Day Four: Sunday 9 November
TV Studio, Stockwell Street Academic Building
2-3.30pm: Screening 2
Justyna Tobera – Spectrestate
“Spectrestate” is an audiovisual expression of how I see the world – quite literally. For years, I was treated for the wrong condition. That prolonged misdiagnosis left my brain unable to fuse images. What I see now is always doubled, fractured, layered upon itself.
This piece is my attempt to give form to that experience – to translate a neurological condition into an aesthetic language. What you see and hear is not just an artistic choice; it’s how I move through the world every day. Visuals split and overlap, sounds arrive late or echo without source. There is no single frame, only parallel ones trying to align.
I don’t offer a linear narrative or a clear message. Instead, this is an immersive glimpse into my fractured perception – a reality that oscillates between the ghostly and the tangible.
“Spectrestate” is not only about loss or disorientation. It’s also about survival. About making sense when the senses themselves betray you. About building a language out of distortion, and learning to see beauty in what refuses to resolve.
My name is Justyna Tobera. I am a composer and performer based in Poznań, Poland, working at the intersection of sound, movement, and sensory perception. My artistic practice revolves around exploring the body’s relationship with space, material, and resonance—treating sound not only as an audible phenomenon, but as a tactile, spatial and ecological experience.
I engage deeply with the physicality of instruments and the sonic potential of the body, investigating how gesture, touch, and embodied movement shape and transform sound. I treat instruments as porous, responsive environments—extensions of the body and vessels of vibration—where friction, breath, and silence are as integral as pitch and rhythm. My works often incorporate prepared instruments, sensors, and custom-built interfaces to reveal otherwise hidden layers of sonic and spatial interaction.
Through my use of sensor technologies and live electronics (programmed in Max/MSP), I create interactive systems in which the body becomes both source and modulator of sound. In recent projects, I have integrated tools like the Myo armband with the theremin to explore how muscle tension and movement can sculpt sonic form—highlighting the intimate and speculative connections between the organic and the digital.
My compositions have been presented at contemporary music festivals across Poland, including the International Festival of Contemporary Music Poznańska Wiosna Muzyczna and the Neofonia Conference, as well as in Slovenia, Austria, Denmark, Italy, Lithuania, and Hungary.
Currently, my research focuses on augmenting the body through sensory extensions and on how these altered states of perception influence musical creation. I’m particularly interested in how this research opens up new ways of relating to the environment—listening through the body, composing through movement, and performing in dialogue with nature.
Ioannis Panagiotou, Jack Walker, Peter Nelson Ensemble -Edinburgh Contemporary Ensemble – Confronting Silence
Confronting Silence, directed by Ioannis Panagiotou, co-composed by Ioannis Panagiotou and Jack Walker, and performed by the Peter Nelson Ensemble – Edinburgh Contemporary Ensemble, explores an anecdotal story from Ioannis’ family during the Greek Civil War. This audiovisual work haunts the sociopolitical ghosts of the past and dislocates lost memories, occupying a space of in-between—past and present, sound and silence. It acts as a bridge between personal and collective memory, echoing Toru Takemitsu’s reflections on film, music, and death.
Ioannis Panagiotou is a composer and visual artist based in the UK. He holds a PhD in composition from the University of Edinburgh, is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of the Aegean, and teaches composition for film at the University of Edinburgh. Using multimedia narratives and oral history, his works explore themes of memory, migration and identity, presented in the USA, Japan, the UK, Lithuania, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece, as well as in major festivals and organisations such as b-side Festival, Dialogues Festival, Miry Concertzaal, Museum of Contemporary Art (Teriad) and the Greek National Opera. He has collaborated with musical ensembles such as Plus-Minus Ensemble, Red Note Ensemble, Edinburgh Quartet and Edinburgh Film Music Orchestra. He has been an artist in residence at the University of the Arts (Zurich) and the Artistic Director of the Peter Nelson Ensemble – Edinburgh Contemporary Music Ensemble.
