CYFEST 17 Video Screening Program: Data Traces, 2026
CYFEST 17 Natura Naturans: Human Beings, Nature, Landscape.
Video Program “Reimagine the Landscape / Data Traces / Land of Memories”
3 program screenings
curated by Victoria Ilyushkina
21 November, 7:00 PM
“Data Traces”
Data Traces brings together works in which information drawn from bodies, ecosystems, weather, and technological environments becomes part of the artistic process itself. Data is not treated as a neutral description of reality, but as an active material capable of reshaping how landscapes, bodies, and systems are perceived. Across the program, distinctions between the organic and the computational, physical places and digital representations, natural evolution and technological intervention become increasingly unstable. Landscape emerges as a living document: continuously recorded, processed, and rewritten.
Arnaud Laffond / “Breathing” — inspired by the universal act of breathing, the work transforms “meteorological and environmental data” into evolving light and visual landscapes, projected onto architectural or sculptural forms, making invisible processes visible and questioning how data “reshapes our perception of climate change.”
Guli Silberstein / “MATERIALIVE” creates an audio-visual documentary of the hyperreal and living form, born from the history of dreams, actively “moshes” body, pixels, nature, and neural networks, made by a unique combination of generative AI and algorithmic datamoshing.
Liudmila Belova / “Diary of Observations” (video: Iurii Tolstoguzov, sound: Kristina Petukhina) explicitly frames this as an encounter between “the organic natural environment and the logic of technological systems,” tactile explorations of nature by AI Blob tracking software, synchronizing AI tracking with the artist’s real-time hand movements to imagine how a machine perceives living nature, visualizing tactile explorations. Soundscape syncs with artist painting.
Jean-Michel Rolland / “Affordance” depicts a physical, reversible interaction with nature — a man resting in a tree — and, through the figurative transformation of a digital image, shows the impact of time, which leaves no trace in the real landscape.
Hong Chen / “The Command of Origin” uses “heart-rate data” translated into parameters to modulate a particle universe, revealing a reciprocal relationship where “individuals and systems continuously produce, regulate, and transform one another.”
Citron | Lunardi / “Kingdom Plantae” imagines a post-human future where nature re-emerges in hybrid forms: ecosystems reconstructed through data and pixels, created via human-AI collaboration, luminescent plants reduced to simulacra and sustained by generators on natural/artificial platforms, forming a continuous cycle of mutation and regeneration.
Anton Khlabov / “Distortion of Signal” (sound: Giuseppe Di Bisceglie) turns to the urban landscape, where distorted advertisements become “ephemeral light scattered across the imperfect surfaces of the city” — an echo of the same fragility.
Mark Cypher / “Dis_place” is a net-artwork that deforms landscapes through geographic, personal and economic data, arguing that neither place nor data has fixed meaning, but both “emerge through networks of relationships.”
Sami Keskikallio / “Bordering”. Some phenomena of nature seen through an artificial divide. Filmed in the northern cities of Haparanda (Sweden) and Tornio (Finland), which share a border and, more or less, a culture.
Tonoptik / “Latent Space” is an AI-driven audiovisual work that transforms Bangkok’s electrical wires into digital landscapes where human-made networks “begin to resemble organic forms,” deliberately “blurring boundaries between nature and technology, landscape and data.” (Based on a corpus of photographs, the imagery is processed through machine learning and temporal interpolation, generating fluid, unstable visual layers accompanied by sound derived from electrical signals.)
Jaanika Peerna / “All That Is Kelp Melts Into Ice” (camera and sound: David Rothenberg, editing: Harriet Lengel Enright) is a performance film in which the cinematic gaze itself becomes a transformative agent collapsing temporal and ecological scales into a single, haunting encounter. Jaanika Peerna brings her signature ‘last piece of ice on Earth’ into a forest of kelp in the extreme tides of the Bay of Fundy on Grand Manan Island, where sea and sand confront the richness of the plant world with the lingering presence of dwindling glaciers on our hearts and minds.
