomach for design
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Out with the parties, booze and junk food, in with weeks of intense dieting and gruelling exercise - not your typical student experience, but recently 27 undergraduates at one German design university gamely took up the challenge of obtaining a rippling six-pack - all in the name of art.
“Six-Pack: Designing Stomachs”, a new four month module taught at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, proved so tough that seven of the students dropped out and lecturer Ludger Pfanz forced another to seek medical advice, worried that that he was taking things too far.
The course asked students to "design their own bodies", to pick a goal, such as getting a six-pack, and then undertake the diet and exercise regime needed to achieve it.
This being an arts college, however, a toned physique was not the be all and end all of the project.
Mr Pfanz explains that it was really about giving students a new experience that they could use, along with their new-look bodies, to create new media art.
The students' hard work culminated in a recent end-of-course catwalk show. The catch for those visiting was that the models insisted on a reward for their months of hardship and pain. The price of an entrance ticket was also a six-pack, but this time of the kind usually favoured by students - a six-pack of beer.
