Category: 2025

Matjaž Pogačnik and Jakob Lavrič are developing a project that explores the organization of autonomous, self-sustaining systems. The work is inspired by firefly synchronization, a natural phenomenon in which fireflies coordinate their light pulses, and aims to recreate this behavior using simple electronic units.

The project involves the design of artificial “fireflies”, a small electronic devices equipped with a light source, internal timer, speaker, and an infrared (IR) communication interface. Each unit can detect signals from nearby fireflies and respond by adjusting its own behavior.

The fireflies interact with one another and are capable of complete synchronization. At the same time, they perform mutual data transmission, which can be observed, heard, and configured. This allows real-time insight into how the system self-organizes: how signals propagate, how synchronization emerges, and how information flows through the network.

References:
Mirollo, R. E., & Strogatz, S. H. (1990). Synchronization of Pulse-Coupled Biological Oscillators. SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, 50(6), 1645-1662. Synchronization of Pulse-Coupled Biological Oscillators Renato E. Mirollo; Steven H. Strogatz SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematic

Lewis, S. M., & Cratsley, C. K. (2008). Flash Signal Evolution, Mate Choice, and Predation in Fireflies. Annual Review of Entomology, 53, 293-321. Access PDF via Sci-Hub

During PIFcamp, Simon Goričar will continue experimenting in the field of pixel sorting, a set of techniques for creating glitchy images (more generally known as glitch art). His early explorations have shown intriguing seeds of promise. He wishes to build improved tools and explore pixel sorting methods, both as a way of obtaining even more interesting results, as well as a way of removing dependence on proprietary tools.

The project has several goals:
– to discover and document various ways of pixel sorting that more commonly give pleasant and good results,
– to build a Rust library for creative image effects using pixel sorting, which will be eventually open-sourced,
– to capture a wide array of source material, focused mostly on nature and structures around PIFcamp, and
– to put to the test alternative ways of post-processing and combining pixel sorting outputs using open-source image editors.

Simon Goričar is primarily a software engineer, but also an aspiring musician and, more recently, a music live-coder who has appeared a few times at local from-scratch sessions in Ljubljana this year. With a passion for open source, open data, and “software-for-good” as a means of disentangling oneself from tech giants, he hopes to build software as a means of improving quality of life.

When not actively engaged in his project or hiking around with a camera, he will undoubtedly be inquisitively wandering around PIFcamp and trying to learn as much as possible. Hopefully some evening live coding jams will calm his spirit!

I often think with the body—sometimes alone, sometimes with others—trying to sense where movement begins and where it becomes something else. A gesture, a sound, a signal. Sometimes I wonder: what does it mean to feel a sound before you hear it?

At this year’s PIFcamp, Diana will be continuing a thread from last year’s workshop Negotiation of Agency, Points of Contact, where she explored how bodies negotiate control and connection. This year, that exploration will shift into sound.

Her focus will be on what she calls embodied synthesizers: simple, wearable sound-making devices designed for the body or for two performers to share. Her goal isn’t to create precise instruments, but to open up new ways of listening to movement – and new ways of moving through sound.

She will be experimenting with different ways bodies might generate sound. What happens when a stretch of fabric triggers a frequency shift? Or when a brush of skin closes a conductive loop, and a tone responds to touch? Can sound arise from the space between people, from the tension or timing of a gesture, rather than from a knob on the machine?

Some of the configurations are very simple: an accelerometer worn on the wrist, a soft sensor stitched into a stretch of fabric, imagined as a connective tissue between two bodies, a tiny speaker buzzing against the ribs. The idea isn’t to build perfect instruments, but to create fragile, relational systems – ones that only make sense when moved through, together.

Previous experimentation in this direction available here: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/303774830

Zach Poff is a media artist and educator who builds expanded field recording devices such as contact microphones, hydrophones, ultrasound devices, and RF and light listeners to reveal hidden aspects of the environment, similar to how a doctor’s stethoscope probes the systems of the body. This “listening with other ears” helps him de-center his human perspective and imagine alternative ways of inhabiting the world.

At PIFcamp, Zach plans to continue this research with a specific focus on ultrasound. He has been developing techniques using DIY microphones and custom software to live-stream the sonic activity of bats in real-time. By doing so, he makes these usually hidden creatures “visible” through sound and explores the vast differences between bat and human perception timescales in an aesthetic way.

In addition to this, Zach will develop bat-inspired sonic devices where ultrasonic echoes are slowed down so that the resulting acoustics become rhythmic gestures. These devices are designed for both live performance and installation contexts. He also sees many exciting opportunities for workshops and collaborations. These include exercises aimed at “de-familiarizing” familiar spaces through sound, creating compositions for multi-channel audio playback, exploring dance and movement paired with rhythmic spatial feedback, visualizing acoustics, and much more.