Places
Cafesjian Center for the Arts
Special Events Auditorium
10 Tamanyan Street, Yerevan 0009, Armenia
Artists
Breathing explores how invisible climate processes can become visible through moving images. Generated from real meteorological and environmental data, the video transforms scientific information into an evolving audiovisual landscape where data, abstraction and figurative imagery merge. Oscillating between contemplation and urgency, the work questions how generative media can reshape our perception of climate change and reveal the hidden systems that connect humanity, technology and the living world.
Bio: Arnaud Laffond (born 1986 in Nevers, France) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Lyon whose work explores the intersection of moving image, artificial intelligence, generative media and environmental research. His artistic practice focuses on making invisible phenomena perceptible, translating climate data, geological processes, collective dreams and scientific information into immersive visual experiences. He regularly collaborates with scientists, cultural institutions and local communities to develop works that combine artistic research with participatory approaches; recent collaborations include ClimatEurope2, the Belgrade Science Promotion Center, Villa Créative (Avignon), EOFA Biotech Geneva and Centre Pompidou. His work has been presented internationally at Ars Electronica (Austria), Amsterdam Light Festival (Netherlands), Scopitone (France), Impakt Festival (Netherlands), ISEA Dubai (UAE), Dig Shibuya (Japan), Adelaide Festival Centre (Australia), the Grand Palais (France), the Macau Biennale and CYFEST. Recent distinctions include the Kino Mural Award (2025) and nominations at Ars Electronica and SCAM.
Data, body, pixels, fluids, neural networks, nature, all moshed up, made by a unique combination of generative AI and algorithmic datamoshing. Morphing videos in the uncanny valley. MATERIALIVE is a poem for human and nature (co)existence and the processing of it, by organic forces and technological powers. A hybrid is created, an audio-visual documentary of the hyperreal, or perhaps a living form, born from the history of our dreams and hallucinations. A material, perhaps maternity, for thought, and thought as material/maternity. Perception of existence, creation of substance, and the impact of time — that is the thematic core, empowered by new technology to re-reflect.
Bio: Guli Silberstein is a London-based digital video artist and filmmaker working for over two decades, since graduating with a Master’s degree in Media Studies from The New School New York in 2001. An early adopter (2020) of using AI to create video work, he also works with visual effects and ‘glitch’ datamoshing techniques. He continuously uses disruptive digital technologies to peel back the surface layer of human perception and expose hidden patterns of existence, trauma, and consciousness. His extensive body of mind-bending work has been showcased and won awards at hundreds of festivals and exhibitions around the world, such as WRO Media Art Biennale in Poland, Transmediale Festival in Berlin, FILE in São Paulo, the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, London Short Film Festival, and the Royal Scottish Academy. Editions of his artwork have been curated by close collaborators such as Sedition Art, Luba Elliott’s CVPR AI Art Gallery, and Dead End AI Gallery Amsterdam.
Concept: Liudmila Belova. Video: Iurii Tolstoguzov. Sound: Kristina Petukhina
“Diary of Observations” is an imaginary scenario where artificial intelligence steps out into a natural environment for the first time and begins to study it intently. These “tactile explorations” of nature by AI are visualized using Blob tracking software. Its algorithms identify specific images for detailed inspection and track the movement of selected objects. The soundscape reflects this encounter between two distinct ways of perceiving the world: the organic natural environment and the logic of technological systems. The rhythmic structure of the sound is synchronized with the hand movements of the artist, who creates a painting of tropical leaves in real-time within the frame. The work invites the viewer to imagine how a machine might perceive living nature — and what happens when artificial intelligence begins not only to analyze and listen to the world around it, but also to create its own “Diary of Observations”.
Bio: Liudmila Belova works with video, sound, painting and photography, investigating questions of memory, space and time and studying the impact of new technologies on the human being in art practice. Winner of the “50 Bestern” prize at ZKM (2000, Karlsruhe, Germany) and of the Sergey Kuryokhin Award (2017, Russia). She has taken part in more than 50 local and international group exhibitions and festivals. Since 2011 she has been a regular participant in exhibitions parallel to the Venice Biennale. Her works are held in the collections of the Russian Museum, the Anna Akhmatova Museum, the Kolodzei Art Foundation (New York, USA) and in numerous private collections.