Dr Jack Walker is a composer, sound designer and researcher based in Edinburgh. He particularly enjoys working on pieces that exploit some degree of chaos or indeterminacy, using computer systems, improvisers and non-linear system dynamics.
Kostas Zisimopoulos – STAHTI
“STAXTH” is a collaborative visual poem that was inspired by, and illustrates the composition “Stahti” by Kostas Zisimopoulos. It was produced by Sophia Savagner (videography & masks & performance).
‘Stàhti’ – which in Greek means ash – is an acousmatic work based on pre-recorded voices and text. The inspiration of this piece comes from the poem by the Latvian poet Baiba Bičole titled ‘’Es ārpus laika esmu’’ (“I exist outside of time”).
This work was driven by the will to expand the expression of poetry in music, and to dive into the archaism of sounds the human voice can produce.
The video presents a character trapped in a enclosed room, attempting in vain to escape his existence. With only dead cockroaches to keep him company, he lies in the wake of his own despair.
The ending has an open interpretation : either he becomes free of his state of mind, or he meets death.
Composer and member of the Greek Composers’ Union, born in 1994 in Athens, Greece. He has received commissions and performances from ensembles, orchestras, venues and institutions such as Philharmonie de Paris, Berliner Philarmoniker, Carnegie Hall, Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia, GMEM – Centre national de création musicale Marseille, Residentie Orkest, Gaudeamus, November Music, Grachtenfestival, Alexandrinsky Theatre and ARCo, while also has been collaborating with ensembles like Percussions de Strasbourg, Ensemble Multilatérale, Les Metaboles, Ensemble Fractales, Divertimento Ensemble, PHACE, Trio Estatico, Ensemble Taller Sonoro, Ensemble U:, Cikada, Meitar Ensemble, Ensemble NOMAD, TACETi, Ensemble Suono Giallo, Vertixe Sonora, GAMEnsemble, ARTéfacts ensemble, and KamerOrkest Driebergen.
His musical focus centers on the concepts of deviation, instability, interruption, and interference. Exploring the intricacies of time and its perceptions, he weaves together elements such as form, micro-material, rhythm, and sonority in his artistic exploration. Drawing inspiration from poetry, painting, philosophy, and the ancient essence of language, his compositions venture into the ethereal and fluid plasticity of sound. He explores the interplay between technology and the essence of sound, composing for acoustic instruments, vocals, and electronics, while collaborating in multidisciplinary projects.
He had collaborated with choreographers, artists, theatre groups, collectives and companies such as ‘Imitating the Dog’, ’Theatre of Experience’ and ‘Thingamajig’ by composing original music for ‘Old Times’ by Harold Pinter, ‘The Dance of Death’ by A. Strindberg’ and ‘ASTYlogia’ by N. Fytas among others.
His music has received premieres and performances in France, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Estonia, Norway, Czech Republic, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Ukraine, Israel, China, United States, Thailand, Russia and Canada.
F. C. Zuke – Silence is Deathly Painful
Silence is Deathly Painful is an experimental animation that was completed in 2023. The audio used in this work comes from an archive of recordings that were conducted by a computer program. This program, entitled Silence Observation System (S.O.S.), listened to talk radio broadcasts across the United States from 2019-2022 and recorded what happened before, during, and after moments of silence that occurred on these broadcasts. This software generated an archive of recordings that captured the voices and ideologies of broadcasters commentating on events that happened throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This audio material was manipulated and used as the sound design for a new animation work where a boy explores a surreal world that is overrun with radio infrastructure. Many of the visual forms in the work are robotically replicated, which echoes the path toward “radio homogenization” in America that began in the 1990s with the 1996 Telecommunications Act that made radio monopolies flourish.
