PIFcamp

ISOLABS is conceived as a landscape of forensic situations between art and science, stretching from the source to the mouth of the Soča River. It encompasses fieldwork and exchanges, environmental and remote sensing, mapping, reflection, and encounters with local and global communities that connect art, technology and the sciences.

With the accessibility of modern instruments for environmental sensing and recording, whether on a biological, chemical, physical, or visual level, human capacity to understand the components of what we consider “nature” has exponentially increased. However, to fully broaden our view of complex biospheres and comprehend them as ecosystems, we must integrate cultural, historical, and geological realities. How can an Alpine river, flowing into the Mediterranean Sea, with its material and cultural sedimentary deposits, contribute to ecological thought?

The Soča River is a particularly fragile biosphere and cultural treasure, which in its Alpine part is associated with a complex mix of historical conflicts, exploitation for hydroelectric power and sports tourism, extreme pollution, and geological damage. In its lower course, it creates a subtle micro-spread of the urban structures of Nova Gorica and Gorizia. Its mouth and contact with the Adriatic Sea form a new fragile ecosystem. During PIFcamp, the SPEKTR-Z[i] team will continue with the mapping and charting of the valley, an important part of the activities will also be connected to the launch of DIALECT (Distinctive Intonation and Articulation for Local Expression/Ecological Conveying and Traits identification), which is an ISOLABS research cluster devoted to mapping Slovenian, Friulian, and Italian dialects and microtoponyms in and around the river basin.

The team will also devote part of its time to the exploration of the war histories of the valley in connection to their preparations for Expanding Black situation, a research direction aimed at  reflecting the global information space expansion of kriegstheater/theatrum belli, especially focused on the ongoing war operations on the territory of Ukraine, Russian Federation, Azov sea, Black Sea as well in adjoining airspaces.

---

[i] SPEKTR Z – Sensor Polygon for Electromagnetism, Communication, Technology, Research, and Detection is a hybrid mobile laboratory. It began operating in July 2022 in the Karst region during the largest natural fire in modern Slovenian history. Its activities continued as part of the ISOLABS project in the Soča River basin in August 2022, where it will remain active at least until 2026. The laboratory is of a hybrid nature, composed of modules and equipment for remote sensing, receiving, and processing systems for sensor data. A special section of the laboratory is dedicated to public presentations of its operation and collaboration with tactical media workers, artists, the creative and high-tech industry, and research institutions. The laboratory will be physically present in the Soča River basin from 2024 onwards, and we also plan to present it to the public at the central location of the European Capital of Culture in Nova Gorica. The laboratory is currently under construction and is expected to become operational in the fourth quarter of 2024.

suNEARth is an interface translating radio sun observations into compositions with field recordings collected on Earth. A composition follows a linear data spectrogram which is translated into sound using visual pattern recognition. The algorithm searches through the collected and archived field recordings and finds the best visual matches in the audio spectrograms. In this way, the sun observations are not compressed to the audio spectrum but rather manifest in recognizable recorded sounds or a total mess, as the sun and Earth can be.

The interface was developed by Gianluca Elia and Francesco Bigoni and was part of the objectives for PhD research addressing sun-Earth cohabitation by Pepa Ivanova.

Pepa is inviting PIFparticipants to perform the sun collectively. Anyone willing to record sounds, describe and categorize them, as well as try the interface or even advise on improving the methods and upgrading the code, can join. Other types of data recordings using spectrograms as output are also very welcome.

In the current era, characterized by a diminishing empathy towards the non-human agents of our ecosystems, the essence of our relationship with the soil is under scrutiny as well. The “Status of the World’s Soil Resources” report, published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2015, illuminates a paradox: while our understanding of soil has reached unprecedented levels, the proportion of individuals directly engaged in soil cultivation has declined significantly across the globe¹. This trend has profound implications, especially considering that approximately 95% of the nutrients in our food supply are derived directly or indirectly from soil, which possesses the inherent capacity to nourish plant life². The disengagement of the majority of contemporary humans from the living cycles and agrobiodiversity of the Earth is arguably a consequence of prioritizing productivity and profitability, highlighting a pressing need for reconnection with the very ground that sustains us.

