Festival Artists
Gundega Graudiņa
Hummotron
Merging humming with the legacy of tape instruments such as the Mellotron, Hummotron is a voice-controlled cassette tape system. It picks up the voice directly on the neck via a contact microphone inserted in a self-grown kombucha leather choker; the audio is then digitally analysed and used to control the playback speed and the volume of modified cassette players.
Gundega Graudiņa is a sound artist, performer and educator, based between Linz, Austria and the Latvian seaside. A classically trained guitarist, she blends acoustic and electric string instruments, voice, tapes and digital sound effects to create poetic performances where repetitive yet subtly shifting melodic structures, dense textures and noise collide and merge.
Saumil Bhandari
Sandesh Tara
Meaning: sandesh = message; tara = string
Sandesh Tara is a post-digital electro-acoustic instrument that lets the musician layer digital sound over its electroacoustic sounds, using the same gestures to play it with strings. Built as a portable 14-string bamboo instrument with seven strings along each of two axes, it houses two pairs of magnetic pickups. The instrument draws its inspiration from the Indian ektara, whose split-bamboo bending technique allows microtonal movements, and the neckless ancient lyre family of lutherie. Sandesh Tara investigates how folk string instruments might evolve in a post-digital context, where acoustic craftsmanship, electronic and digital sound, and embodied performance become part of a single instrument.
Saumil Bhandari (b. 1989, Lucknow, India) is an artist, designer, engineer, and instrument maker whose practice explores the intersection of sound, electronics, material culture, and performance. He previously worked as a Creative Technologist for over nine years, developing consumer products, interactive technologies, and user experiences for mass production.
His current artistic research focus investigates how traditional knowledge systems, folk instruments, and handmade materials can be reinterpreted through contemporary electronics and digital media. Through experimental lutherie, physical computing, and sound performance, he develops hybrid instruments that blur the boundaries between acoustic and electronic sound production.
Boris Shershenkov
Radiant
Radiant is a multichannel reprogrammable synthesizer that uses phonoptic and electrical effects of hand-controllable plasma discharge to change the parameters of synthesized sounds and their positions in space.
Boris Shershenkov is a media artist, researcher, educator, and musical instrument designer. He focuses on projects that explore new methodologies in technological and sound art, combining modern techniques with media archaeology to study the relationship between humans and technology. As a musician, he specializes in live electronics and electroacoustic improvisation, both solo and in collaboration with others.
Mobina Vatandoost (Mubie)
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Blending industrial design with tactile hardware like a vocal reflector, Mubie transforms abstract digital frequencies into raw, immersive, and deeply somatic realities.
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Mobina Vatandoost (Mubie) is a Linz-based artist, singer songwriter, music producer, and postdigital luthier. Blending industrial design with tactile hardware like vocal reflector, she transforms abstract digital frequencies into raw, immersive, and deeply somatic realities.
Andreas Grünauer
PLS DNT TCH
PLS DNT TCH is a postdigital instrument built around a flat surface with contact mics and capacitive sensors hidden underneath. Touch and pressure shape its sound, moving between calm string-like tones and wild, bouncing waves of echo.
Andreas Grünauer is a trombone player and contemporary musician based in Vienna (Austria), working across multiple musical genres and collaborative projects. In recent years, Grünauer has begun exploring the intersecting fields of postdigital lutherie and sound design, expanding his artistic practice beyond performance into instrument design and visual media.
Obi Blanche
RAKE and GRAKE
RAKE is a custom-built guitar and experimental test-ground platform for exploring somatic performance, feedback, and post-digital sound practices. Together with its successor GRAKE, it reflects a brutalist “béton brut” approach to instrument design, where function, materiality, and sonic experimentation are closely intertwined. Combining prepared guitar techniques, DIY construction and philosophy, and digital augmentation, both instruments operate as evolving research environments rather than fixed musical tools.
Obi Blanche (FI) is an experimental guitarist, instrument builder, and producer working at the intersection of prepared guitars, somatic performance, and post-digital sound practices. His work combines DIY instrument design, feedback systems, and movement-based composition with melancholic melodies and song structures. Drawing from both experimental music and contemporary production, he develops custom instruments that blur the boundaries between body, instrument, and technology. His ongoing artistic research is framed under the concept of #postdigitalpunk.
Performances blend prepared guitar, latent space sound generation, and traces of melancholic songwriting. Layers of feedback, resonance, and elastic audio processes reshape musical material into unstable yet expressive sonic environments, emerging from shifting relationships between voice, movement, and machine.
Omid Zolfaghari (OMZOL)
HEXStretch
HEXStretch is a modular tactile sequencer and synthesizer that translates physical geometry into a rhythmic playground. By inserting 6.35 mm plugs to trigger specific sounds and linking them with conductive rubber bands, players create tangible loops where the physical distance between sockets directly represents time. This ongoing project offers a hands-on way to “stretch” and sculpt complex polyrhythms through a hexagonal landscape.
Omid Zolfaghari, aka OMZOL, is a Linz-based artist. Working at the intersection of sound, technology, and storytelling, his practice centers around experimental approaches to music, while also exploring interactive art and making experimental musical instruments.