Glitch Painters: feedbacksociety with BrKpCm

"I always have the idea that feedbacksociety, in whichever constellation doesn't really matter, but it will be there until one of us is dead," affirms Renzo van Steenbergen. Feedbacksociety is a long-standing collaborative project started back in the early 2000s amidst Den Haag’s noise scene. Over two decades since their initial meeting through the Academy of Arts in The Hague, the duo has continued to explore the boundaries of sound—or noise—image, and performance art, evolving their practice with the changing landscape of technology and artistic expression.

Both Arno Scheper and Renzo van Steenbergen work at the intersection of sound and image. “I do a lot of projects with live cinema, for instance, while I like to explore ways of making accessible art,” states Arno. Renzo, who is currently based in Tallinn, Estonia, finds himself mostly working in the realms of theater and installation art. Besides his work with Arno under the name of feedbacksociety, he will be presenting ‘Portaal’ in collaboration with Kristjan Pütsep, a cinematic, artificial, and expansive piece involving machines and immersive visuals.

Arno Scheper and Renzo van Steenbergen first crossed paths in 2001 when Renzo came to study in The Hague. “Arno was a year ahead of me in what was then called Sound and Image, now known as ArtScience,” Renzo recalls. “We started working together, creating experimental works that typically involved audio and visual elements. Sometimes, these experiments evolved into installations or audiovisual performances. We’ve been fortunate to keep the spirit of feedbacksociety alive.”

Feedbacksociety, initiated by Arno in 2001 as a group exhibition in The Hague, aimed to combine intensity, spatiality, and musicality through live sound performance. The event took place at 1646, now an experimental gallery space, where they introduced harsh noise into a visceral and immersive experience. “For me, intensity and physicality were crucial aspects of feedbacksociety,” Arno explains. “It reflected how we felt at the moment, blending noise, image, and crossovers in unique and often raw ways.”

Renzo, who initially attended this event as a visitor, soon became a core member of the collective. “The noise scene in The Hague was vibrant and growing at that time. After that first evening, Arno invited me to join feedbacksociety, and from then on, we’ve been working together under this name.”

“BrKpCm, which stands for Boor Kop Cam (Drill Cam), was something I invented in the early 2000s,” says Arno. “It’s essentially a camera attached to a drilling machine, rotating rapidly. Initially, it was a response to the limitations of early digital technology, and now we’re updating it with modern techniques.”

“Back in the day, we used a small camera with a transmitter to send wireless video at low resolution. Now, we’re challenging ourselves to bring it up to HD values, integrating new technical mechanisms and digital processing. We’re using Python and MIDI to extract information from the image and translate it into sound, merging analog and digital methods,” elaborates Renzo further. BrKpCm has evolved significantly from its original form, especially concerning the image resolution, blending the old with the new.

feedbacksociety performing at Klankvorm presents Quadra, V2_ Rotterdam 2019

Despite these advancements, the essence of BrKpCm remains the same—a unique fusion of sound and image, created through unconventional methods. “It’s still very much about exploring what’s possible with the media we have,” says Arno. “And in this performance, video is just as much a sound instrument as anything else.”

While feedbacksociety’s work is not explicitly interactive, each performance is influenced by the space and the soundsystem being used. “At Conflux Festival, we’ll be working with quadraphonic sound, which adds another layer of complexity and excitement to the performance.”

“But there’s no fixed timeline or script,” Arno explains. “It’s more like free jazz between the two of us, responding to the space and the moment.”

feedbacksociety installation during Klankvorm presents Lightforms, Plein 1940 Rotterdam 2020

As Arno Scheper and Renzo van Steenbergen prepare for their upcoming performance of BrKpCm, one thing is certain: “feedbacksociety has always been about this mix of different techniques and noise, much like our friendship and collaboration—always a little different but fundamentally the same. Our performances have become more polished over time, yet we still retain the raw energy that defined our early work,” concludes Renzo.

The live performance of BrKpCm will happen on Friday, 20st September, 21:15h at Brutus.

For more information about feedbacksociety, check their website.

Programme 2024

Performances

At the heart of Conflux Festival lies an exploration of the intricate connections between art, music, and human sensory perception, reflecting this year’s theme, "Symbiotic Realities." Over four days, the festival's performance programme invites artists to investigate how sound and light shape our experience of reality and interact with our bodies and minds. The program is a dynamic fusion of cutting-edge sound performances, live audiovisual acts, and expanded cinema projects by internationally acclaimed artists, transforming a variety of unique locations across Rotterdam.

Opening with a free concert at Plein 1940 on Thursday, September 19th, Conflux begins its journey into new sensory realms, inviting the audience to experience how art can create new forms of interaction between humans, technology, and the environment. On Friday and Saturday, the festival moves to Brutus, where the raw and industrial space will serve as a backdrop for performances that merge the image and sound, exploring how technology can both amplify and transform human perception. The program culminates on Sunday, September 22nd, at WORM, within an intimate setting the festival aims to immerse audiences in a deep, sensory dialogue that blurs the boundaries between the natural and the artificial, the digital and the physical.

