decentralized sounds

This installation and performance departed from the concept of sonifying gas data produced from decentralized networks – where gas refers to the computational effort required to execute operations on the Ethereum network. Each transaction requires fees that fluctuate unpredictably, particularly during the energy crisis following the Ukrainian war.

The piece interrogates the limits of networks claiming to be decentralized while remaining dependent on centralized global energy infrastructures now in crisis. Through sonic translation of blockchain data, the work reveals the material dependencies that underpin supposedly immaterial digital economies, questioning the environmental and geopolitical implications of crypto-economic systems.

This critical making practice employs sound as a means of making visible the invisible infrastructures that sustain digital capitalism, inviting reflection on the contradictions between technological promises of decentralization and the reality of continued dependence on extractive energy systems.

Photos: Teddevo

Documentation

category

sound installation, ethereum networks, technological autonomy

date

23.09.2022

context

jsps fellowship

localisation

tokyo

collaborator

yepeng ding (tokyo university), akihiro kubota (tama art university)

decisions architecture

This participatory performance and LARP (Live Action Role Play) investigates new methodologies for collective decision-making through cybernetic roleplay. Participants receive phones and headsets that assign them roles within a spatial "decisional grid" – a performance environment inspired by global parliamentary architectures and stock market trading floors.

The project employs spatial power dynamics through color-coded zones and numerical systems that guide participant movement, creating embodied experiences of political and economic decision-making processes. Each session accommodates up to 20 participants following pre-written scenarios, with a custom interface (the "decisions architecture editor") enabling collaborative scenario development and real-time execution.

Concerned with conventional methods of urban participation, this work proposes LARP as design methodology – using roleplay as a research tool for understanding and reimagining collective governance. The project contributes to discussions about participatory urbanism and speculative democracy, demonstrating how performance can serve as both critique and prototype for alternative decision-making systems.

The work has been presented at WorkHardPlayHard festival (Minsk), Château de Vullierens (Morges), Royal College of Arts (London), and NYU Shanghai, receiving nomination for the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation excellence award.

category

participative performance, cybernetic role-play

date

21.06.2019

context

head

localisation

geneva

collaborator

tutors: gordan savičić and dominic robson
technical assistance: mikhail samoilov

digital lyric

An online catalogue for the exhibition Digital Lyrics that functions as a technotext – a literary work that interrogates the inscription technology producing it, embodying its own critical concepts through its material construction. The catalogue draws inspiration from Ted Nelson's original hypertext vision, where one can trace the genealogies of files by examining their origins and relationships.

The project revives Nelson's Xanadu concept, known as a utopian vision of what the internet could become without capitalist appropriation. Through experimental publishing practices, the catalogue explores how digital media can function as sites of poetic and critical intervention, challenging conventional relationships between form and content in online spaces.

This work contributes to ongoing conversations about alternative internets and resistant digital practices, demonstrating how web-based publishing can serve as both creative practice and critical commentary on digital culture.

Visit project

category

online catalogue, performative publication, technotext

date

01.02.2020

context

digital lyric exhibition

localisation

morges

collaborator

elea rochat, paul choppin

head publishing

HEAD Publishing was initiated by HEAD Geneva as a way to create an in-house publishing house, representing research into contemporary publishing workflows and digital editorial practices within design education contexts. I designed and led the project, developing both the editorial workflow for publications and the technological infrastructure using entirely open source technologies and digitally coded layers with Paged.js.

The project explores how institutions can develop sustainable publishing models bridging traditional print culture with emerging digital possibilities through collaborative editorial processes. The system allows export in EPUB, PDF formats, print-on-demand through Lulu, as well as generating long-read web versions from the collaborative editing system. The work investigates new forms of academic and artistic publishing prioritizing accessibility, community engagement, and experimental formats through open source technological approaches.

Publishing functions as a site of collective knowledge production rather than individual authorship, challenging conventional academic hierarchies through experimental publishing practices. This research contributes to ongoing discussions about the future of academic publishing, particularly within art and design education, exploring how institutions can support more equitable and experimental publishing practices that serve community needs over commercial interests.

category

publishing research, digital workflows

date

01.09.2020 - ongoing

context

head - geneva school of art and design

localisation

geneva, switzerland

collaborator

head publications

intranetcv

IntranetCV was a project to create an internal internet for the visual communication department, designed for students and professors to use as a tool for better communication. This experiment explored how a department could develop its own tools, recognizing that the tools we use shape us in fundamental ways.

