Author: katja

PIFcraft, an Epic Finale

New venue unlocked! pH [or PIFhain, as folks like to call it; a secret club operating cca. once yearly; hint: Faith in LEDs]


Reclaim you local horse stable. Build from scratch and scraps. Nurture more-than-human relations. Listen. Embrace and transfer oscillations. Abolish bouncers. Share. Solder. Distill. Hydrate. Care. Vibrate. Dance.

Lineup
🝪 So&Zach 🝰 Mr. Mogochi 🝐 Alevtina&Celeste&Nora&Eye Measure 🜘 Cansing Crush 🜚 Simon&Tanja&Fer 🜁 Toyota Vangelis 🝏 Blaž&So 🝅 Simon&Kandela Solver&fileneed&Eye Measure 🜠🜥 Nora b2b Blaž 🝧 Blažen DJ 🝝 all of the Rocks, Plants, Birds, Robots, Code, Pixels, Synths, Bats, and other Non-other Entities 🝪

+ pre-performance: Embodied Synthesisers workshop

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Photos by: Matjaž Rušt

PIFcamp s11 e01: God of Light [Energy Awareness workshop]


//For now, this entry is being edited continuously, adjusting itself to the PIFcraft timetable and following encounters within the community. Current versions are noted in the square brackets at the end of the title.

First PIFcraft log entry will focus on writings, dialogues and participants’ projects which can (for starters, at least) be summed up in the following set: off-grid, low-tech, self-host.

Part 1: Off-grid

//A report will follow on Bernhard Rasinger‘s intro workshop on energy awareness and solar power. One of his PIFprojects is setting up an off-grid solar-powered network for the camp.

Listen to the Energy Awareness workshop jingle ft. Karel Gott & Darinka‘s Fang das Licht:

Bernhard’s Energy Awareness workshop. Photo: Katja Goljat


For the past 11 years, the village of Soča (located in the Triglav National Park) has been providing PIFcampers with infrastructure, space and natural phenomena. Although the week-long communities that form each camp connect with the environment, try their best to take care of it, and generally just immensely appreciate it, there’s no denying that bringing 50+ extra persons (not to mention all of the sound- and light-emitting devices) to a village of 140 inhabitants, is a shock. There are several ways to monitor (and then find ways to diminish) our impact, such as calculating power consumption, understanding which (re)sources the energy is coming from, and setting up off-grid systems that are more in tune with their surroundings.

Bernhard started monitoring PIFcamp’s power consumption last year. Here are some of his findings:


//How can we reduce these? But also: how does that compare with the kilowatt hours we use in our ordinary lives? And what are the experiences of those of us living off-grid?

Next installments:
Part 2: Low-tech
Part 3: Self-host

What we’re reading, researching, listening to:
– (re)programming – Strategies for Self-Regeneration (free) | authors: Marta Peirano and guests, edited by: Janez Fakin Janša, published by: Aksioma (Ljubljana, 2022)
– Artists Running Data Centers (CC-BY-SA 4.0) | edited by: Davide Bevilacqua, published by: sevus.at (Linz, 2024)
– Low-tech Magazine | about the mag
– Permacomputing | community
– Solar Protocol: Exploring Energy-Centered Design | authors: Tega Brain, Alex Nathanson, Benedetta Piantella (LIMITS ’22, 2022)
– A Feminist Server Manifesto (Peer Production License) | about
– Distributed Web of Care | about

We’ll continue adding items to the above list as we go. If you have a suggestion, let us know on PIFcamp grounds or send an e-mail to katja[at]ljudmila[dot]org.

The Greening of PIFcamp project is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia from the Climate Change Fund.

Sinfonía biótica: Inter-species creative ecosystems by Fernando Fernández

Sinfonía Biótica is an inter-species creative ecosystem. An investigation into the physical and electromagnetic bodies of other organisms, plants and fungi. A network of sensors connected to a database that monitors environmental data and its relationship with the vital signs of organisms.

An open community of people interested in learning more about other forms of life and in developing artistic projects with this information with the aim of raising awareness about the complexity and importance of respecting and caring for these organisms.
 
All this information feeds into Sinfonía biótica VR, a virtual reality experience in which human beings and non-animal organisms -such as plants and fungi- collaborate in the creation of an interactive audiovisual piece.

Each of these organisms within the symphony, based on the data generated by their electrical impulses, movements and sounds, will interpret a part of the bio data sound composition. The movements and interactions of the performer will be added to the unique and unrepeatable collaborative piece as another instrument.

Sinfonía biótica is a project based on multiple types of information collected from different living beings. On the one hand, we record the physical bodies of the tree and its environment using photogrammetry 
techniques and radiance fields. On the other hand, we collect data from the electrical impulses of the plants and soon also from their environment (temperature, humidity, electroconductivity). We treat this data in a way that allows us to represent both the physical appearance and part of their inner workings to create the digital personality of each one of them.

PHYSICAL BODIES
On one hand, we digitise the physical body of organisms using photogrammetry and Gaussian splatting techniques. After processing and cleaning, we can use these point clouds in Blender, Unreal Engine with the LumaAI plugin or TouchDesigner.

ELECTRICAL DATA FROM PLANTS
Biodata – Symbioware
It is an open-source hardware technological device, designed by Sam Cusumano, from Electricity for Progress, based on Arduino ESP-32 that allows us to amplify the electrical signals of living beings.
By connecting its electrodes to plants or fungi, we can receive fluctuations in their electrical impulses and convert them into sounds, projections, changes in lights, etc.

How does it work?
– Small changes in electrical conductivity are measured between electrodes and fed into a programmable microcontroller.
– The changes are detected by calculations of means and standard deviations that light up LEDs and produce MIDI notes and control changes.
– The circuit used to detect biological galvanic conductance is based on a 555 timer configured as an astable multivibrator, similar to a simple lie detector.

The exploration and practice of Biodata Sonification can allow a student, musician, scientist or florist to listen to the secret life of plants, and understand how their tools work!

More information:
https://sinfoniabiotica.xyz
https://molinolab.org
https:/b1tdreamer.xyz