Artists

Click on names for more info

Thu 19 at Plein 1940

The performance is part of an ongoing artistic research project series where the Rotterdam-based artist, Zalán Szakács explores historical early-cinema light projections, integrating them with a site-sensitive approach to architectural spaces. In ‘Lichtspiel’ (Experiment No. 6), Szakács uses the refraction of light through kinetically controlled lenses to transform the Plein 1940 into a mesmerizing display of light and color whilst interacting with the architectural features of the outdoor square. In this work, the projector is used as a light source to project light, not images. Abstract images emerge through the interplay of light and kinetic lenses. This work builds on the principles from the 1646 book Ars magna lucis et umbrae (The Great Art of Light and Shadow) by Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher, who coined the term ‘ars anaclastica’ to describe the refraction of light through different materials.

Credits:
The work is created in collaboration with Teresa Winter (sound score), Nick Mansveld (technical production and design), Frank Kessler (scientific advisor), and Doina Kraal (artistic advisor).

Zalán Szakács

Zalán Szakács is an artist who brings together immersive art, scenography and media theory research.

Through his work, Szakács explores the relationship between space, body and technology, resulting in multi-sensory experiences that include elements such as light, sound, smell, tactility and movement.

Based on the research of media theory and media archaeology, his artistic work brings forgotten analogue technologies – such as 17th-century optical experiments and 18th-century phantasmagoria – to the contemporary context, unfolding as experiential art installations. For each project, Szakács closely collaborates with scientists and researchers as well as filmmakers, artists, sound designers, and local communities.

He has been exhibiting, performing, and screening at CTM Festival (DE), Ars Electronica Festival (AUT), International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL), Het Nieuwe Instituut (NL), V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media (NL), Kunsthaus Graz (AUT), MU Hybrid Art House (NL), Instrument Inventors Initiative (NL), TENT Rotterdam (NL), Zsolnay Light Festival (HU), and Light Art Museum Budapest (HU), among other places. Szakács is a core teacher at Utrecht University of Arts and an affiliated researcher at Utrecht University.

Teresa Winter

Yorkshire based composer and musicologist, Teresa Winter, is a mainstay on prism-pushing experimental labels Night School, Death of Rave, Kashual Plastik, and Boomkat’s in-house Editions imprint. With a doctorate on the vitally important English composer and electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, her work exists in conversation with the sonic and technological legacies of modernism, post-structuralist theory, and esoteric ritual practices.

Fri 20 at Brutus

Set in the iconic brutalist landmark of Brutus on Friday, Roly Porter will be delivering a live performance at Conflux Festival. His immersive and atmospheric soundscapes will resonate through the raw concrete architecture, creating an intense sonic experience. With his deep, experimental sound artillery, Porter’s performance promises to be a festival highlight, transporting the audience into uncharted auditory realms within one of Rotterdam's most striking venues.

ROLY PORTER
Known for being one half of Vex`d during UK’s dubstep golden era, Bristol-based Roly Porter composes epic, atmospheric electronic music alongside his fellow of Subtext Recordings. LPs, such Aftertime, Life Cycle of a Massive Star and Third Law, sonically portray the awe inspired by our inner and outer universes. 2016’s Third Law, released on Triangle Records, is a stunning mass of choral voices, strings, and synthesizers punctuated by pulverizing percussive bursts, almost attacking the listener at the most tension-filled moments, as if emanating deep from within the planet’s core.

In June 2020, Subtext released Porter’s fourth solo studio album, ‘Kistvaen’, exploring ancient burial rites from the moorlands of southwestern England, which features the work vocalists trained in local singing traditions. ‘Kistvaen’ contrasts primordial motifs with that of the 21st-century life in designed environments and an evolving virtual existence. The music blurs boundaries between field recording, folk instrumentation and digital processing, which although beatless creates a profound effect using dark ambiance, deep electronics, and immersive sound design.

Fri 20 at Brutus

For the Conflux Friday evening performance event at Brutus, sound artist Zohar and visual artist Jeisson Drenth will present a unique hybrid AV performance. The two artists have worked together before, but during Conflux 2024 we will experience the new and refined audiovisual outcome of their ongoing collaboration. More information on the performance will follow soon.

ZOHAR
Cutting-edge sonics as the shifting of storms. Percussive and pulsating, Zohar is known for a razor-sharp and highly dynamic club-signature. With years of formative experience controlling dancefloors, the artist behind Zohar has been treading a diverse and eclectic musical path in which rattling low-end and rhythmic tension can be regarded as the common denominators. Known for technical refinement and mixing witchcraft, Zohar now intuitively seeks innovative and surprising connections, both disorienting and exciting listeners in the process.

