PIFcamp

Azucena Sánchez is a media artist from Mexico City, currently based in Munich. Her most recent work, ‘Tlalli, Conversations with Soil’, is an ongoing dialogue between nature and human intervention that focuses on the profound connection that gardeners share with their land. The piece consists of visiting different self-sustainable gardens across cities like Weimar, Mexico City, and Madrid. Through soil chromatograms and (eco)poetics, the piece shows us that with concrete actions from individuals, we can create a true change in our society and promote justice and equality through sustainability. Tlalli invites us to reflect on the political and economic ramifications of agriculture, food consumption and storage. It focuses on permaculture within cities and the ecological restoration of forgotten green areas.

Building on this piece, Azucena wants to explore the possibility of having a conversation with soil by creating an interactive system where the soil itself plays an active role in a dialogue. Using sensors to measure humidity, movement, or resistance, the system would trigger words from an existing (eco)poem, which would then ‘listen’ to response and answer back, creating a back-and-forth exchange fully dependent on the soil’s temporality.

The system needs to actively listen and respond, making the interaction feel like a real-time conversation and turning the piece into a performance between human and soil. Azucena is interested in learning from fellow artists at PIFcamp, especially those working with sound, performance, and technology, to develop this dialogue into a live experience. Her goal is to experiment with ways of making this exchange more immersive, while combining poetry, technology and the more-than-human world.

In Posočje, accelerated technological development, post-war emigration and pressure from established (religious and governmental) institutions has caused the collective ancient spiritual practices (staroverstvo) to fade away. Yet, remnants and records still speak of alternative social structures that formed and persisted despite centuries of repression. Their persistence can be credited partly to the conspiracy of silence (zarota molka), a mode of deception and organisation, a secretive transfer of knowledge through aesthetics, household tools and even the arrangement of houses and burial sites in the villages. Stone was the central material of this religious heritage, with the changes in its texture and surface defining its role and placement within everyday rituals. 

In her project, Celeste wants to work with these concealed bonds and calculations that were driving the organisation of villages and the pulse of everyday actions. Using a ToF sensor and a metallic framework, she plans to scan the surfaces of stones to create visualizations, give light to new symbols (derived from these surface readings) and therefore completing new fictions that force themselves into this reality. She might even explore incorporating sound to further enhance the experience.

Celeste Sanja

Blaž Pavlica will continue developing and improving a codebase for rhythm generation, designed for live-coding performances in the SuperCollider environment. Over the past year, he developed a series of SuperCollider functions for live performances, including tools for generating rhythm patterns with musically interesting properties, functions for creating sets of compatible rhythms, and features that make real-time rhythm composition more intuitive during live coding.This year, he will further develop the collection to enable rhythm generation based on musical parameters such as evenness and syncopation. He will organize, document, and publish the codebase online in a form that will also be useful to other SuperCollider users!

Imagine you could use materials like bioplastics, fabric, or kitchen foil to create your own speakers. Imagine electronics that are no longer hard and rigid but soft, flexible, and able to move with the touch.

Marisa Satsia and Jessica Stanley will be working on a project exploring the combination of soft, biofabricated materials–such as bioplastics–with flexible electronics and e-textiles. The aim of the project is to develop a series of prototypes that investigate how the flexibility and vibrational properties of these materials can be used to create bio-speakers and other electronic membranes or surfaces with embedded circuitry.

As part of their experimentation, they will be making printed circuit boards (PCBs) using DIY etching techniques or a small, portable vinyl cutter to shape tin foil. These circuits will be used to build amplifiers that support the functioning of the bio-speaker prototypes.

Over the week, Marisa and Jessica will focus on hands-on prototyping, testing material combinations, and refining their fabrication methods. At the end of the week, they will host a workshop to share the techniques they used. The workshop will also include a collective brainstorming session to explore potential directions and applications for future developments in flexible bio-electronics.

PALM 01 is a wireless gestural controller (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi) designed for a wide range of applications. It is designed so you could still use your hand for other common tasks while it is attached to your hand (such as typing, playing keyboard, tweaking knobs etc.). It features a gyroscope and 2-3 touch points for each finger and adjustable ergonomics.

