Category: PIFproject

Ionospheric Antenna by beepblip

The ionospheric antenna is a large copper coil designed to capture the crackle of solar electromagnetic radiation. We will build three variations of different sizes to test which one best captures the music of the stars, faint electromagnetic events, and inaudible atmospheric very low frequencies. During summer storms, it should also enable the sonification of ‘whistler’ waves, which can interact with radiation belt particles and cause them to precipitate onto the ionosphere.

beepblip (Ida Hiršenfelder) is a sound artist and archivist. She makes immersive bleepy psychogeographical soundscapes and is interested in bioacoustics, experimental music, and sound spatialisation. Since 2021, she has been developing a series of interdisciplinary sound works such as “Empathic Atmospheres“ which addresses the agency of non-organic others, and “Translating Critters” which explores the potentiality of non-human-animal language translation. She completed her Master of Sonology studies at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague (2023). She also runs workshops for inaudible sound detection, such as electromagnetic detectors, hydrophones, ionospherics, and ultrasonics.

Circular Chromatography by 2024 PIFresident Julian Chollet

Soil, earth, dirt, mud… the stuff we walk on, sit on, sometimes even sleep on. It’s where we grow our food and bury our dead, the foundation that makes our planet livable for everyone – except maybe some water creatures. This mysterious substance is everywhere, yet most of us rarely give it a second thought.

This years’ PIFresident Julian Chollet would like to take you on a journey to explore this underappreciated world beneath our feet. Using Circular Chromatography, it is possible to transform a spoonful of dirt into a vibrant image that reveals the composition of the soil: minerals, organic material, microbial activity, etc.

From sampling to chroma development, the two-day (~4 hours each) hands-on exploration will have plenty of breaks and time for discussions. The workshop is still in an experimental phase, so your feedback and ideas are highly appreciated!

“Sonifying frequencies” by Bernhard Rasinger

Elektrosluch Mini City is a DIY kit of Elektrosluch, an open-source device for electromagnetic
listening. It allows one to discover sonic worlds of electromagnetic fields, surrounding our every step.
Just plug your headphones & explore. Concept & electronics were developed by Jonáš Gruska.


Elektrosluch Mini kit is easy to assemble; there are very few components to solder. It’s a very good
start to pick up your basic soldering skills and start reading a schematic. Bernhard Rasinger will guide
you through the workshop. Be sure to bring headphones with a TRS connector!

And always remember to let there be a comparator at the input!

p/q – Rational number decimals as rhythmic pattern

In this project, Ingo Randolf is searching for repeating decimal numbers to use the repeating patterns as rhythms. To do so, a pattern-recognition algorithm finds repeating patterns in a brute-force method of dividing prime numbers. These patterns will then be used as input to a rhythm machine.

Rational numbers are numbers that can be written as a ratio of two integers (e.g., 1/3). Some rational numbers are decimal numbers that either end after a certain number of digits (e.g., 1.25) or repeat (e.g., 0.3333…).

Prime numbers are integers only divisible by one or themselves. Every non-prime integer can be composed of prime numbers. Prime numbers are the building blocks of the realm of integers.

He will explore what kinds of rhythms come out of this experiment.

Biofabricated soft robots and inflatables by Marisa Satsia

What does molecular gastronomy and biofabrication have in common and what do these techniques have to do with the fabrication of soft robots? 

Through this project Marisa Satsia would like to continue her research of bringing molecular gastronomy and biofabrication techniques into the making of soft robots and inflatables. She will be exploring and working with natural polymers, cooking up and inflating biomaterials and experimenting with different fusing and sealing techniques.

During PIFcamp, she is eager to collaborate with others and potentially integrate her research with someone else’s work – she is especially interested in teaming up with individuals who have electronics skills or share similar interests. If you are interested, please feel free to join in!

