Can a group of people, animals, or even robots in a given environment achieve coordinated behavior without external coordination or control?
Julia Múgica will work on a project that deals with the intriguing concept of collective behavior. Her focus will be on the emergence of synchronization, which showcases how this phenomenon goes beyond individual actions and emphasizes the importance of self-organization through local interactions. To illustrate this phenomenon, Julia plans to employ various approaches, including particle systems to create live-coded visuals and generate textures using noise algorithms.
Additionally, she will collaborate with Alicia Champlin on an investigation related to potential synchronization in the heartbeats of individuals entering Blaž Pavlica’s dome. Lastly, in collaboration with Lina Bautista and Iván Paz, they aim to build a set of small swarm robots known as “the kilobots”. These robots were developed in 2012 and will be programmed to perform collective algorithms, further highlighting the idea of emergent synchrony.
For this year’s PIFcamp Jelisa Weber will be working on a project with a focus on engraving stone materials like boulders and river pebbles with a half-automatic milling process. The search for suitable stones and surfaces for engraving will serve as preparation and also as a small survey, documented in pictures. These images, or any images resulting from this process, are then re-engraved on the stones.
Using a handled milling device controlled by an Arduino, the images are going to be translated pixel row by pixel row into darker and brighter areas. Leaving a mark in the history of the ever-changing minerals.
Drawing from her prior experience in a similar project, where she combined an Arduino with a tattoo machine, in order to „print“ images with it. Jelisa sees this as an opportunity to transition from Processing (free graphical library and integrated development environment) to Python, elevating the image-processing script’s potential to new heights.
Oriol Pares is a New Media Artist specialized in the use of technology as an explorative tool for communication. During this year, he started building his first DIY synthesizer project with a sensor able to track galvanic changes on a living matter. He intends to bring that instrument and continue his exploration, connected to the vibrant and special landscape surrounding the camp.
And, If there are any fellow oscillator enthusiasts at PIFcamp wanting to join, try, out or even collaborate, the next part of the Field Oscillator instrument may not be that far away. ;)
This year’s PIFresident is Michael Candy, an Australian artist who works with physical technologies and robotics. His installations and experiments often manifest as interactive sculptures, videos, or interventions. During his PIFresidency at PIFcamp Michael hopes to continue his ‘anomaly’ experiment series in which robotics and light are used to create unlikely spectacles.
He started this series of work in December last year when a prototype drone was built to stabilize a laser excited phosphor beam of light as it ascended, resulting in a slowly extending beam of light. Another experiment was a floating robot underneath the surface of a frozen lake, shining light back through as it maneuvered around until the batteries froze over. He has no idea what anomalies might manifest during PIFcamp, as they are mostly designed around their environment; but he surely will bring a lot of parts to play around with!
Additionally, Michael will be working on his project with other PIFcampers, who are eager to work with electromechanical tech, and possibly continue this collaboration further into the residency in Ljubljana. He will share his extensive experience with designing robots and animatronics for cinematic applications with anyone wanting to build physical robotics, or needing help with a mechanism design. Sounds like something you are into? Just hit him up!
PIFresidency is a cooproduction between Projekt Atol Institute, Lightning Guerrilla/Forum Ljubljana and Kersnikova Institute. With financial support from Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Municipality of Ljubljana, Department for Culture and SYSTEMICS LAB/UCSB. PIFresidencies are part of the Rewilding Cultures project and co-funded by the European Union.
Rob Canning of Zavod Rizoma will lead two experimental instrument building workshops culminating in an informal improvised musical/sound/noise performance. Workshops will combine a sculptural, craft and upcycling element with a technological element, allowing the made objects to become touch sensitive instruments or interfaces.
One workshop will be directed at younger PIFlars and shall involve less coding and place more emphasis on listening, sound recording, simple soldering and creative object construction. The more advanced workshop will look more closely at the technological back-end enabling participants to integrate capacitive touch interfaces into their own creative workflow using the esp32 and the OSC protocol.
konS:: Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art is a project chosen on the public call for the selection of the operations “Network of Investigative Art and Culture Centres”. The investment is co-financed by the Republic of Slovenia and by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union.
During PIFcamp 2023, Sophia Bulgakova is planning to experiment with food and various augmentation of reality using XR technologies and analogue tools of sensory deprivation while dining.
She wants to conduct testing & tasting sessions together with other participants exploring their relationship with various sensory stimulants with a focus on food and dining as a communal ritual. How can a change in visual perception affect the taste of certain foods? Can physical togetherness be achieved at a distance? How our taste buds be tricked by the stimulation of other senses? These experimentations will be a part of her collaborative, ongoing umbrella project, Metaphysical Tastings, which Sophia is working on together with Leonardo Scarin & Cemre Deniz Kara.
Sophia will also continue her experimentations with the analogue/digital VJ set-up she is developing and work on arranging jam and play sessions with other participants of this year’s program.
