PIFcamp

What is the technical functioning behind a clock and how could we attune ourselves to other means of time-framing? This project aims to experiment with the construction of time-telling devices in order to understand how we might relate differently to time. Our bodies are attuned to clock time – a precise rhythm based on the second, made possible by the oscillation of a quartz crystal. Through piezoelectricity, the crystal marks each second by vibrating 32,768 times – a precise and pervasive count that can be replicated anywhere.

Older time-framing techniques involved following the course of celestial bodies such as the sun, the moon, or the stars, which required situated time-telling devices to compute time locally. Sundials are designed according to their location; the slow movement of the shadow offers a direct, gradual experience of the sun’s motion and the passage of time. Depending on their size and arrangement, some time-telling structures, such as Jantar Mantar in India or Stonehenge in Britain, offer a collective or embodied experience of time measurement.

Over the course of the summer camp, this project will experiment with building situated time-telling devices to experience the passage of time differently, combining analogue and digital elements. What rhythms do we want to attune to, and how do we want to materialize the experience of time’s passage within the setting of the Soča Valley? This is an experimental, hands-on project that will evolve throughout the week and be shared as a workshop.

Coralie Gourguechon is a designer and PhD student in Experimental Research through Design, Art, and Technology at the Free University of Bozen–Bolzano. Her thesis, Counting the Stones in My Computer: Unmaking the Chip Reality, explores the multiple temporalities of the microchip through its material arrangements. Through the unmaking of the chip, she seeks to understand the realities behind its manufacturing processes.

In this project, authors Jakob Lavrič and Matjaž Pogačnik will recycle, modify and upgrade vintage cassette players that will record and play back sound onto a shared magnetic tape. In this way, information will travel between multiple stations located several meters apart, connecting the sounds and local ambiences of different areas of PIFcamp. Through loops of magnetic tape, recordings will continuously circulate, be stored, intermingle with other recordings, or travel to independent tape loops at other locations. By the end of PIFcamp, the project will have produced a collection – a kind of sonic archive – capturing the event’s acoustic environment.

The resulting soundscape and its final composition are inherently indeterminate. Rather than producing a fixed work, the project establishes a medium for manipulating sound through a network of stations that control the tape’s speed and direction, as well as the recording, playback and erasure of audio. The cumulative effect of these interactions cannot be fully predicted, as it emerges from the continuous interplay of multiple sonic processes.

Inspired by an online meme comparing the Thneed – a textile object from Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax, capable of serving as a shirt, a sock, a glove, a hat, or almost anything imaginable, but whose production completely destroys the forest of Truffula trees from which it is made – to artificial intelligence, Dasha Ilina set out to make a Thneed herself, learning to crochet through YouTube tutorials. The project uses this strange textile object as a starting point for conversations about the environmental impacts of data centers and the extractivist practices of Big Tech that accompany the expansion of digital infrastructure.

Like much textile work, crocheting is often a collaborative process. It also functions as a form of data storage, preserving traces of how many people contributed to a piece, the techniques they employed, and the skills embedded within it. Crocheting readily lends itself to collective practice, inviting discussion throughout the making process. Participants are therefore invited to join the conversation and consider whether the Thneed is, indeed, a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need.

Dasha Ilina is a Russian technocritical artist based in Paris. She employs low-tech and DIY approaches to question, document, and challenge the mythology surrounding technology, revealing what it tells us about the world. Her practice engages the public to create space for critical reflection on care, privacy in the digital age, and the contemporary tendency to seek technological solutions to social problems. She is a frequent collaborator with the collective [Disnovation.org] and co-director of NØ SCHOOL NEVERS, a summer school dedicated to critical research on the social and environmental impacts of information and communication technologies.

How does one document an event that thrives in the ephemeral? During PIFcamp I will be aiming to do this through the creation of a zine that will seek to uncover the histories and experiences of PIF.

Zines exist in a strange ephemeral way, much like PIF, they are rarely archived or preserved for the future but capture specific moments with deeply personal touches. Zines are not books, they don’t get ISBN’s, they aren’t given recognition in traditional publishing spheres but they speak to community. Communities develop and form with zines telling their stories, zines help spread revolution and change amongst people. 

This zine will utilize unique formatting, combining a physical paper existence with audio recordings of what brings people to this event year after year and attempt to uncover how it has continued to grow and thrive for over ten editions. Together, PIFcamp attendees will create an archive of their time, from this session as well as previous ones, to reflect and consider how these spaces exist.

Sid Drmay is a nonbinary trans, queer DIY artist who works primarily in zines, textiles and paper while exploring multidisciplinary methods.

The project builds on a line of research into electronic organisms, now situated within the context of a natural ecosystem. Antonín Kindl is interested in how technology can operate within a landscape in a way that does not create a separate, additional layer, but instead becomes an integral part of the systems in which it is embedded. The Antennae function as instruments of translation, capturing phenomena occurring at frequencies and scales beyond direct human perception and transferring them into a slower medium that visitors can observe and experience.

Each unit is conceived as a static electric organism placed on the ground. It consists of two vertical light-guiding antennae that communicate through light or sound, as well as sensory roots – interchangeable probes that provide the machine with sensory access to the surrounding ecosystem. Through these sensors, the organism can perceive bioacoustic activity in the soil, contact vibrations on nearby surfaces, humidity and light conditions, and potentially also chemical or spectral inputs.