F. C. Zuke creates audiovisual and interactive artworks that investigate how beliefs are acquired, transmitted, and performed in society. Their latest installation, animation, and video projects examine influential historical texts, American talk radio, human-canine relationships, intelligence tests, and other systems of belief and power. In addition to their individual practice, they have collaborated with filmmakers, choreographers, musicians, scholars, and other artists to produce video works, performances, and short films. They are currently an Assistant Professor of Digital Media at the University of Mississippi and have taught courses that explore video, sound, digital imaging, installation, performance, creative coding, and interactive media. Their works have been exhibited, performed, and screened nationally and internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture (Matera, Italy), SKC Gallery (Rijeka, Croatia), College Art Association Annual Conference (Chicago), Experimental Music Studios (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Jan Hus Church (New York City), Culture Centre Saldutiskis (Lithuania), the Hokin Gallery (Chicago), Screen Power Festival (London), Kimball Recital Hall (Lincoln, Nebraska), Art and Design Gallery (Lawrence, Kansas), Cinema dei Piccoli (Rome, Italy), Tagore Hall (Bangalore, India), the Wexford Arts Center (Leinster, Ireland), the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art (Laurel, Mississippi), and other venues for art, music, and the moving image.
Vitor Bossa & Vivi Rocha – space hypothesis
Space Hypothesis is a synesthetic audiovisual piece in which sound and image intertwine in a symbiotic and inseparable relationship.
Created by the duo Viviane Rocha and Vitor Bossa, the work emerges from a shared interest in experimentation with audio and video, exploring the fusion of both mediums as a core creative strategy.
In this piece, much of the music is generated through a custom Max/MSP patch that processes the Cello Suite No. 1 by J.S. Bach, deconstructing and reshaping its harmonic and temporal structures. Vocal lines by Viviane Rocha are layered onto this texture and further transformed through synthesis.
The video follows a similar path. Its foundation is a 16mm film recording of a natural landscape, which is processed through Max/Jitter and videosynthesis techniques. Additionally, multiple cycles of compression — via intentional uploads and downloads — are used to distort, degrade, and reconfigure the visual material.
What emerges is an audioreactive, immersive experience that blurs the boundaries between sound and image. The work constructs a hybrid perceptual space that invites viewers to engage with audiovisual matter as a fluid, living organism. Through algorithmic reinterpretation and poetic abstraction, Space Hypothesis proposes speculative reflections on time, memory, and the interdependence of media.
Space Hypothesis is a synesthetic audiovisual piece in which sound and image intertwine in a symbiotic and inseparable relationship.
Created by the duo Viviane Rocha and Vitor Bossa, the work emerges from a shared interest in experimentation with audio and video, exploring the fusion of both mediums as a core creative strategy.
In this piece, much of the music is generated through a custom Max/MSP patch that processes the Cello Suite No. 1 by J.S. Bach, deconstructing and reshaping its harmonic and temporal structures. Vocal lines by Viviane Rocha are layered onto this texture and further transformed through synthesis.
The video follows a similar path. Its foundation is a 16mm film recording of a natural landscape, which is processed through Max/Jitter and videosynthesis techniques. Additionally, multiple cycles of compression — via intentional uploads and downloads — are used to distort, degrade, and reconfigure the visual material.
What emerges is an audioreactive, immersive experience that blurs the boundaries between sound and image. The work constructs a hybrid perceptual space that invites viewers to engage with audiovisual matter as a fluid, living organism. Through algorithmic reinterpretation and poetic abstraction, Space Hypothesis proposes speculative reflections on time, memory, and the interdependence of media.
Vivi Rocha is a Brazilian singer, composer, and music producer whose work explores the expressive intersections between voice, poetry, and sound design. Her career began in classical music, with operatic training and a 7-year tenure as a soloist at the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo. Her second album, Impermanente (2023), was followed by 33 solo performances across Brazil. She has released five albums and EPs to date and is the recipient of the INfluxo Award for Best Composition. In 2025, she released the single Inferno Astral, debuted the show RISCO, and is currently preparing Perdida no Paraíso, alongside the publication of her first book of poetry by Editora Urutau.