Kristina Petukhina (b. 1985) is a sound artist and co-creator of Tonoptik. Her practice focuses on sound art, experimental music, field recording and synth engineering.
Iurii Tolstoguzov (b. 1983) is a new media artist and co-founder of Tonoptik. His practice focuses on audiovisual work, light-based environments, generative systems and art coding.
Around a low tree with twisted branches, a man seeks to rest. He doubles up. One lifts its paw, clings to a branch, the other sits on an uncomfortable curve, like a monkey trying to make its nest. There are three now, then four, to explore the possibilities for action offered by the plant. This tree was waiting for him. The character stretches, hangs, lengthens. He becomes one with the tree and settles there, promising to visit it without hurting it. Of course, the tree is instrumentalized by becoming a chair or a bed, but no one cuts off its branches or assembles them to make them useful. The tree remains a tree, it becomes a temporary shelter, the act is reversible and, once the visitor has left, it will resume the course of its peaceful life, a living being among the living.
Bio: Jean-Michel Rolland (born in 1972, France). A musician and a painter for a long time, he has brought together his two passions — sound and image — in the digital arts since 2010. Through video art works, generative art, audiovisual performances and interactive installations, he questions temporality, a genuine fourth dimension inherent to the moving image, as well as the duality between his two favourite mediums, the sound and the visual. His formal research is guided by the desire to reveal the intrinsic nature of our perceptual environment and to twist it, to better give new realities to the world around us.
The Command of Origin presents a particle universe that seems to generate its own laws. As particles move, patterns of individuality, collectivity, and larger systems emerge. Yet this apparent autonomy is shaped by heart-rate data, translated into parameters that modulate the system’s behaviour. A persistent cursor disrupts the illusion of a closed visual world, exposing its hidden controls and suggesting a reciprocal relationship in which individuals and systems continuously produce, regulate, and transform one another.
Bio: Hong Chen is an artist studying Experimental Art at the University of Arts Linz, with a background in vehicle engineering. Working with moving image, biometric systems, and installation, she examines how systems of control shape perception and consciousness, particularly the tension between machine interpretation and sensory experience.
Kingdom Plantae is a speculative fiction imagining a future where humanity has vanished after irreversibly disrupting Earth’s balance. Nature, shaped by anthropization and contaminated by technology, re-emerges in hybrid forms: ecosystems reconstructed through data and pixels, luminescent plants reduced to simulacra and sustained by generators on natural/artificial platforms. Created through a collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence, the work challenges anthropocentric perspectives and subverts traditional biological classifications, proposing a fluid and shifting vision of endangered biodiversity. Beyond dystopia, the video unfolds as a visual poem in which nature and technology intertwine within a continuous cycle of mutation and regeneration, evoking a posthuman world in constant evolution.
Bio: Citron | Lunardi is the artistic duo formed by Selene Citron and Luca Lunardi. For over a decade, their practice has moved fluidly across art, science, and technology, interrogating the very concept of human identity. In their most recent work, identity is understood as a fluid, permeable shell that is shaped by both biological and technological forces and approached through a post-anthropocentric lens. Positioning the moving image as a key tool for actively imagining forward-looking scenarios, Citron | Lunardi investigate the hybrid networks binding humans and non-humans, drawing on recent developments in posthumanist philosophy. Across video, sculpture, and installation, the duo works with a range of animation techniques — drawing, sculpture, photogrammetry, 3D-scanned landscapes — weaving together a dense fabric of analog and digital imagery.
Sound: Giuseppe Di Bisceglie
Information never disappears completely, it only changes form. As noise accumulates within the original message, the possibility of decoding the signal back to its initial state gradually becomes almost unattainable. Yet at this point the signal itself acquires a particular poetic beauty and expressive power, as the signifier becomes detached from its signified. “Distortion of Signal” explores this state: the simple, unambiguous messages of advertisements on urban screens, transformed through chains of reflections and distortions, become fragile, trembling pulsations of ephemeral light scattered across the imperfect surfaces of the city.