The project by Ajda Kadnuc is developed as an experiential exploration of alternative ways of experiencing space, grounded in non-human perspectives. During PIFcamp, the artist plans to carry out a guided walk in the Soča Valley, where participants will receive instructions and small objects that will accompany them along the way. The aim is to create a situation that encourages different modes of orientation, attention, and movement through the surroundings.

During the walk, Ajda will test a simple acoustic system to record the hidden acoustic dimensions of the forest in order to explore decomposing ecosystems and the potential of bioacoustic perception. By walking, listening, and interacting with materiality, she will explore how mapping becomes a relational, affective process shaped by ecological entanglements. Project is part of a broader reflection on how space can be sensed and mapped.

Offline Network Practice is a software art project and experimental network developed by Aleksander Roidl. It explores how digital culture can be shared, preserved, and experienced without relying on the commercial internet, shaped by proximity, loss, and care.

The project is built from a series of Raspberry Pi nodes with e-ink displays and local storage, linked together through a portable router or temporary mesh. Together, they form an autonomous, offline-capable network. Each node functions as a minimal archive: hosting and serving fragments of digital media—net art, executable code, digital zines, obsolete software, lost documentation, personal folders, or collective research.

These archives are not online. They appear in specific places—public spaces, temporary gatherings, kitchens, bathrooms—where visitors must be physically present to access them. The e-ink displays offer slow, quiet, and persistent interfaces, showing poetic messages, system states, or hints of what is stored within each node. The network is intentionally unstable: it may fragment, go offline, or intermittently reconnect to exchange data with other nodes.

The project asks:
What remains when the connection breaks?
What happens when the network itself becomes ephemeral, partial, or silent?
How do we engage with websites, code, and digital traces that don’t rely on the internet to exist?

In this context, a website becomes something else entirely:
Not a live feed, but a local artifact.
Not a destination, but a file passed hand-to-hand.
Not dynamic, but static, defined by its last sync.

These offline websites may load slowly, incompletely, or with deliberate friction. They may include broken links, missing images, or blank spaces where once there was connection. And they point toward alternative, embodied modes of digital circulation that embrace presence, imperfection, and disappearance.

Azucena Sánchez is a media artist from Mexico City, currently based in Munich. Her most recent work, ‘Tlalli, Conversations with Soil’, is an ongoing dialogue between nature and human intervention that focuses on the profound connection that gardeners share with their land. The piece consists of visiting different self-sustainable gardens across cities like Weimar, Mexico City, and Madrid. Through soil chromatograms and (eco)poetics, the piece shows us that with concrete actions from individuals, we can create a true change in our society and promote justice and equality through sustainability. Tlalli invites us to reflect on the political and economic ramifications of agriculture, food consumption and storage. It focuses on permaculture within cities and the ecological restoration of forgotten green areas.

Building on this piece, Azucena wants to explore the possibility of having a conversation with soil by creating an interactive system where the soil itself plays an active role in a dialogue. Using sensors to measure humidity, movement, or resistance, the system would trigger words from an existing (eco)poem, which would then ‘listen’ to response and answer back, creating a back-and-forth exchange fully dependent on the soil’s temporality.

The system needs to actively listen and respond, making the interaction feel like a real-time conversation and turning the piece into a performance between human and soil. Azucena is interested in learning from fellow artists at PIFcamp, especially those working with sound, performance, and technology, to develop this dialogue into a live experience. Her goal is to experiment with ways of making this exchange more immersive, while combining poetry, technology and the more-than-human world.

In Posočje, accelerated technological development, post-war emigration and pressure from established (religious and governmental) institutions has caused the collective ancient spiritual practices (staroverstvo) to fade away. Yet, remnants and records still speak of alternative social structures that formed and persisted despite centuries of repression. Their persistence can be credited partly to the conspiracy of silence (zarota molka), a mode of deception and organisation, a secretive transfer of knowledge through aesthetics, household tools and even the arrangement of houses and burial sites in the villages. Stone was the central material of this religious heritage, with the changes in its texture and surface defining its role and placement within everyday rituals. 

In her project, Celeste wants to work with these concealed bonds and calculations that were driving the organisation of villages and the pulse of everyday actions. Using a ToF sensor and a metallic framework, she plans to scan the surfaces of stones to create visualizations, give light to new symbols (derived from these surface readings) and therefore completing new fictions that force themselves into this reality. She might even explore incorporating sound to further enhance the experience.

Celeste Sanja

Blaž Pavlica will continue developing and improving a codebase for rhythm generation, designed for live-coding performances in the SuperCollider environment. Over the past year, he developed a series of SuperCollider functions for live performances, including tools for generating rhythm patterns with musically interesting properties, functions for creating sets of compatible rhythms, and features that make real-time rhythm composition more intuitive during live coding.This year, he will further develop the collection to enable rhythm generation based on musical parameters such as evenness and syncopation. He will organize, document, and publish the codebase online in a form that will also be useful to other SuperCollider users!