The platform comprised a set of tutorials, documents, and a calendar used exclusively by students and faculty, creating an autonomous digital environment outside corporate social media structures. Through experimental web interfaces and alternative networking protocols, the project investigated how educational communities can create their own systems for knowledge sharing and professional development.

This work contributes to broader discussions about digital autonomy and alternative internet infrastructure, exploring how institutions and communities can resist surveillance capitalism while fostering genuine community connections through self-determined technological practices that serve pedagogical rather than commercial interests.

category

web project, alternative networks

date

01.09.2020 - ongoing

context

personal research

localisation

geneva, switzerland

collaborator

juan fortun

makebook makesport

Working optimization dominates corporate discourse, with systems like Methods Time Measurement (MTM) marking radical shifts in manual labor attitudes by prioritizing movement efficiency while neglecting bodily health.

makebook makesport proposes the "perfect machine for designers" – an exercise device that enables simultaneous book layout creation during physical workouts. Motivational phrases and images scroll past users, creating entertaining ambiance during exercise sessions. After each workout, users can print their personalized book as a souvenir of the embodied design experience.

This critical exercise machine interrogates the relationship between physical labor, creative production, and bodily well-being under contemporary capitalism. By combining fitness culture with design practice, the project reveals how both domains commodify bodily performance while promising optimization and self-improvement.

The work contributes to conversations about labor embodiment and biocapital, demonstrating how speculative design can critique the quantification of creative and physical work while proposing alternative relationships between body, mind, and productive activity.

make books and do sports!

category

installation, critical tool, performative tool

date

28.11.2017

context

head

localisation

geneva

collaborator

raphaëlle mueller

dance your code

This participatory performance investigates the relationship between computational logic and embodied knowledge by asking participants to physically enact different programmatic qualities of contemporary visual coding languages. Participants are invited to dance code sequences with their bodies on a performance mat, collectively creating the visual image that their code was intended to generate.

The project explores somatic computation – the idea that bodily movement and algorithmic thinking share fundamental structural relationships. By translating abstract computational processes into physical gesture, the performance reveals the embodied dimensions of supposedly disembodied digital processes, questioning traditional separations between mind, body, and machine.

This work contributes to critical discussions about embodied AI and corporeal computing, demonstrating how performance can serve as a methodology for understanding and critiquing computational culture through lived, physical experience rather than theoretical abstraction alone.

The performance took place at the Open House of HEAD Geneva in 2019.

category

participatory performance

date

12.04.2019

context

head

localisation

geneva

collaborator

simon pinkas, carla marceau, leo durand

cartographie de la recherche en design graphique

What does the landscape of graphic design research look like? It is this question that this exhibition tries to answer, which in turn can itself be read and thought of as a cartography.

Graphic design is always about something other than graphic design. As such, research can question the social world, politics, images or writing, typography and the sign, their role in the transmission of knowledge and visual communication, but also history, archives and collections, or digital media, new media, and the complex modes of visualization associated with them.

The cartography of research in graphic design then reveals six large territories, whose porous borders are briskly crossed by most projects and researchers. This division is contingent; it offers a point of view on a current state of research, an instant illumination of its few dominant colors, which projects mix continuously and in varying proportions.

Such mapping is of course built on questionable divisions, presupposing the very limits of the map, drawn between research and practice, between graphic design and art or design. Foreign to any normative ambition, these choices are to be seen as starting points, avenues for discussion and reflection on the potential extensions that the richness of the field of graphic design suggests here.

website

in the medias:
Studio Malte Martin
magazine etapes
ligne de base
this is our work
vivienphilizot.com

curation: Vivien Philizot, Malte Martin
texts: Vivien Philizot
graphic design: Vivien Philizot,
in collaboration with Michaël Mouyal, Julienne Richard
scénograpy: Philippe Riehling
proofreading: Charlotte Bomy
traduction Birgitt Sørensen
digital consultant: Juan Andres Gomez
coordination: Département Collection,
expositions et recherche du Signe

category

experimental website, archiving

date

06.06.2017

context

personal

localisation

paris

collaborator

malte martin, michael mouyal, vivien philizot

fakepress

FAKE is an American independent publisher based in New York, founded by experimental artist Cristiano Grim, with a vision centered on disruption of meaning, transfiguration of forms, and awakening of the senses. The publisher creates hybrid publications combining photography, graphic design, underground music, and poetry into innovative formats: music compilations pressed on audiophile-quality vinyl with offset-printed zines.