Bio: Anton Khlabov is a photographer and multimedia artist (b. 1986), lives in Yerevan. In 2005 he graduated in “New technologies in contemporary art” at the PRO ARTE Foundation. His video art works have been presented at the Avanto Festival / Kiasma Theatre (Helsinki, Finland), Örebro International Videoart Festival (Örebro, Sweden), Video Guerrilha festival (São Paulo, Brazil), the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, the festival Contemporary Art in Traditional Museum, “Qui Vive?”, Videoforma Festival (St. Petersburg), OutVideo, No-Festival of Video Art and Animation, Cyfest MediaArt festival and Gyumri Art Week. His works are held in the collections of the Haegeumgang Theme Museum, Yukyung Art Museum in Geoje (Republic of Korea).
Giuseppe Di Bisceglie is a student of electronic music at the Martini Conservatory in Bologna. Originally trained as a guitarist, exploring fingerstyle, fingerpicking and harmony, he later expanded his musical language into electronic and electroacoustic composition. Active both in the studio and live, he blends digital and analogue instruments in live electronics performances and electroacoustic improvisation, solo and in collaboration with other musicians.
Dis_place is a net-artwork that transforms images of place using economic, geographic, and personal data to generate evolving audiovisual compositions. The work challenges fixed definitions of place, presenting it instead as dynamic, relational, and contested. By deforming landscapes through data, it exposes the tension between the apparent clarity of data and the complexity of the realities it helps produce. The artwork suggests that neither place nor data possesses stable, inherent meaning. Rather, both emerge through networks of relationships, while the tools and methods used to measure and describe them shape what can be perceived, known, and represented.
Bio: Mark Cypher is an artist who lives and works in Perth, Western Australia and has been featured in over 30 international exhibitions. He serves as the Chair of Graphic Design at Murdoch University, where his research focuses on posthuman art and design practice. His artwork is also part of several prestigious Australian state and national collections.
Some phenomena of nature seen through an artificial divide. Filmed in the northern cities of Haparanda (Sweden) and Tornio (Finland), which share a border and, more or less, also a culture. They have a history as twin cities — a special case of two neighbouring cities or urban centres that grow into a single conurbation, or narrowly separated urban areas, over time. Unsurprisingly, the nature on both sides of the border remains the same.
Bio: Sami Keskikallio (aka MKRF) is a media artist living in Sweden, working with video, abstract animation, sound and music. At the moment his interests lie in studying the dialogue and emotional flow between concrete and abstract expression. As of now, inspiration comes from experimental dance and body movement as an art form.
Latent Space (2025) is an AI-driven audiovisual work that transforms Bangkok’s dense networks of electrical wires into evolving digital landscapes. Based on a corpus of photographs, the imagery is processed through machine learning and temporal interpolation, generating fluid, unstable visual layers accompanied by sound derived from electrical signals. The work reflects the theme Natura Naturans by revealing urban infrastructure as a living, self-generating system. Human-made networks begin to resemble organic forms, blurring boundaries between nature and technology, landscape and data.
Bio: Tonoptik is a new media art project founded by Yuriy Tolstoguzov in 2015, with Kristina Petukhina joining as co-creator in 2019. Working at the intersection of art, technology, and science, the duo creates light and sound installations, audiovisual performances, and generative works. Tonoptik’s practice combines minimalist and maximalist aesthetics with an open experimental approach. The artists work with machine learning algorithms, physical data, interactive environments, and spatial sound, positioning technology simultaneously as medium, method, and subject matter. Their works have been presented internationally at major museums, festivals, and media art platforms.
Camera and sound: David Rothenberg. Editing: Harriet Lengel Enright
A performance film in which the cinematic gaze itself becomes a transformative agent, collapsing temporal and ecological scales into a single, haunting encounter. Jaanika Peerna brings her signature ‘last piece of ice on Earth’ into a forest of kelp in the extreme tides of the Bay of Fundy on Grand Manan Island, where sea and sand confront the richness of the plant world with the lingering presence of dwindling glaciers on our hearts and minds.
Bio: Jaanika Peerna is an Estonian-born artist whose work encompasses drawing, installation, and performance, often dealing with transitions in light, air, water, and other natural phenomena. Her art practice stems from the corporeal experience of existence and reaches towards awareness of the fragility and interconnectedness of all life. Her work is part of the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, and is represented by JHB Gallery and ARC Fine Art.