Ethical Hardware Workshop at PIF

It is an open secret that the hardware in our smart devices contains not only plastics but also conflict minerals such as tungsten, tin, tantalum, silver, and gold. Hence, technology is not neutral. In this workshop, we investigate alternative hardware made from locally sourced materials, known as ethical hardware, to develop and speculate upon renewable practices for the benefit of both nature and humans.

During the workshop, we will make printed circuit boards with wild local clay, using recycled silver as the main electrical conductor. We will model the boards, paint the circuits, and fire them in an open bonfire at PIFcamp. Participants will solder all electronic components and test the circuit for an interactive microcontroller board that can control digital and analogue sensors as inputs and speakers, LEDs, and motors as outputs (similar to Arduino). The workshop will be hosted by Patrícia J. Reis (Mz*Baltazar’s Lab).

Image by Janine Schranz ©

Diving Into the Posthumanist Practice

Tamara Lašič Jurković is an interdisciplinary designer, researcher and teaching assistant specializing in design theory, who plans to host a workshop PIFcamp to create a local version of the collaborative game Left With a Memory, present her project Hacked Meditation and refine her PhD topic proposal. All three endeavours—the PhD topic and the two projects—are rooted in posthumanist theory in terms of moving beyond human-centered design approaches, challenging anthropocentric beliefs, recognizing the interconnectedness of the “web of life” and comprehending human dependence on natural ecosystems and other biotic organisms. Hacked Meditation is a guided audio meditation that questions the exclusivity and definition of the human being by exploring the microbial life within and outside our bodies. Left With a Memory is a collaborative, educational memory game that highlights the surprising number of red-listed endangered species resulting from the destructiveness of human activity. Lastly, for her PhD, Tamara aims to explore how strategic board game development methods can be implemented in the posthumanist design process and whether board games can be an effective teaching tool for introducing the posthumanist perspective in design.

RIP Your Tech. A Bioplastic Send-Off Party! by Sabina Suru & Andrei Tudose

Have you ever held onto a piece of technology long after its prime? A phone that is too old to even connect to the internet, a cassette player lost in the digital age, a gadget gathering dust in a forgotten drawer, or a film camera received from a friend which just doesn’t function anymore? These relics whisper stories of our ever-evolving relationship with the digital world.

This summer at PIFcamp, Marginal via visual artist Sabina Suru and curator Andrei Tudose, invite you
to Places of Care, to explore these quiet narratives and craft a gentle farewell for our ageing
technologies. The project challenges traditional perceptions of technology and fosters a deeper appreciation for the complex ecosystem it creates, highlighting the importance of care for technology and a shift towards a more responsible approach to resource management in the technological sector and beyond, opening up conversations about the ecological footprint of technology and the need for sustainable practices in its production and disposal.

Oh, speaking of disposal – how do you feel about waste? Not e-waste (well, not just yet), but bio-waste, growing in front of our eyes. Now, imagine transforming this everyday waste into bioplastic, instead of the ever present plastic made of fossil fuel-based chemicals, today’s biggest frown-upon villain.

What is bioplastic, you ask? It’s a material derived from renewable sources like plant starches or vegetable fats, offering a more sustainable alternative to its petroleum-based counterpart. During collaborative working sessions, we’ll get our hands dirty (in a good way!) experimenting with these innovative materials. We’ll make bioplastics from scratch, using everyday materials like agar agar, flour, kitchen scraps and whatever biowaste we’ll stumble upon around the camp.

These materials will become gentle shrouds for your abandoned technologies (please bring some with you!), eco-friendly burial garments which will not only commemorate our cast-off gadgets, but also become the building blocks for a larger installation Sabina is working on. Yap, your e-waste will find its resting place at the Bucharest Technical Museum in October, for the Places of Care exhibition, a testament to our techno-ecology and our possibilities for responsible consumption.