JEISSON DRENTH
With his work, media and performance artist Jeisson Drenth explores the possibilities and limitations
of technologies for people to shape their past, present and future. His practice brings together experimental video, live performance, text-based work and, since recently, music and sculptures. In his hands these media become embedded with queer perspectives and his lived experience as an
adopted person with a history of intercontinental migration. His collaborations with musicians and DJ’s inspire new combinations of multiple creative practices and breathe life into the subjects he is so fascinated with.

Jeisson has performed and exhibited work at CYNETART, Mira Digital Arts Festival, Trauma Bar und Kino, Unsound, Dekmantel, Fiber Festival, Tresor at Kraftwerk, Sonorama Medellín, DGTL FMNSM, Katharsis, Club Kompass, Gessnerallee Performing Arts Theatre Zürich, Museum TENT Rotterdam, M_HKA Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp and BOZAR/Centre for Fine Arts Brussels.

Sat 21 at Brutus

During Conflux Festival Fronte Vacuo will present MμRMUR: The Deer which can be seen both within the exhibition, which opens on Friday the 20th of September, and in the performance programme on Saturday the 21st of September.

In MμRMUR: The Deer, the otherworldly characters from the Humane Methods saga hit the streets engaging the people around them to reflect on the morphing of local ecosystems. This 24 km long walking performance, is a quest for posthuman empathy, a rite to attune with kin species. The journey speaks to the world through silent rituals, operatic murmurs, and biophysical music. The performance begins at iii in The Hague and travels to Conflux Festival in Rotterdam, stretching and sieving across the territory in between. The piece combines street theatre, body art, interactive musical instruments and live video streaming. The travelling group includes three characters – each one with its own symbolism.

MμRMUR: The Deer is co-produced by Volkstheater Wien and commissioned by iii instrumentinventors.org The Hague. Funded by the Austrian Bundesministerium für Kunst, Kultur, öffentlicher Dienst und Sport, Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie and the City of The Hague.

The main character is the Deer, a female human figure with the behavioural and physical traits of a male deer. Throughout the long walk it holds a pair of antlers with only the strength of its neck and nothing else. It is a living statement of queerness: in nature, mostly male animals produce antlers. The second character is the Officiant, a master of ceremonies. A masked, thin body without a face or expressions, his tasks are to accompany the sacred Deer with a ritualistic choreographic prayer and attract followers from the surroundings. The third character is the Shadow. A black body with an operatic bass voice, it accompanies the group while singing and murmuring for hours and hours, marking the rhythm of each step and the passing of time. Its powerful voice is gently amplified through portable speakers and digitally manipulated in real-time by his own body, whose muscular effort is captured and analysed by a custom interactive music system.

The performance will take place in two parts across two consecutive days, each part lasting approximately 6 hours. Audiences are invited to witness the trio departure at iii and their arrival at Conflux Festival at dedicated locations, and more excitingly, to join them along the walk for whatever amount of time one may feel suitable. The trio will invite more people along the way and whoever can join the group and leave at any time. Yet the piece expands beyond the physical realm of the streets into the data world. The entire performance is continuously filmed live by a walking crew, transforming the performance into a cinematic, surrealist audiovisual experience that is streamed in real time online, as well as at dedicated venues in The Hague and Rotterdam, making it accessible worldwide, minute by minute, step by step.

FRONTE VACUO

Fronte Vacuo is a transdisciplinary performance group founded by artists Marco Donnarumma, Margherita Pevere and Andrea Familari. It combines body art, dancetheater, audiovisual performance and emerging technology to create pieces that are “rarely seen in conventional theaters” (Neu Wiener Theaterkritik). The group’s practice is defined by unexpected methods of audience interaction, radical bodily performances and rigorous work on symbolism. Their materials are human and nonhuman bodies, organic symbionts, artificial intelligence machines, spatial sounds and images interwoven into tumultuous biomes.

Fronte Vacuo’s repertoire tours state and independent theaters, galleries, festival and parking lots, including so far among others, Münchner Kammerspiele (DE), Radialsystem (DE), HAU Berlin (DE), Donaufestival (AT), Volkstheater Wien (AT), tanzhaus nrw (DE), CTM Festival (DE), KONTEJNER (HR), PACT Zollverein (DE), Romaeuropa Festival (IT), Centre des Arts Enghien-les-Bains (FR).

Sat 21 at Brutus

For Conflux Festival, Rotterdam-based and internationally renowned artist, composer, and researcher Edwin van der Heide will perform his LSP project live at the Kathedraal of Brutus.

LSP is a research trajectory resulting in a series of works that explore the relationships between sound and three-dimensional image in physical space. Elements present in the sound have a direct visual counterpart (and vice versa). By creating these relationships, the research focuses on composing signals that have both a structural musical quality and a time-based structural visual quality. Different relationships between sound and image are used throughout the sections of the work. The result is a work in which image and sound play equally important roles instead of one supporting the other.