The interaction with the touch points sends out data on its own or provides a context for sending out data from the gyroscope. For instance in music context when engaging your index finger you can control the cutoff filter with the X axis of the gyroscope and resonance with the Y axis, whereas engaging the middle finger can control the delay time and feedback with the XY coordinates.

The pictures show a mockup that serves as an ergonomic proof of concept. The circuit board and enclosure will be designed in the coming weeks. The circuit board and enclosure are currently still in development and will be done in coming weeks. Václav will lead a workshop at PIFcamp where participants will be able to build their own controler!

Developed by Václav Peloušek, @toyotavangelis

Botanical Bodies focuses on researching, collecting, and engaging with the landscape of Triglav National Park, drawing attention to performative gestures between the human and botanical body. The project involves exploratory walks, installations, and an introductory workshop on natural dyeing techniques.

Assuming the constant transformation and exchange of matter within the landscape, the project aims to trace the visible and invisible stories of local plant life–getting to know plants and recognizing their specific characteristics. These interactions form the basis for fostering a sensory and critical understanding of a landscape that has been evolving for thousands of years, bringing into focus the tensions between ‘invasive’ and ‘autochthonous’ species.

The outcomes of this process will come togehter as an in situ installation that brings together natural dyes, dried plants, textile impressions, process documentation, and other traces. Creating a dialogue between traces and the landscape, open to interconnect with other artistic practices marked by movement and wind.

I love birds. Whenever I’m walking outside and hear birdsong, I cock my ear to listen. It’s been a few years since I started paying attention to their voices, and little by little I’ve learned to tell species apart by sound—and in doing so, to feel the passing of the seasons.

I’m fond of the voices of small creatures. The owner of an enchanting chirp is hard to spot. A crow’s call isn’t all that appealing and the bird itself is easy to find, but a nightingale that sings beautifully is much harder to pin down.

Other animals whose calls I enjoy are frogs and crickets, and they, too, are difficult to locate.

Since ancient times, instruments that imitate these animal sounds have existed—what we now call folk instruments. Long before instruments could change pitch precisely or play harmonies, such tools were used to communicate with animals or to express a bond with them in rituals and festivals.

Why do the animals whose sounds I love make those sounds? The Japanese researcher Toshitaka Suzuki discovered linguistic structure in the calls of the Japanese tit: they carry on conversations with grammar. Frog choruses are thought to mark territory, yet in field recordings of Australian frogs captured by the artist Felix Hess, two frogs can be heard skillfully adjusting their timing so their calls don’t overlap—fascinating to hear. For them it may be a territorial display, but to me it sounds like experimental music generating intricate rhythms.

It’s only natural that animals respond to recordings of their own calls, provided the frequencies fall within their hearing range; playback is routine in ethology. But do they ever react to the sounds of instruments that only resemble their calls to human ears?

At the very least, an AI birdsong detector didn’t respond to the sound of a bird-call whistle. I wonder if animals in the mountains would react somehow. What is at the heart of their acoustic communication—frequency, timing? Within the same species? Between different species? Does the predator–prey relationship change things?

I’m neither a bird nor a frog, so I can’t know what mood they’re in or what meaning their sounds carry. Yet as I imagine it, I design sound-making robots and devise algorithms. The robots are programmed to produce sounds in a way that, in my own way, lets them “become” those animals.

Text and photo: So Kanno

Join Alevtina Senik for a beginner-friendly DIY electronics workshop exploring the creative possibilities of piezo elements. Participants will build a small preamp on an etched PCB, based on a Ralf Schreiber’s schematics. Along the way, they’ll delve into the basics of the piezoelectric effec its function and potential in artistic practice, while learning (or refreshing) soldering skills and experimenting with various capacitor values to hear how they affect the sound.

Everyone will leave with a fully functioning preamp board, ready for further sonic exploration, recording, or circuit-bending adventures. A great first step into the vast, swampy world of analog sound!

Alevtina Senik is a media artist currently based in Bremen, Germany. With a background in liberal arts and sciences, their practice is rooted in anthropological interests and expands through a growing engagement with technological systems, DIY practices, and material exploration (such as ceramics).

The open-source electromagnetic spectrum listening device workshop is happening again!

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 ans 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!