The long-term aim is to develop the units to a point where they can operate autonomously, powered by solar energy, requiring no ongoing maintenance, and communicating with the outside world only when there is someone present to receive their signals. At the same time, they can continuously record underground activity and build a local archive of environmental data. Over time, Antonín Kindl intends to expand the project into a distributed network of multiple objects embedded in the landscape, exchanging information with one another and forming a shared technological ecosystem.

Blaž Pavlica will continue his work on a project developed last year: a system for rhythm generation in live coding. He plans to implement several improvements, including adapting the syncopation calculation algorithm so that it functions in any meter, enhancing the base rhythm generation process to produce a greater number and variety of rhythms, refining rhythm chaining to allow for more control, and adding utilities that support longer-form section phrasing.

Blaž Pavlica is a programmer, live coder, audiovisual artist, and DJ from Ljubljana, Slovenia. In recent years, he has focused on various forms of live coding, including creating visuals with the Hydra language, developing experimental soundscapes – sometimes incorporating immersive audio – and performing improvised algorave sets using the SuperCollider language.

Off-grid is a DIY workshop following on the topic of energy awareness introduced by PIFresidents Bernhard Rasinger and Uroš Veber in 2025: How’s energy produced and distributed? Do our daily habits affect energy consumption? At what price does energy come?

To give answers to some of these questions, a speculative smart device called “the black box” was developed during the 11th edition of PIF camp.

The workshop offers a hands-on approach to microcontrollers and environmental monitoring aimed at energy management. We’ll use Wi-Fi enabled MCUs, web APIs and relays to develop together a smart device to improve the efficiency inside the camp or to speculate about the “dramatic consequences” of saving on electricity bills :)

Workshop held by Stefano Manconi in collaboration with Bernhard Rasinger.

Links: https://github.com/stziopa/the-black-box

Further readings:
https://pif.camp/pifcamp-s11-e01-god-of-light-intro/
https://v2.nl/publications/off-grid
https://www.withouthotair.com

Photo credits: Katja Goljat

The Soča River is certainly good at making noise. But what does it take to make it play some tunes?

Approximately one artist-curator (Jani Pirnat), one designer-artist (Tamara Lašič Jurković), a pile of leftover construction materials, a bunch of bouncing ideas, and a pinch of trial and error. Jani and Tamara aren’t musicians, nor are they particularly skilled in physics or mechanics. But they enjoy brainstorming, building things, and testing whether they work. Their vision is to create a musical instrument that would be played autonomously by the river.

One of the most distinctive characteristics of the upper reaches of the Soča River is its fast, powerful current. The goal is to construct a wind instrument that uses water flow to generate the airflow needed to play flutes. For construction, discarded plumbing pipes and tubes will be used (and afterwards carefully removed from the protected natural site). The newly established river pipes duet will be happy to share their ideas and dilemmas with the PIFcamp community – they will host a workshop on making simple overtone flutes from PVC pipes in return for engineering tips and musical tricks.

Spectrum is a Digital Eurorack module for intuitive microtonal sequencing. It bypasses standard MIDI constraints, enabling real-time EDO (Equal Division of the Octave) modulation through a high-precision trackball and mechanical keyswitch interface. The design facilitates neurodiverse melody through organic, improvisational workflows. It features dynamic EDO scaling and a “thumbing” mode (popularized by Toto’s Steve Porcaro) for freeform, syncopated sequencing, drawing on the tactile ergonomics of Oberheim DSX-style hardware (1981). At PIFcamp, the focus will be on refining control algorithms and optimizing the interface for high-density, real-time melodic manipulation.

Omar Mashaal (Australian Tactile Instruments) develops hardware for experimental performance. With 25+ years in software development, live coding and embedded systems, his work centers on microtonality, physical computing, and non-standard tactile interfaces.

BioCyberdeck is a portable art-science mini laboratory for exploring the electrical properties of living organisms. The project draws its idea from the cybernetic culture of DIY cyberdecks – standalone, purpose-built devices designed to perform specific tasks. While cyberdecks in the classical sense were conceived for accessing digital networks and information systems, BioCyberdeck opens an interface to living processes in the biosphere.

At the heart of the system is oyster mushroom mycelium, which grows through a substrate and functions as a living potentiometer within an analog oscillator. Using electrodes and sensors, the device detects changes in the electrical properties of the living system and translates them into sound. The soundscape emerges as a trace of relationships between the organism, moisture, temperature, substrate, materials, and the sensing system. Other organisms can also be connected to the portable system.

The project investigates how living organisms can be understood as active co-creators of technological systems. Rather than optimizing, controlling, or extracting data, BioCyberdeck proposes a different relationship with technology: listening, observing, and making contact with the usually invisible processes unfolding in the living networks around us.

As an open and repairable device, it brings together biology, electronics, art, and field research. Instead of answers, it offers an experience: tuning in to the processes at work in living networks – and in that listening, reconsidering where technology ends and the organism begins.

BioCyberdeck is a project by Nastja Ambrožič (author) and Ana Jerina (co-developer).