The three-dimensional image in space is realized by combining laser light with a thin layer of smoke. The smoke makes it possible to project in space, instead of (only) on a surface. This gives the work bodily and almost tangible qualities that happen in front, around, behind and at the audience. The architectural quality of the projection builds upon, and simultaneously intersects with, the spatial perception of sound. The resulting environment challenges the audience to explore and change their perspective while being inside of the work. It is a sensory experience in which the work and its experience seem inseparable.

Edwin van der Heide is an artist, composer and researcher in the field of sound, space and interaction. He extends musical composition and musical language into spatial, interactive and interdisciplinary directions. His work comprises installations, performances and environments. The audience is located in the middle of the work and challenged to actively explore and interact with the artwork.

Sat 21 at Brutus

For one of Conflux Festival's performance events at Brutus, renowned artists Heleen Blanken and Aho Ssan are invited to create a new live performance. During Conflux 2024 we will see the premiere of this unique collaboration. More information on the performance will follow soon.

HELEEN BLANKEN
Heleen Blanken is a visual artist based in Amsterdam. She levitates across the fields of installation art, new media, cinematography, scenography, and sculpture. Influenced by the complex exchange between humanity and the natural environment, her artistic practice explores the different layers of our aesthetic perception of the natural world while defining traditional artistic dichotomies like the organic vs. artificial and analog vs. digital. In her work, she raises questions on how we contemplate ideas of nature.

Heleen’s work has been shown internationally in curated shows at institutes such as Nxt Museum, Stedelijk Museum, Kunstkerk Dordrecht, Floriade World Expo 2022, Gropius Bau Berlin, La Gaîté Lyrique, Gallery Ron Mandos, Musée d’art Contemporain, and Ars Electronica. She has collaborated with institutes such as Naturalis Leiden, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, and the Institute for Geosciences Utrecht.

AHO SSAN
Aho Ssan, key player of French experimental music, is the artist name of Paris based Niamké Désiré. Who has garnered wide international attention for his felt, yet richly philosophical approach to sound assemblage. His last album, positively reviewed, Rhizomes, was released on Nicolas Jaar’s Other People Label.

With a background in graphic design and cinema, he ended up composing electronic music and creating his own digital instruments. He got on Subtext Recordings, in 2020 with his debut LP Simulacrum. Based on the concept of Jean Baudrillard, the LP navigates through society’s presentation of inclusivity and equality against his own experience of growing up black in France.

Subsequently his work has been presented in various institutions across Europe and the United States such as the Lincoln Center (New York), La Maison de la Radio (Paris), CTM (Berlin), MACBA (Barcelona), Muziekgebouw (Amsterdam) and Krakow Philharmonic (Krakow).

Sun 22 at WORM

During Conflux 2024 we will see a new iteration of The Open Loop. During the inaugural edition of the festival Marco Broeders & Julian Edwardes experimented with limited visitors in an intimate setting, for this year's closing concert the duo will transform Central Station of WORM into an audiovisual entrainment (AVE) spa, designed to take you into a higher state of consciousness.

Through the use of strong stroboscopic lights, visual patterns are projected on the retina, resulting in visible colour palletes. The light patterns are combined with electronic soundscapes to create a full synaesthetic experience stimulating the brain, and typically provide an experience of deep relaxation.

WARNING | We recommend that people with a history of epilepsy and/or photic epilepsy do not participate. If this is your first AVE experience, we advise that you always remain seated or reclined. If, at any time, you begin to feel vertigo, nausea, or a sense of mental instability, raise your hand and we will lower the intensity of the light source and lower the volume of the tones and discontinue the session.

Marco Broeders (NL '70) graduated as an architectural designer from within the safe and institutional walls of the monastery building of the St. Joost Academy (Breda, The Netherlands). Marco Broeders, now under the monicker Co2RO, turns contrasts such as ‘light and heavy’ and ‘light and dark’ into manageable tools. Add these tools to an arsenal of obscure and rarely available analog projectors and lamps and behold the prism, or better yet, the realm where Co2RO breathes life into otherwise bloodless spaces. Always within a new and self-contained environment. Always under—let’s call ’em—‘adventurous’ circumstances. And always using a method that is absolutely unruly. As every Co2RO installation is explicitly laborious. Like a birth operation performed under extremely difficult circumstances, throwing even the most experienced doctor off balance. A metaphor not as far-fetched as you might think as each time Co2RO sets up his control room, an autonomous and authentic consciousness is born and for the first time will see the light.

Julian Edwardes (UK/NL ‘79) is an artist and electronic musician from the Netherlands. He is a trained visual artist with a background in Fine Art at AKV St Joost in Breda and at the Sandberg Institute Amsterdam. In his music sonic entities are playfully sculpted and positioned in gritty landscapes of shifting symphonic drone. Form, language, identity and existence are assayed within a compositional network pullulated from a modular synthesizer, utilizing unstable systems and disrupted resonant bodies.

