Category: PIFproject

In his project Tomaž Strgar, a graduate of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, as well as a post-graduate student on the Faculty of Arts (both in Ljubljana), who develops alternative principles of display and organization of on-line content, restores and designs smaller pieces of furniture and much more, questions the foundations of contemporary tendencies of web, technologies and society in general development.

»Web 3.Tree«

The theoretical part will predominantly include hacking of the concepts of our web future, all of which have been accumulated under the term »Web 3.0«. We shall discuss the production of web tools and technologies, the intelligence of machines and people, the meaning of semantic web and content organizing, and visions, such as the intelligent networks of intelligent machines. As needed, we will enlist the help of Descartes, Darwin, Turing, Huxley, Hegel and other spirits to the discussion. With the help of the visitors from the interested participants of other PIFcamp projects we shall gather ideas and material to develop our PIF web tree.

Practically speaking, we shall perform a radical cut into the foundations of modern web aesthetics. A web page will no longer be a scroll, but will always – just like a poster – be visible in it’s whole; the interactive elements will following a click open a new page with same characteristics. With the combined use of standard and non-standard tools we shall plant the PIF web tree, which will function something like this. You are warmly welcome to collaborate!

Another project group be mentored by Michael Murray (IE), who is an arts technologist working in the technical areas of Theatre, Circus, Music and Video with a background in electronics and computer technology and a true passion for  lighting, and Tom O’Dea (IE), a Dublin-based artist, whose work encompasses sculptural works and mixed media installation across sound, electronics and video and is currently a researcher at the Arts Technology Research Laboratory in Trinity College Dublin.

The project aims to explore the idea of comparative rupture within the natural environment through the use of structured geometric lighting and sculptural installations, driven by data from local or networked sources. The aim of the project is to explore and deconstruct the claims towards neutrality and objectivity inherent in the data structures of the ‘hyper-real’ systems of global computing and communication technology by drawing them back into the affective and asignifying register of the natural environment.

The project will make use of various LED lighting technologies to create a system by which we can explore with other PIFcamp collaborators the effectiveness of different aesthetic strategies for reconstituting data as an affective or subjective entity.

The project also aims through collaboration to generate discussion about how a particular technology can act reflexively on the artist to shape their practice, through the setting in the natural environment, PIFcamp forces the project to coexist with elements outside the control of the technology’s parameters.

Edible wild plants expert Dario Cortese presents his “food hacking” node!

On Open Saturday the participants and guests of the camp will be able to join a workshop mentored by Lavoslava Benčič named Graphic Sound. Lavoslava works in the field of visual communication and is an active member of Čipke.

Graphic Sound

In the course of the three-hour-long workshop of graphic sound we will shape sonic structures. The workshop is mostly directed towards those, who don’t have previous knowledge or experience in music composition.

We will start by exploring the beginnings of Graphic Sound and continue by discovering some examples from the art scene of the 20th century. The digital era has wastly contributed towards the transformation of graphic sound tools. We shall get to know them in the practical part of our workshop. We will install the software on our personal computers, prepare our selected visual data for the inclusion into the program and for the effective transformation into sound. What follows are sonic experiments, conducted by the tranformation of visual data into sonic structures. The worshop will conclude with a jam session.

It is highly recommended that the participants bring their own laptops and headphones.

Computer art node holder and ultimate open source & free software geek Luka Frelih presents the 7th project of the summer camp, named PIFcamp Reactive Network.

PIFcamp Reactive Network will take on signals from the real world environment of the PIFcamp and its participants, react to them trough live-coded scripts and feed them back to the camp trough screens and kinetic sculptures. The physical input and output devices speaking the OSC protocol will connect trough Noise Make-up Language (NML), a web livecoding bridge, and form a living, pulsating and growing network inhabiting the camp site, its computers and browsers, not to mention the minds and bodies of campers.

We will invent and make input and output modules based on ideas from kinetic sculpture, DIY and kids robotics, modular synthesizers and the beautiful natural surroundings to combine humble potentiometers, servo motors and microcontrollers, glue and sticks into abstract expression carriers capable of transforming gestures into numbers and back again. We will also bring along and repurpose the huge 19-pad stomp board from Sounds of Ljubljana which will surely add to the fun of finding the pattern that will emerge from connecting these experiments with the noise emanating from other projects at PIFcamp.

