PIFcamp crowd is back and ready to create DIYstractiON!

After last year’s Covid-resilient pocket edition PIFcamp is back in its full glory! A crowd of sixty familiar and new faces of artists, hackers, musicians, engineers, memsters and their inhuman friends gathered at the now traditional location in the Soča Valley to launch the seventh edition of PIFcamp, a one-week production lab that combines art, technology, creativity and open-source knowledge.

After everybody settled in at the camp’s backyard Tina and Uroš explained the do’s and don’ts. What followed were participants’ introductions which promised a varied week full of practical workshops, presentations, field trips, laboratory research, jam sessions and – which is never lacking at PIF – fun.

We are looking forward to projects and workshops searching for “mechanical nature”, collecting “micro stories” about fungi, using open source technologies for beer brewing, developing interfaces for simultaneous use of different sensors to synthesise sound and control other devices, exploring new 360 video filming techniques, speculating about “fungi internet”, developing experimental low cost motion “glove” controller and DIY microbial fuel cells,… if we mention only some of them. 

It seems that the keywords of this year’s PIFcamp edition are #mud and #funghi. We have yet to witness what will grow out of this combination, but one thing is certain – if nothing else it might provide fertile ground for quality pifmeme content. The Soča Memelords are already hard at work. Expect more reports in the future PIFlogs. 

After dinner, Bernhard took out an MB’s Vectrex, a vintage gaming console, built in 1983. Once the console was switched on, people started gathering around it, attracted to it like a cat to a laser point, or like mice to the sound of a flute. Many of the participants played at least one game with the Asteroid-inspired Mine Storm video game, and for the whole evening, the console was never left unattended.

Soon, the vintage space sound effects coming from the game got mixed with the sounds and the notes coming from Mitja and Vaclav’s synths.

After a while, the Vectrex was added to the jam session, functioning as an oscilloscope to render the sound waves coming from the synths.

This added a dreamy hypnotic visual tone to the chilly melodic style of the jam, making it continue well into the night, for the amusement of the few night owls that were still awake, bringing the first day of PIFcamp to a conclusion.