Exhibition

Perception is a vital conduit between the external world and our inner experience, shaping the very foundation of how we understand and construct reality. At the Conflux Festival, the exhibition invites artists to explore and challenge these processes by presenting works that offer alternative views on how our sensory systems mediate and sometimes distort our relationship with the world around us. Through abstract fields of light, immersive soundscapes, dynamic video patterns, and innovative interventions, the artists reimagine the boundaries of perception, reflecting on the festival's theme, "Symbiotic Realities."

"Symbiotic Realities" calls for a deeper reflection on the interconnectedness between human consciousness, technology, and the environment, suggesting that reality is not a fixed concept but a fluid and evolving experience shaped by myriad forces. In this spirit, the exhibition serves as a laboratory for sensory experimentation, where the audience is invited to experience how perception itself can be stretched, reconfigured, or augmented, forging new connections between the organic and the digital, the natural and the constructed.

Hosted at Katoenhuis, a multifunctional hub for immersive experiences and technology, the exhibition will be open from Friday afternoon, September 20th, through Sunday evening, September 22nd. Visitors will find themselves immersed in a series of experimental light- and soundinstallations and artworks that challenge conventional ideas about how we perceive reality, encouraging them to engage actively with the sensory interplay that defines our existence in an increasingly interconnected world.

Artists

Click on names for more info

Fri 20 at Katoenhuis

Hypnosis is known for inducing a trance state and using suggestions to influence behavior and thought. EMDR, on the other hand, is considered a non-mystical, medical evolution of this idea, aimed at helping people process traumatic events that they cannot consciously address.

For Conflux Festival 2024, Jeroen Alexander Meijer presents 'The Pendulum Always Swings Back to Stillness,' an installation that playfully explores the psychological effects of light overstimulation on the sensory system. This newly commissioned artwork features a large pendulum with a powerful light source, focusing on the phenomena of hypnosis and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing).

Credits:

TouchDesigner Development: Marloes Teunissen
Sound Design: Jeroen Alexander Meijer & Marloes Teunissen

This installation is a commissioned work by Conflux Festival, co-produced by Klankvorm and made possible with the generous support of Mondriaan Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL, City of Rotterdam, Fonds21 and Bevordering van Volkskracht.

Jeroen Alexander Meijer is an interdisciplinary mindscape artist who navigates psychology, philosophy and cognitive science to create interactive experiences that help us become aware of the mysterious properties of our attention.

His fascination begins with his own attention deficit disorder (ADD) clashing with the hyperdistracting world of today. By practicing the ancient technique of Vipasssana meditation he regained awareness over the subtle and immeasurable power of the mind, inspiring the objective of his work to help audiences all over the world get into similar meditative states and bend their attention back on itself. He achieves this by composing multi-sensory installations that focus deeply on perceiving your own perception, with the ultimate goal of creating a profound sense of how our inner realms intimately influence our outer worlds.

Fri 20 at Katoenhuis

Line-AV 2.0 is an evolution of Daan Johan's original sound piece called 'Line'. The piece consists of 24 speakers and custom built LED fixtures. The result is an immersive field of sound and stroboscopic lights which reveal the characteristics of the rudimentary light and sound system.

The project is developed with the idea of an open content installation, meaning that the installation can be used for artists to create new compositions for the set-up.

For its premiere during Conflux 2024, multiple artists are invited to create new sound and light compositions for the installation.

Macular is an initiative of a group of artists who share a collective interest in art, science, technology, and perception. The members of the collective collaborate on the creation and production of multi-sensorial artworks that are presented at media arts festivals, galleries, and other arts institutions around the world. An important part of the initiative is that the collective functions as a nomadic lab in which the members do research and develop the technology and theory that’s needed in order to create their works.

One of the ongoing research topics is the creation and manipulation of emergent systems and the possibilities for composition that arise from them. Besides showing these systems as installations, they can also be seen as instruments for live performance, where the performer and/or the audience becomes part of the system. Another field of interest is the notion of musical thinking and the way concepts of musical theory can be inserted into other media in order to create generative compositions in movement, light, and sound.

Fri 20 at Katoenhuis

In LFS2, innovative and antiquated technologies meet in a forest of light and sound emitting nodes. Sculptural light beams orchestrate the continuously transforming, pulsing and waving field emerging from the swarm of autonomous units, intersected by the shimmering tips of an underground rhizome. The work originates from the two artists’ ongoing research into dynamic architectures composed of solid and ephemeral media. The artists treat orchestrated and autonomous artificial entities as building blocks for immersive, emergent architectures in which the territories of digital and analog media, solid matter and sensory experience fade into each other.

