PIFcamp

What does it really look like to use as little as possible?

Libi Rose Striegl continues an ongoing exploration of low-power, self-built energy systems, driven by an interest in circular economies, scavenger aesthetics, and the practices of reuse, repair, and repurposing. The project emerges from a long-standing discomfort with the amount of electronic waste generated through technology-focused art and making, asking whether meaningful technological practice can be built around sufficiency rather than abundance.

Previous works in the series explored photovoltaic energy using scavenged solar panels from commercial goods, as well as chemical energy generated by simple saltwater batteries. These power sources were used to run short-range FM transmitters and light bulbs. At PIFcamp, Striegl extends this exploration into mechanical power generation by building a working water turbine from scavenged parts. Coupled to a simple DC motor repurposed as a low-voltage dynamo, the turbine will generate electricity to charge a portable battery for later use.

The project operates within a fiction in which parts are readily available, energy is easily harvested, and knowledge is generally accessible. Working within these constraints, Striegl continues an ongoing practice of scavenging and construction while putting accumulated knowledge of physics and electronics to use in generating power from what is available. At its core, the project asks: what does it really look like to use as little as possible?

The project builds on previous work in the same series: SOLfm and a (semi) poetic meditation on salt and power that has no name, both completed as part of the third and fourth iterations of the Digital Naturalisms Conference. Future iterations and installations will continue to respond to the locations and circumstances, adapting to new environments and their available materials.

Animator and live coder Roger Pibernat will peek into the microscopic world of the Soča valley, sampling microorganisms to make them dance with code. Using his live coding software for visuals Animatron, he will create a live-animation show improvising with a collage of short stop-motion loops of the microorganisms that live in the surroundings. No living creatures will be harmed in the process.

He will also organize a workshop to convert regular USB computer keyboards into dedicated OSC controllers.

Performing Captured Data is an experimental process that artist Citlali Hernández has been developing through her artistic practice. The project traces personal data digitally captured by dominant corporate systems, focusing on gestures such as likes, scrolling, and clicks – small bodily movements translated into information that typically feeds systems of identification. It explores how this digital information and its underlying structures can be related to physical gestures and material forms charged with personal and biographical significance, seeking artistic ways of returning agency to the data we produce.

During PIFcamp, Citlali will present a prototype of this work in the form of a workshop or a series of small actions, working with data, bodily movement, and technological systems. The project builds on methods she has previously explored, including Markov chains and text-to-speech, while deliberately avoiding the use of large language models (LLMs) or pre-trained models from corporate platforms. Her aim is to experiment with artistic ways of reusing the information we generate and to invite the PIFcamp community to join the process and discover what reflections emerge along the way.

What is Biodata?
Biodata is an open-source hardware and software device, originally created by Sam Cusumano and continuously developed by MolinoLab, that translates the natural bioelectrical signals of living organisms (plants, fungi, animals) into real-time MIDI data. By placing electrodes on their bodies, the device detects subtle changes in electrical conductivity – triggered by factors such as light, water, or touch – and converts them into data.
Each plant generates its own unique melodies, creating living soundscapes that reflect its activity and vitality. Biodata does not harm plants in any way; it simply “listens” to the electrical processes already taking place within them.

Connectivity and musical versatility
Connect Biodata to your computer or mobile phone via Bluetooth or USB cable, and use any app or DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) to convert the MIDI data into music in real time. Thanks to its TRS MIDI output (mini-jack) , you can send MIDI information directly to an external synthesizer or a modular Eurorack system, integrating the plant’s bioelectrical expressions into any hardware setup.

Biodata is a fully open-source and customizable project, receiving updates from its developers. Over the years, MolinoLab has used Biodata in numerous performances and installations, exploring the creative possibilities of plant-generated music in live settings.

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Workshop: Build Your Own Biodata
In this hands-on workshop, participants will have the opportunity to build their own Biodata from scratch. Throughout the session, we will learn the fundamentals of the device, assemble the components, and bring our own hardware to life.

What will we do during the workshop?

Device construction: We will assemble each component of Biodata, soldering and connecting the necessary parts to make the device fully functional. By the end, each participant will take home their own working Biodata.
Live testing: We will connect the sensors to different plants and also to fungi, comparing how each organism generates distinct signals and how they translate into musical data.
Exploring software: We will showcase different examples and tools to convert the received data into visuals and sound. We will experiment with various programs, from DAWs to visual programming environments, transforming bioelectrical information into interactive installations and collaborative performances.

The workshop is open to all profiles – no prior experience in electronics or programming is required, just curiosity and a willingness to experiment. At the end, we will have the chance to create joint installations or performances, exploring the collaborative potential of this fascinating bridge between nature and digital art.

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Sinfonía Biótica – A Virtual Reality Experience

As part of its ongoing exploration, MolinoLab has developed Sinfonía Biótica, a virtual reality experience that integrates the electrical data from plants and fungi into real-time audiovisual composition. In this immersive experience, the bioelectrical signals of living organisms drive the generation of both sound and visuals, creating a synesthetic journey where nature becomes the composer.
Sinfonía Biótica will be available to experience during Open Saturday – don’t miss the chance to step into a world where plants and fungi shape the music and imagery around you!

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.