PLAY PRETEND
Video installation
Composition and Sound Design, 11 min.
Collaboration with Sondi
Play Pretend is a moving image installation born out of Sondi’s ongoing archival project “Coding Blackness” that examines the performativity of Blackness as it is constructed through code, gameplay systems, and player interaction within video game worlds. It traces how bodies and gestures enter these systems, how they are transformed into data, and the stories that data is made to tell.
The work explores motion capture data of Black digital performance. Motion capture (mocap) is a technology that records the movement of people and objects, translating physical motion into digital data. These movements are stored within the architecture of the game, where they can be reused and assigned to different characters and contexts.
Through processes of digital excavation, this data is taken out of the games and assembled within a growing archive. In Play Pretend, these motion capture fragments are reassembled into an unstable theatre. The same fall, the same flinch, the same celebration returns again and again, now stripped of its original game environment and held in a bare, uncertain space. What is at play, and what is at stake?
Play Pretend emerges as a new choreography. Seen side by side, layered and repeated, the motions begin to speak. Through this re-staging, the work listens for other possible readings, other worlds that might be held inside these gestures. Within this unstable theatre, Black digital bodies slip between capture and escape, rehearsing, again and again, the possibility of another story.
Coding Blackness is a work/archival research in progress currently in development during the Stage IX Residency for Immersive Arts & Research 2026/2027 in the Netherlands.
READ MORE ABOUT IT HERE
HOME 404
3-Channel Video Installation
Composition, Sound Design and Sonic Scenography, 11 min.
Collaboration with Sondi
Home 404 is an immersive installation that rethinks the concept of home and diasporic identity. The work is a reconstruction of memories from my home in Cameroon, inspired by rituals that are embodied as masks inhabited by spirits. Home 404 aims to heal diasporic wounds that were caused by the loss of home and feelings of displacement, and emphasizes the hybridity of identity, especially in relation to the diaspora.
The three-channel video installation includes three digital masks that the viewer can interact with and appropriate, enabling them each to experience the story from their own perspective as they move through the ritual. The way in which the objects and spaces in the videos appear, disappear, transform, and metamorpho-se points to the fragmented and subjective nature of memory.
HOME 404 at Stedelijk Museum
HOME 404 at Noorderlicht Biennial
HOME 404 at Garage Rotterdam
SONDI Director, Writer, 3D Animation & Video Editing
PIM BOREEL Sound Design & Composition
LILIA ADJIL 3D mask modeling
MIKA SCHALKS Graphic Design
LAST GRAIN OF SAND
VR installation
Sound Research, Curation, Composition and Sound Design, 12 min.
Collaboration with Post Neon
Everyone knows we need to make substantial changes to the ways we consume the world's finite resources. But not everyone knows that sand, a resource we use every day, is running out.
We were inspired by geologist Michael Welland’s final lecture on the Abundance and Scarcity of Sand, to create an experience that highlights and educates about this limited resource.
A Last Grain of Sand is our exploration, predominantly through VR, that tells the story of our past, our present, and a potential future.
We showcased A Last Grain of Sand at Eye Filmmuseum, NXT Museum, STRP festival, Gouden Kalf and online (www.lastgrainofsand.com).
Concept, Creative Direction and VR POST NEON
Website and Type Design Charlotte Rohde, Hannes Brischke
3D Post Neon
Physical Installation and Pattern Design Arno Hoogland
Website Development Paul Evers
Copywrite Matthijs Loriaux
VR Assistance Ali Eslami
Sound Design and Composition Pim Boreel
Voice Actor Steve
DEUS EX MACHINA
CNC machine installation
Composition and Sound Design, 20 min.