LFS2 is commissioned by FIBER (NL) in collaboration with KIKK Festival (BE) and supported by iii, Creative Industries Fund NL and Stichting Stokroos.

Intrigued by the phenomena and history of optical sound, Mariska de Groot (1982, NL) makes, performs and composes for comprehensive analog light-to-sound instruments and installations which explore this principle in new ways. Her work often has a reference to media inventions from the past, with which she aims to excite a multi-sensorial and phenomenological experience in light, sound, movement and space.

Mariska obtained her BA in graphic design in Arnhem (2000-2005) and received her masters diploma at the ArtScience interfaculty in 2012. In 2009/2010 Mariska received a Startstipendium from Fonds BKVB. She won the BNG Workspace12 Project Prize in 2012, in 2014 she won the O68 Price for German/Dutch artists and in 2016 she received Creatives Industries Talent development grant.

Dieter Vandoren (°1981, Belgium) is an artist, performer and creative tech developer. His work draws from diverse backgrounds in music, IT and experimental architecture and revolves around the creation and play of spatial audiovisual instruments and environments with a focus on embodiment, immersion and primary sensory experiences.

Dieter has a masters degree from the ArtScience Interfaculty (Royal Academy of Art & Royal Conservatoire The Hague) and a bachelor in Digital Communication (University of Applied Sciences Utrecht). His works have been featured at Ars Electronica (AT), Club Transmediale, Akademie der Künste Berlin (DE), NIME/Goldsmiths (UK), Artefact/STUK (BE), Medialab Prado (ES), Electrochoc (FR), Sound Around Kaliningrad (RU), Sin Pin Pier Gallery (TWN), Gaudeamus Muziekweek, November Music, Rewire, TodaysArt, STEIM, STRP, Glow, FIBER (NL) and more.

Fri 20 at Katoenhuis

For Conflux Festival, Sabrina Ratté will be exhibiting an adapted version of her work Floralia for Klankvorm’s open content installation SVNSCRNS.

FLORALIA
Inspired by the writings of Donna J. Haraway, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Greg Egan, the work plunges us into a speculative future, where samples of then extinct plant species are preserved and displayed in a virtual archive room. Through editing and visual strategies, this archive room is sporadically transformed under the effect of interference caused by the memory emanating from the listed plants, revealing traces of a past that continues to haunt the place. Floralia is a simulation of ecosystems born from the fusion of technology and organic matter, where past and future coexist in a perpetual tension of the present.

SABRINA RATTÉ
Sabrina Ratté is a Canadian artist based in Montreal. Using tools, such as 3D scans, analog video synthesizers, and 3D animation, her formal approach serves as the foundation for the creation of ecosystems that manifest across various platforms, from interactive installations to series of videos, digital prints, sculptures, or virtual Reality. Exploring the convergence of technology and biology, the interplay between materiality and virtuality, and the speculative evolution of our environment, her work is influenced by the realms of science fiction, philosophy, and theoretical writings. Ratté portrays worlds devoid of humans, where forgotten remnants continue to evolve and forge new relationships with the ecosystem.

Her work has been exhibited in institutions such as Laforet Museum in Tokyo, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Centre Pompidou in Paris, the PHI Center in Montreal, the Max Ernst Museum in Brühl, and the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. She has presented solo exhibitions at Gaîté Lyrique in Paris, Fotografiska in Shanghai, and Arsenal Contemporary Art in Montreal and New York. Notably, her work is part of the collection at the Montreal Contemporary Art Museum. Ratté was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award in Canada in 2019 and went on to receive the award in 2020.

Fri 20 at Katoenhuis

'Parallel Strata', a kinetic light and sound installation by Nicky Assmann and Joris Strijbos, consists of an audiovisual composition for multiple towering kinetic light sculptures. It is based on the concept of rotating stroboscopic light and shadowplay, connected to the position of the spectator. The shadowplay emerges from the rotating lights and stroboscopic effects, unveiling a parallel strata. Assmann and Strijbos focus on combining these techniques in a linear spatial composition for the five machines, resulting in mechanically moving creatures of light and sound through which the audience can wander.

The collaborative works of Rotterdam-based artists Assmann and Strijbos are the result of empirical, ongoing research in the fields of kinetic art, expanded cinema, and experiments in perception.
In their installation series such as 'Moiré Studies', 'Fading Shadows' and 'Parallel Strata', they develop multi-sensory machines that invoke visual distortion and play with the senses through kinetic light sculptures. Their work emphasizes synaesthetic relationships between light, sound, space, time, and motion. Acting as instruments for light and sound compositions, these pieces can be seen as a form of visual music and expanded cinema, experimenting with different elements of the cinematic apparatus. Assmann and Strijbos construct their own light projectors and screens from diverse materials, creating compositions for light, sound, and kinetic sequences. These abstract cinematic interventions evolve through time and space, directly influencing the senses.