In response to this challenge, the intention of artist Saša Spačal is to leverage soil chromatography as a method for environmental engagement during the upcoming PIFcamp. This will be achieved through conducting soil chromatography workshops and the creation of large-scale textile soil chromatograms, which will serve as sound scores. Subsequent research will focus on the conceptualization and preliminary testing of a sound instrument designed to interpret these textile scrolls, transforming them into a performance tool that vocalizes the soil. This endeavor seeks not only to cultivate a renewed interest in the substrate that nourishes us but also to underscore the critical role of soil in sustaining life on Earth through sonic storytelling about hyperlocal underground communities.

1. https://www.fao.org/3/i5199e/i5199e.pdf, accessed: March 13th, 2024 ↩︎
2. https://www.fao.org/3/cc0900en/cc0900en.pdf, accessed: March 13th, 2024) ↩︎

Modulating Time is a collaboration between artists Lizzie Wilson, Alex McLean, and Mika Satomi. Together, they will explore connections between e-textiles and live coding, including modulating time in live coding performance through movement tracked via sensors and machine learning.

Mika is interested in developing a physical wearable device that senses the tempo and pattern of the wearer’s movement. Lizzie and Alex are looking into how the tempo and pattern can be extracted from the sensor data and incorporated into live coding processes to create interesting music.

We are excited to host this project at the 10th PIFcamp and look forward to seeing the outcome!

█▄▀ █░█ █▄▄ █░█ █▀   █▄▄ ▄▀█ █▀ █▀▀
█░█ █▄█ █▄█ █▄█ ▄█   █▄█ █▀█ ▄█ ██▄

An experimental platform with open ends – a temporary laboratory is to be created

KUbUS bASE is an interdisciplinary and process-oriented platform that invites continuous transformation throughout the week. The open cube can serve, for example, as a workshop area, living room, performance space, sound installation, and projection surface. As a social sculpture, the base invites site-specific participation. For PIFcamp, it seeks to explore new formats and invites people to linger, participate, and exchange ideas.

KUBUS is inspired by the activities and spirit of Setzkasten Wien — a workshop, residency, and performance space in Vienna that has developed its experimental approaches over the past ten years. Initiated by Stefan Voglsinger, the project aims to create space for collective practices and experimentation.

Stefan will bring the following projects to be shared as a collaborative process or workshop:

• Analog 16mm shooting, developing, and projecting film
• Building a reactive network of solar-powered pulsing triggers with solenoids, motors, and relays to resonate the steel surface of the bASE sculpture
• Field Recording Trips using self-built microphones and sharing knowledge about sound recording and experimental music

Michael-Jon Mizra is interested in how cellular automata can be used to aid musical composition and how to perform and control various synthesis processes, such as additive and subtractive synthesis, granular synthesis, and other synthesis processes based on signal modulation. He is inspired by the simple rules that lead to great complexity in systems such as Conway’s Game of Life (GOL). In the GOL, there is a grid of cells, and each cell can either be dead or alive depending on how many other cells surround it. With each step forward in time, the cells update, and a world takes shape. The beauty of this system is that one cannot predict, from the initial conditions, whether the world will enter a stable state or continue to change for eternity. This unpredictability inspires him as a tool for performance and composition.

The traditional medium through which an audience may experience the GOL is sight and visualization. He is challenged by translating this in a meaningful way to sound, considering it a tension between the temporal and spatial dimensions. It is possible to “go up” a dimension, look down upon the grid, and see the whole as an interaction of the parts. But music is a temporal phenomenon. It’s not possible to “go up” a dimension in time and “hear” how there is no beginning and no end. Instead, we must listen and make deductions; what happened before implies what may happen next. We must search for patterns and store information for later retrieval.

Mizra hopes to find answers—answers gleaned not from tackling the problem head-on but from approaching it from an angle, allowing him to uncover something new.

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.

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!

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!