Collaboration with Arno Hoogland
MDF is cheap and easy to work with, but the material is seen as the gnarliest, least sustainable, ugliest material in interior design. Due to its dusty features MDF seems to be far away from its wooden ancestor: the tree. Because of this, the material has a bad reputation. Futurist designer Arno Hoogland disagrees. He wants to show the divine qualities of this material in his first ever solo-exhibition ‘Deus ex Machina’, located in the Isola District during Salone del Mobile in Milan, Italy. Deus ex machina Arno came across a piece of software that let him dance with his CNC milling machine. Arno could specify the thickness and shape of the line, and the machine would figure out for itself how deep he would sink the milling head into the material. This way it became a dialogue with the machine, so that no one knew in advance what the outcome would look like. For his new series, Arno refers to the expression Deus Ex Machina. Like a divine intervention, he brings the machine and the material to life. For the presentation of this new series, the machine gets a place in the spotlights in Milan. It doesn't feel right if Arno gets all the fame, while the machine stays behind in the Netherlands. Temple samples As a designer, Arno is strongly inspired by futurism. He tries to shape future worlds, which can differ from each other. In Milan, all these worlds come together in a 'temple of the future', made on site in building blocks by the milling machine. Next to the temple’s building blocks, Arno shows a range of furniture. *Using Bio-based MDF to help the planet
ANATOMY OF A SYMBIOSIS
Bio-sonification for radio broadcast, 22hr.
Software Design, Composition and Sound Design
Collaboration with Sasa Spacal
Sonification of a biological process resulting in a drifting ambiental electronic drones and gentle glitchy sonic detritus. The sound-form calls for a deep listening session while the underlying concept foregrounds the disruptive human intervention.
“Saša Spačal’s Anatomy of a Symbiosis is the outgrowth of a dynamic, living biotechnological installation, Symbiome – Economy of Symbiosis, originally presented as a generative 22 hour broadcast of the sonified data it generated, now edited and collected as a condensed listening experience, enabling wider transmission of the intrinsic messages and ways of being in the world which it invokes.
On the surface, one is listening to the audio artifact of the disintegrating symbiotic bond between soil bacteria Rhizobium trifolii and red clover Trifolium pratense caused by human intervention with the introduction of nitrogen fertilizer, eliminating the necessity for this unlikely and fragile collaboration which had developed in the deep past, hidden from human cognizance by its macro time frame and micro scale, buried within the earth.” – from liner notes by Brandon Rosenbluth
Anatomy of Symbiosis is an audiovisual artifact that captures pH data on the disintegrating symbiotic bond between the soil bacterium Rhizobium trifolii and red clover Trifolium pratense, caused by human intervention with introduction of nitrogen fertilizer. Such industry-standard agricultural practices eliminate fragile alliances that enrich the very soils on which all life on Earth depends. Eons-old symbiotic bonds, hidden deep beneath the earth and unnoticed due to their vast timespan and microscopic scale, support much of both human and other-than-human food production — its dissolution urging us to reconsider our role in reshaping Earth’s web of life.
Saša Spačal · sound, concept
Red clover Trifolium pratense and soil bacteria Rhizobium trifolii · symbiosis
Mirjan Švagelj · experiment setup, data collection and scientific consultation
Pim Boreel · software design and programming
Ana Čavić · poem proofreading
Tina Ivezić · graphic design
Miha Godec · photo
Brandon Rosenbluth · liner notes
Katja Kosi· proofreading
Luka Prinčič, Luka T. Zagoričnik · executive production
Anatomy of a Symbiosis was commissioned in 2022 by Radio Art Zone, a joint project by the artist duo Mobile Radio (Sarah Washington & Knut Aufermann) and the Luxembourg community station Radio ARA, which broadcasted for 100 days as part of the European Capital of Culture Esch2022. In 2023 the work was published as an album by Kamizdat.
Performances, Exhibitions, Transmissions
Beijing Art, Science and Technology Biennale 2025: Symptomatica | Horizon, Vestige curatorial team [Yunchul Kim, Jungyeon Park, Menger Chu], 798CUBE Art Museum, Beijing, China
Klanghain: Symbiosis and Networks, curator Lona Gaikis, Volkskundemuseum Wien, Klima Biennale Wien, Vienna, Austria
Are You For Real, ongoing web-based exhibition, curators Giulia Bini and Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás, IFA – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Berlin, Germany
Anatomy of Symbiosis, Kamizdat, osmo/za, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Radio Art Zone, curators Sarah Washington and Knut Aufermann, Radio Ara, European Capital of Culture Esch2022
Free streaming, downloads (name your price) and limited edition USBs are available through our Bandcamp shop kamizdat.bandcamp.com.
Some rights reserved under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence www.creativecommons.com/licence
Production: Zavod Emanat s podporo Mestne Občine Ljubljana