Vitor Bossa is a multidisciplinary artist working across sound, video, photography, and text. His research focuses on the manipulation of time, memory, and perception across various media. His work has been featured in international festivals and platforms such as Sundance, Cannes, El Ojo, Berlin Commercial, Seattle International Film Festival, and the Hong Kong and Rio de Janeiro Film Festivals. His practice ranges from poetic documentaries to experimental installations, and he has participated in artist residencies in Brazil, Denmark, Germany, and Austria.
Together, Vivi and Vitor collaborate on audiovisual works that investigate the thresholds between sound and image, body and landscape, language and abstraction. Their shared interest in processual creation and sensory immersion shapes pieces like Space Hypothesis, where composition, synthesis, and visual decay articulate a shared poetic and technological vision.
Daniel Pakdel – Corvid Transformations
Experimental filmmaker and composer Daniel Pakdel’s numinous encounters with a chattering of Jackdaws manifests audio-visually through visceral imagery and immersive soundscape composition. In this psycho-ethological meditation, field recordings and super 8 footage become the bases of poetic inquiry, mapping self-transformation in the face of the more-than-human world. By tracing these birds’ murmurations during the penumbra of twilight, through winter into spring – at times ears perked to quiet conversations, other times surrendering to deafening chorus – Daniel questions the boundaries between sound and selfhood. Through this, jackdaws are reframed as messengers in this mythology recreated. Rather than their folkloric associations with thievery and death, they become archetypes of the collective shadow, surpassing their biological identity by becoming mirrors of the human psyche.
In recreating the primacy of his experience, we are drawn into flight through a mirage of images shaped by improvisatory filmmaking. The camera itself becomes a paintbrush of memories, reverent and liminal, revealing the emotional undercurrents of perception. These seemingly invisible forms, that clothe the ear, entrance us into a dreamlike state, within which the subconscious recalls, and speaks to us through, the ambiguity of the sensuous.
Tolling bells, signalling twilight and the onset of encounter, merge with manipulated jackdaw voices buried amidst instrumentation. Birdsong and violin entwine in an ongoing tension of continuous becoming… until a moment of transformative resonance, where boundaries dissolve, and sound, self and jackdaw become indistinguishable from one another.
“In allowing the Jackdaws to become key players in our conception of self, a portal opens to the unconscious. Entering into this relationship then is an act of archetypal activism; a reclamation of one’s agency that emerges through some qualitative resonance with the other.”
Experimental filmmaker and composer Daniel Pakdel’s numinous encounters with a chattering of Jackdaws manifests audio-visually through visceral imagery and immersive soundscape composition. In this psycho-ethological meditation, field recordings and super 8 footage become the bases of poetic inquiry, mapping self-transformation in the face of the more-than-human world. By tracing these birds’ murmurations during the penumbra of twilight, through winter into spring – at times ears perked to quiet conversations, other times surrendering to deafening chorus – Daniel questions the boundaries between sound and selfhood. Through this, jackdaws are reframed as messengers in this mythology recreated. Rather than their folkloric associations with thievery and death, they become archetypes of the collective shadow, surpassing their biological identity by becoming mirrors of the human psyche.
In recreating the primacy of his experience, we are drawn into flight through a mirage of images shaped by improvisatory filmmaking. The camera itself becomes a paintbrush of memories, reverent and liminal, revealing the emotional undercurrents of perception. These seemingly invisible forms, that clothe the ear, entrance us into a dreamlike state, within which the subconscious recalls, and speaks to us through, the ambiguity of the sensuous.
Tolling bells, signalling twilight and the onset of encounter, merge with manipulated jackdaw voices buried amidst instrumentation. Birdsong and violin entwine in an ongoing tension of continuous becoming… until a moment of transformative resonance, where boundaries dissolve, and sound, self and jackdaw become indistinguishable from one another.
“In allowing the Jackdaws to become key players in our conception of self, a portal opens to the unconscious. Entering into this relationship then is an act of archetypal activism; a reclamation of one’s agency that emerges through some qualitative resonance with the other.”