Lynne Bruning creates exclusive wearable art, eTextiles and adaptive technologies. She teaches seamless integration of electronics with textiles, inspiring fiber artists, electrical engineer and computer hackers to embrace eTextiles and wearable technology. Ms. Bruning fosters eTextile communities via The eTextile Lounge, an online resource and by lecturing and teaching worldwide.

eTextile Explorations

Using traditional crafting techniques of embroidery, lace making and sewing, we will use conductive fabrics, threads and paints to transform electronic hardware into soft circuits and eTextiles. During PIFcamp we will collaborate with the other nodes to replicate their computer circuitry into functional electronic textiles and thru this process gain a greater understanding of how electronic hardware is manufactured and how to manipulate these systems into eTextiles. By exploring alternative methods of manufacturing sensors and PCBs we hope to introduce additional tools to PIFcamp’s varied electronic systems and expand our electronic component vocabulary.

Another local participant on PIFcamp will be Tilen Sepič, a multidisciplinary designer, new media artist and promoter of open source culture. His experience with light is manifesting in light-design objects, product photography and light installations.

His project will explore generative patterns and shapes made with overlapping frequencies of light, exactly synchronized with frequencies of sound in context of nature.

Light setup will be controlled with multiple voltage-based analog inputs including CV, PWM and sound, so that can be interconnected with many other projects.

Because the setup will be created from fundamental high-power LED parts only, it will be 5-10 times cheaper than common led show-lights.

Tilen will be building, exploring and testing scalable LED installation for lighting trees, with analog drone-based control over the frequencies and colors.

You are welcome to join him!

Another project on PIFcamp comes from our own Ljubljana-based intermedia artist Robertina Šebjanič, who in her art practise places her interest to the fields such as the humanist and natural sciences, bio-art, noise/sound art and much more, and Monika Pocrnjič, a visual art education student with interest in art, esthetics, biology, technology, anthropology and pedagogy.

Oscillatorium – Living systems oscillation

The sonification of environment, or sonification of processes, is communication; a step towards understanding inter-species’ communication and inter-species co-existence. Analogue oscillators do not exist only in the field of electronic circuits, but also in nature, which is why this project attempts to deepen and continue the research and development of natural electronic synthesizers – sound objects.

In the field of natural sciences, predominantly biology, the use of natural oscillators is dedicated to the study of the ways of functioning of the natural world within its temporal structure. A simple example of this is the functioning of the heart and circadian rhythms, which represent the information flow from the working processes in our brains. Circadian rhythm enables us to understand and monitor time and helps us to maintain our everyday rhythm on the basis of electro-chemical oscillation of the cells. Within this project we would like to concentrate on the study of various living systems (animal and plant species) and through them establish a specific oscillation for each of the species, which we would then assemble into a sonic-visual experience.

Theoretically we would be referring to work of botanist Jakob Johann von Uexküll, more specifically to his A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, with a Theory of Meaning. Von Uexküll introduced biosemiotics as a research field and defined the term umwelt (milieu, situation, embedding – lit. German for environment). The expression usually refers to the so-called “self-in-world” subjective reference frame. The biological basis at the heart of his studies originates from a reflection on the communication and discerning of the meaning of what is human and what is animalistic. The fundamental thought of Uexküll’s theory is that organisms can have different umwelten, even when they share the same environment.

The project Oscillatorium is in its development phase and will debut at Kiblix festival 2015 (produced by Kibla). The collaboration at PIFcamp will be in the form of debates, experimentation and research.

Key words:
bio-sonification, natural oscillation, vibration, analogue, bio-analogue

How to hack your holiday

Michael Page is an artist/inventor who has been refining an electro-mechanical music sequencing machine for the past few years. After confronting the fact he enjoys performance but not studio recording with his machines, he started thinking about documentation, and how a happening or recording of an event can be the outcome of a project. He believes an event or a recording of an event is something with realness about it and appreciates the real incidental aspects – it all happens in a real place and time and is rich with “free data”, such as room / PA acoustics, performance errors, background noises, birdsong etc.

His project on PIFcamp will tranfer his outlook on documentation to the happening on the camp. Do you know how people’s holiday photos pretty much just show the good stuff? Or when people make their kids catch a Frisbee for a photo, but don’t actually play a proper game with them? Do they do this to conjure some sort of hyper-real hyper-idyllic family scene or something?

Michael’s project will try to remove as much of this bias as possible, by having photos, audio and video taken at arbitrary intervals. A starting point for exploration will be camera set to time lapse mode taking documentation every half hour or so, with the resulting material compiled into a very honest holiday slideshow. The project will investigate the physical process of hacking an audio/video device to record at arbitrary intervals and hopefully start discussion around the subjects of documentation and the consumption of media and experience.