FAKE features international artists including Parker Day, Braulio Amado, Stefano Lemon, Zach Hobbs, Jane Pain, Iphigenia Douleur, Jonathan Castro, Alessandro Adriani, Jordan Lieb, Antoni Maiovvi, Peaking Lights, Curses, and Alana O'Herlihy. Music is mastered by audio engineer Marco Antonio Spaventi, zines printed by SNEL in Belgium, vinyl pressed by Discomat, and distributed by Printed Matter (USA) and Sound Metaphors (EU).

As interaction designer and coder of the first version of the website, I contributed to creating digital infrastructure that supports this experimental publishing practice.

category

web project, graphic design, interaction

date

01.03.2022

context

independent project

localisation

new york / amsterdam

collaborator

jonathan castro (graphic design), juan gomez (code and interaction)

perpetual printing

The only obstacle to perpetual printing is the entropy of the equipment. A stripped, dismantled HP DesignJet 500 inkjet printer reveals its inner nature – fragile, composed of motors, cables, and mechanical parts. The primary functions are reversed: instead of producing single pages, the machine operates in continuous loops, creating blurry prints on an 8m² motion screen.

Through hardware hacking, the paper management system, sensors, and cartridges are reprogrammed with custom software that defies industrial logic. A minimal algorithm fuels continuous action reduced to essentials: horizontal lines. Noise becomes line, line becomes sound, time transforms them into concrete music.

This machine performance generates perpetually-changing compositions through fragmented signs that print and overprint without pause. The work interrogates the temporal rhythms of industrial production, proposing circularity over efficiency and process over product.

Presented at Musée de Beaux-arts du Locle, Porto Design Biennale, and Weltformat Festival, this work contributes to discussions about post-digital materiality and critical making practices that reveal the hidden labor and temporalities embedded within everyday technologies.

Code repository

category

installation, printing performance

date

01.06.2018

context

center for future publishing (cffp)

localisation

musée de beaux-arts du locle, porto design biennale, weltformat festival

collaborator

center for future publishing members

wiki2epub

During a semester, I worked as a research intern in a research laboratory (Institute of Network Cultures) alongside Cristina Cochior (RO), and with the support of The Wikimedia Foundation Netherlands, we conducted experimental and exploratory research on the potential use of content from projects such as Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikidictionary, etc. in offline formats such as EPUB. During the 5 months of research, we interviewed artists about their uses of wikis: Anja Groten from Hackers & Designers, Femke Smelts from Constant, and Andre Castro from Piet Zwart. Some of them use wikis as a tool and others are interested in using them to make hybrid publications. We presented our research at the annual Wikimedia NL conference in Utrecht. We exposed in detail the findings of our research, and we presented the design of a prototype that is used to export content from wikis (HTML) to EPUB files. This research is still ongoing and we are developing it during our free time because we have received a lot of interest from the foundation and independent wikis. This research made me discover the world of experimental and hybrid publishing and made me aware of the issues facing its many actors.

category

publishing tool, experimental research

date

30.09.2016

context

publishinglab

localisation

amsterdam

collaborator

cristina cochior

staying with the wiki

A wiki dedicated to providing an overview of the key concepts in the extensive work of Donna Haraway.
The wiki was also complemented by a local Wi-Fi network attached to a dog that served as a hub for collaboratively exploring, during a day, the different "becoming with" modes in which humans collaborate with other species.

Website

category

local wifi network on a dog

date

14.12.2018

context

hochschule fĂĽr kĂĽnste bremen

localisation

bremen

collaborator

daria sazanovich

help your government

Improve your life while maintaining peace in the streets! Get tax reductions, food coupons, and other advantages by doing your patriotic duty and helping the overwhelmed police forces in this chaotic, riot-ridden era. Just search on the map. Help Your Government (HYG) is an approach to the uber-ization of violence. Users get a connected tonfa. A tonfa is the weapon baton used by police in riots and for security in private spaces. The use of the tonfa is quantified when users show up to a riot. They are awarded a tax reduction for using their tonfa. There is also the premium version of the tonfa, where users can express themselves and be distinguished when in a riot or when securing a private place, like a bank or a night shop. Most importantly, users receive general benefits by helping the state.

category

critical object and website

date

01.11.2017

context

head

localisation

geneva

collaborator

david heritier

be your selfy

What does it mean to connect? is a mental souvenir with someone strong to be a connection in this world?
this is the result of one week workshop with Studio Moniker

category

participatory performance

date

02.04.2019

context

head

localisation

geneva

collaborator

alix meuwly