If you are sensitive to flickering lights, please be advised that this installation contains stroboscopic effects!

'Parallel Strata' was commissioned by the ZERO Foundation in 2018. The 2024 iteration was co-produced by Llum Barcelona and will be exhibited during the Conflux Festival.

Fri 20 at Katoenhuis

During the exhibition at Katoenhuis, Conflux is showing a Klankvorm commissioned piece by Saåad & Klara Ravat who were among the first new audiovisual collaborations which Klankvorm initiated back in 2017. For this film, which is presented as a video-installation at Katoenhuis, the original analogue 16mm projections of German/Catalan filmmaker Klara Ravat were digitized and edited to the complex and immersive soundtrack of French musician Romain Barbot better known as Saåad.

Klara Ravat

Klara Ravat is an olfactory artist an experimental filmmaker based in Berlin. By opposing the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, Ravat absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice. By investigating the concept of landscape in an adventurous and exploratory way, she wants to amplify the wonderment of the spectator by creating compositions or settings that generate tranquil poetic images that leave traces and balances on the edge of alienation and recognition.

After studying qualitative trend research in Barcelona Klara moved to The Netherlands where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (ArtScience at The Royal Academy of Arts). At the same time, she started studying Psychology at the Open University of Catalonia. Klara is the co-founder and the director of the Smell Lab, a platform for olfactory art and inter-disciplinary practices that relate to scent as a medium for expression and communication, in Berlin and in an international context. The Smell Lab main mission is to co-produce, host, educate, innovate and support artistic practices that involve the sense of smell and olfaction.

Saåad

After touring across Europe with I Pilot Dæmon, Romain Barbot founded Saåad in 2009, a project-laboratory whose music revolves around the notion of reminiscence: music of memories or memories of music, soundscapes that play with a hypnagogic state conducive to introspection. Simultaneously luminous and nocturnal, light and massive, soft and abrasive, it hypnotizes with its apparent simplicity before losing us in the infinite variations of its spectrum. With a very rich discography (more than twenty releases in 12 years) on labels such as Hands In The Dark, Opal Tapes, In Paradisum, or Nahal, and appearances in various forms (concerts, performances, installations, videos, improvisations...), along with multiple collaborations, including some with renowned artists (Mondkopf, Siavash Amini), Saåad is above all a life-long endeavor, a total art encompassing the spiritual and musical wanderings of its founder Romain Barbot, dedicated to a music still largely unknown in our country.

Fri 20 at Katoenhuis

Club Night

For the first time, Conflux Festival 2024 partners with Perron to delve into the nocturnal reality of contemporary club culture with a techno-driven Saturday night programme. This event reimagines the club as a modern urban ritual, a space where boundaries blur and music becomes a medium for collective transcendence.

Expect a night where sensory experiences and audiovisual elements are unleashed on the dance floor, reshaping the club environment into a dynamic space of connection, transformation, and sonic explorations.

The event features performances by internationally renowned artists who specialize in blending otherworldly soundscapes with cutting-edge rhythmical structures, creating a sonic laboratory that dissolves the barriers between self and other, reality and imagination.

In this way, club night becomes more than just a party - it evolves into an essential ritual for contemporary urban life. In a world often fragmented by technology and isolation, the event provides a haven for collective expression, where music, light and movement weave new forms of interconnectedness and understanding. Through this shared, ephemeral experience, “Symbiotic Realities” comes alive, demonstrating how nightlife can serve as a powerful counterpoint to the complexities of the digital age by bringing people together in moments of ecstatic unity.

Artists

Click on names for more info

Sat 01:15 at Perron

DJ and producer NVST from Switzerland has established herself as one of the rising stars of the international clubbing and electronic music scene. Playing uncompromising sets around the world, this hyperactive artist seems insatiable. A regular guest at the most prestigious clubbing festivals (Amsterdam Dance Event, Positive Education, Dekmantel Selectors) and the trendiest clubs of the moment (Garage Noord, Tresor, Ankali, Zhao Dai), she leaves no one indifferent. In addition to DJ sets under her own name, she is part of The Drift Institute, a live group that blends post-punk, abstract, and techno.

NVST's growing reputation is built on sharp, powerful, and deeply committed sets. Taking her audience by surprise, she doesn't hesitate to put them in uncomfortable situations to lead them into a trance. Breakbeats, industrial, techno, and acid are just a few of the strings to her bow. Her style draws from all genres in order to transcend them and create moments of collective communion.

The values that drive NVST's approach to DJing are far from conventionalism and commercial approaches. As an advocate for a more open and inclusive electronic music scene, she is part of the Female:Pressure family and fights for better representation in the nightlife industry. In addition to her already impressive schedule, she co-directs the Big Science label with Warzou, a sound experimentation laboratory focused on marginal electronic music. She is also a resident DJ on LYLRadio and Rinse FM.