Laurent Malys is working on a show that mixes dance and techniques of live music composition. He build a prosthesis to attach each part of a split computer keyboard to his hands, allowing him to type while moving freely and dancing.
The show is intended to be an ironic and impractical transhumanist performance that will show the creativity of algorithmic and electronic music, while bringing all the musical expressiveness through the movement of the body. It is also a questioning of the interfaces between humans and machines/instruments and our relationship to technical languages.
The technical part of the project involves three software components that are in an early stage of development and will continue to be built and tested during PIFcamp: – tui-seq: A terminal user interface for live composition and live coding (using FoxDot and supercollider) – body2ctrl: A set of computer vision tools that can translate movement of the body into musical control – ofxpartloop: An “event-driven” music visualization software (made in Openframeworks)
During the PIFcamp, Laurent will try to engage other participants to experiment ‘body2ctrl’ to control music software or their own software or hardware synthetiser (via midi or osc).
Laurent Malys makes sound and moving images with algorithm and electronics and experiment with various ways to mix music, visuals and performance (with live-coding, digital and analog synthesis, vector synthesis, electronics, mechanics, fabrication.)
Fransisca Tan is an Austrian food experience designer with a diverse background in cognitive sciences, communication, gastronomy, and media technology. With a deep-rooted passion for exploring and curating transformative human experiences, Fransisca uses the multisensory power of food as her canvas. As an artist, creative producer, and international project manager, she endeavors to foster connections among individuals from diverse backgrounds, unveiling the profound significance of community and compassion.
In her project for PIFcamp, all participants are invited to collaborate and embark on a collective exploration. Together, they may delve into the fascinating questions such as: How does food and our environment shape our interactions? What does the future (of food) smell, taste and feel like to our touch – engaging all our senses? The beautiful surroundings of Soča valley will partake in this explorative journey by feeding inspirations on ecosystem thinking.
During the event, participants can look forward to engaging talks challenging concepts such as food waste and nature, hacking rituals & cultural practices surrounding food, and workshops on sensory exploration that venture beyond traditional culinary boundaries.
Join Fransisca and fellow participants at PIFcamp as they unlock the mysteries of our relationship withfood, each other and the natural world, and collectively envision a future that tantalizes not just our taste buds but all our senses.
70% of the bat species use echolocation to hunt and communicate. The ultrasound signals that bats emit are above human hearing, but we can bring them down to our perception with some electronics. Let’s build a couple of Bat-detectors and let’s search for bats at the Soča river when the sun comes down.
No bats? No problem! We can steal the bats superpower and build a small square-wave synth secretly screaming for attention.
Rodolfo Acosta Castro is a Berlin based artist working with electronics, code and nature in theater context. He will try some experiments with ultrasound transmitters and is happy to collaborate with other projects, to improvise or use new materials.
This year we will go through the documentation of previous PIFcamps, that is through everything related to food. Everything that can be thought of, gathered and connected to, and clustered under the umbrella of PIFood. Ideas, experiments, successes and failures. The goal is to provide future experimenters with information about previous activities, and offer the opportunity to this year’s attendees to recreate some of the material in its edible form, as fermented correspondences and digestible ideas; to reflect, react and engage with it from new perspectives. In so doing we will also attend to (fragmented and not in that order) questions such as:
How can we connect through food and with food; with the environment that provides us with nourishments? How can we think of care through food? How can we think of food as the Other? What can we learn from applying food related concepts to how we collectively imagine the world? What role do science and art have in how we consume, digest and nourish the natural and social world we live in? What kind of sustenance does PIFcamp provide for the hunger of imagination?
We will reminiscence and rearticulate foraging walks, alternative “club mate” fermentations, lime paneers, sourdough scoby breads, coffee corners, DIY incubators for natto and tempeh, open fire workshops, kombucha and foraged syrups cocktails, PIFnicks, beer brew workshops, and more.
The main ingredients were and remain the people. We will also remember these actors, explore their work and what informed their PIFood related activities, while also trying to connect with those physically not present to talk about Diva dinners, durian food festivals, beach BBQs, distillery visits, loose fruit, brick over construction and so on.
We will learn about how PIFood was incepted through correspondences with DiNaCon, and how collaborations with PIFcamp’s kitchen informed its identity. We will also discuss where we can find concepts floating within the degrowth community (conviviality, care, social metabolism, commons, growth, post-normal science, ubuntu etc.) within PIFood, and also broader PIFcamp and DiNaCon activities. And we will debate the introduction of concepts like regrowth, undergrowth and overgrowth.
Participants are invited to help with preparing this documentation, to contribute to it with their own material and memories, new takes on it, reinterpretations, and new ideas, experiments, connections. The space will be open for sharing meals, recipes, ideas, and accompanying questions. Finally, we will launch this documentation on the PIFood.club blog.
If any participant sees themselves in any of the stated, please contact Ahac (ahac@drmr.si) and discuss your input and/or possible requirements for your PIFood related activity.
Commemorating the inspiration for PIFood, its godfather, the late but never forgotten Dario <3