Join us if you wish to:
● Reimagine the afterlife of technology: Give your tech a gentle send-off and explore themes
related to ecology of technology, obsolescence and responsible consumption.
● Embrace new materials: Learn to make bioplastics from sustainable and readily available
ingredients.
● Be part of a collaborative artwork: Contribute to a wider installation displayed at a really cool
museum!

Bacterial Field Guide by Maya Minder

Kombucha, as a new material (also praised for its probiotic benefits for our digestive system), holds potential as a suitable approach to familiarize oneself with the complex world of microorganisms. Bacterial cellulose as made inside Kombucha is a new model system for cooperation and conflict in a complex multi-species microbial environment. As Lynn Margulis pointed out that bacterial life as part of the five kingdoms is the predominant lifeforms on planet Earth and the most ancestral life form developed in wet humid environments.  The encounter and study from an artistic approach bears great potential of learning from bacterial live and existence through the view of non-human perspectives while diving into a field trip of encounter using microscopes, human sensory and deep contemplation. The Workshop will endorse the symbiotic approaches of how human perceive microbes through history involving a holistic approach of understanding the kingdom of bacteria by workshops and field trips. Within this workshop we will dwell into various aspects of Kombucha and the existence of biofilms in natural environment, its composition and perceiving in a human scale sensory apparatus. Hands on Workshops on how to grow bacteria, how to sing with bacteria, how to draw and colourful create recipes of enhancing or interfering human microbiome, but also biologic knowledge and micro-cosmomological perceptions of plant-human, plant microbial, stone-microbial, organic inorganic symbiotic living territories of bacteria. Coping, hunting and analyzing them by going back into the beginnings and history of microbiology science threw Louis Pasteur, Sergei Winogradsky and Heinrich Anton de Bary as well as but also mapping out field trips for investigating into geological appearance of microbial matts pre-existing on planet Earth (Stromatolites) as primer terrestrial landscape. 

Bacterial cellulose made of Kombucha requires research and practice in handling the material. Creating protocols for growing bacterial cellulose requires time, space and stillness to research its density, thickness and strength of the material, as well as drying processes, duration and durability of the layers, the post-treatment still to explores can be adapted to traditional leather making processes. For the appropriate duration of several months as the preparation and post-processing time, I conducted the research on bacterial cellulose produced by fermentation of kombucha and its production and processing process and led to interesting results, the results of which led to further research and practical application as well as workshop giving but for Piff camp mainly the sharing knowledge and creating encounters, experience and new possible collaborations

Working with the new biomaterial requires adaption and familiarize with the uncanny bacterial existence. To learn microbial behaviour means to adapt to a pre-historic deep time understanding of original archaic lifeforms. In this workshop I propose to learn from an hands-on approach inside the outdoor lab using olfactory, sensory, biohacking and sensorial methods to approach microbial existence as well as field trip explorations to visit ancient and modern existence of microbial matts in our environment. We will additionally research in our approximate environment and explore the concept of biofilms as a biomass pre-existing and predominant during the triassic period by visiting the Karst mountains. Through tapping into invisible life and their ability of growing microbial matts by microbial activity we will get familiar by approaches of Lynn Margulis or Betsy Dexter Dyer, feminist Biologists who are leading in the approach of symbiogenesis, welcoming a more close look into the predominant existing species of microbes. To oppose and decolonize knowledge of them as laboratory guinea pigs by western science epistemology of microbiology biochemistry.

Oscilloscope Music

Oscilloscope Music is audiovisual music, where the visuals are drawn using sound. In order to get the closest possible correlation between image and sound, the exact same signal that is connected to the left and right speakers is also connected to an analog oscilloscope’s X and Y inputs, producing complex lissajous images.

Over the span of six years Jerobeam Fenderson and Hansi3D have created ever more elaborate techniques to explore this largely uncharted field of audiovisual music, resulting in a full length album, as well as the unique 3D-audio software OsciStudio. For PIFcamp they will do a little performance, host an introductory workshop to lasers and/or oscilloscopes and maybe try to do a tiny laser light installation.