Sat 02:30 at Perron

There is no one like Legowelt. His vast musical output spans many different worlds – some real, some imagined - and does so in a unique and captivating fashion that keeps listeners enthralled. Since
first emerging in the early nineties as a key part of the Dutch West Coast scene and Intergalactic FM family, he has become a core member of that crew who takes inspiration from Detroit and Chicago pioneers but also fantasy films and sci-fi culture, and is nowadays a modern day techno pin-up in his own rite.

Perenially fascinated by old and battered noise-making machines, his dizzying output is defined by analogue textures and classic values as well as an ever-roaming sense of sonic investigation that veers from techno to freaky house deepness via old school acid. A producer with a rare sense of humor, Legowelt’s productions come thick and fast but always retain high levels of quality assurance. They land on labels like Clone, L.I.E.S., Peoples Potential Unlimited and Crème Organization in the form of myriad EPs but also well received full lengths like The Paranormal Soul and Crystal Cult 2080.

Of course, Danny Wolfers records under myriad aliases but Legowelt is his most celebrated ever since he hit the charts with 2002’s ‘Disco Rout’, a track that really put him on the map. The ensuing years have seen him forever tweaking his mystical, misty and mystic forest techno sounds and have seen him grow in demand as a live performer. When playing in clubs around the world he creates captivating sound tracks on the fly, soundtracks that force listeners to play imaginary films in their heads and dance non stop. Legowelt, then, is a true performer, creator and innovator with a fierce work rate that puts the rest of the world to shame.

Conference

Amid ongoing and expanding conflicts between humans, nature, and machines, Conflux Festival once again aims to serve as a platform for envisioning new models of coexistence and synergy. It seeks to develop symbiotic techno-natural ecosystems that respect diverse modes of understanding and critically engage in conversations about them.

Conflux Festival 2024's conference programme gathers thinkers, theorists, artists, and performers from the festival to reflect on the theme of Symbiotic Realities. With a special focus on the interconnected nature of perception and reality, the conference presents alternate ways of understanding our diverse and interdependent world, highlighting the symbiotic relationships between humans, machines, plants, and animals. Along the keynote speakers Bogna Konior, Thomas Moynihan and Tessa Verhoef, there will be artist talks by Lavender Suarez, Heleen Blanken and Zalán Szakács.

The one-day conference programme will be happening on Saturday 21 September at Debatpodium Arminius.

Artists

Click on names for more info

Sat 21 at Arminius

Bogna Konior will be one of the academic speakers during the conference programme, happening at Arminius on Saturday afternoon the 21st of September.

Bogna Konior is an Assistant Professor of Media Theory at the Interactive Media Arts (IMA) department at NYU Shanghai, where she also co-directs the AI & Culture Center. She is also a Research Fellow in the Antikythera Program on Speculative Computation at the Berggruen Institute, and a mentor in the Synthetic Intelligence program at Medialab- Matadero Madrid. She is the author of The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet (Flugschriften, 2019), currently being developed into a book-length project exploring the implications of Liu Cixin's theory of communication to the internet.

Together with Anna Greenspan and Benjamin Bratton, the editor of Machine Decision is not Final: China, and the History and Future of AI (Urbanomic, 2024). Her work on digital culture, philosophy of new media, and posthumanism has been presented internationally, recently including the Cambridge Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, e-flux, and the Ljubljana Biennale. She is currently working on two projects. One is on female Christian mystics are early thinkers of machine erotics and nonhuman personhood, and the other on the future of technology as an existential project, in dialogue with Polish sci-fi writer and intellectual Stanislaw Lem.

Sat 21 at Arminius

Peter van der Putten is a creative researcher particularly interested how machines learn from interaction. Or going beyond AI to Artificial ‘X’: study other human qualities through an artificial creature lens such as creativity, emotions, or even topics such as religion, to see what we can learn from this, what the boundary limits are and to speculate on possible futures

Maarten H. Lamers is a cross-disciplinary researcher, combining computer science with other interests and playful thinking. His work typically approaches academia in a playful manner, both in subject and in method. He believes that playfulness can be a valuable asset in academic work. Themes that reappear in his research and lecturing are artificial intelligence, robots, hybrid bio-digital systems, and of course playfulness.

Peter and Maarten are assistant professors at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), Leiden University', next to their industry positions.

Daniel Simu is a Dutch interdisciplinary artist with a BA in Circus Arts (London NCCA) and an MSc in Media Technology (Leiden University). He has performed all around the world as a juggler and clown for more than 15 years, and was awarded Best Dutch Juggling Act at the Dutch Juggling Championships 2016. In 2022, Daniel used his curiousity for technology and performance to build the first Acrobot prototype. It performed 2 amazing shows, and then fell apart. This success motivated him to acquire new skills such as 3d printing, electrical & mechanical engineering, turning him into a self-thought robot builder.

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