AVANTGARDEN 3.0: Fractal Laboratories and the Politics of the Synthetic
AVANTGARDEN 3.0 presents immersive synthetic habitats in which identity, embodiment, and agency are examined within computational systems. These environments function as temporary laboratories for inhabiting technological culture from within, making its pressures visible while opening space for reflection and empowerment.
STATEMENT (ENGLISH)
Fractal Laboratories and the Politics of the Synthetic
I construct immersive synthetic habitats populated by mutable bodies and seductive surfaces that examine how identity and relational experience are reconfigured through computational systems. Within these ecologies, contemporary bodies are reflected as aestheticized, optimized, and destabilized by algorithmic infrastructures, revealing the tension between cosmetic control and biological contingency.
My work builds hybrid realms where digital ecology, techno-organic embodiment, and speculative perception intersect. These spaces range from virtual laboratories and synthetic gardens to sculptural condensations and avatar-based networks. They are inhabited by skinnable figures, proto-machinic organisms, and responsive entities that probe post-human transformation, relational awareness, and the behavioral logics of networked culture.
Drawing from gaming architectures, rave culture, post-Internet aesthetics, and science fiction imaginaries, I construct immersive worlds that function simultaneously as social habitats, experimental laboratories, and collective observatories. Projects such as AVANTGARDEN BIOMES, SYNTHETIC WELLNESS MINISTRY, and XENOSKIN transform platforms into performative ecologies where avatars and synthetic beings negotiate care, proximity, and agency across procedural and algorithmic infrastructures. Humor, artificiality, and exaggerated polish function structurally, intensifying the interplay between seduction, critique, and systemic exposure.
Recent projects extend these investigations into post-anthropocentric and interspecies frameworks. Works such as ONENESS, AVANTGUARDIANS, and XENOSKIN explore how human and nonhuman forms coexist within digital environments, redistributing perception and generating emergent ecologies. Synthetic anatomies, fractal organisms, and hybrid bodies operate as active models of systemic processes, visualizing how biological, technological, and cultural forces intertwine. In works such as ALPHA/DELTA, mutation, horror, and alien-like appearances foreground the material condition of existing in a human body, revealing biological fragility, transformation, and entropy, while reflecting how technological, robotic, and AI systems render both ourselves and our creations alien. Within parts of AVATAR STUDIES, kawaii and chibi aesthetics are structural, emerging from an ecosystem in which platforms monetize cuteness, users aestheticize themselves for algorithmic advantage, wellness culture packages softness as healing, and corporations industrialize fantasy for profit. Yet these digital transformations offer temporary relief from existential constraint through playful reconfiguration of the self.
The earlier phase of AVANTGARDEN was grounded in the construction of temporary speculative zones inspired by space age optimism and the utopian industrial imaginaries of the mid twentieth century. Monumental megalithic 3D structures functioned as experimental thinking devices and architectural propositions for technological futures shaped by collective aspiration. This foundational period established the spatial and sculptural logic that now evolves into mutable habitats, skinnable identities, and responsive ecologies.
Across virtual worlds, installations, sculptural extensions, sound compositions, and live digital gatherings, my practice examines how computational culture reshapes embodiment, collective presence, and ecological imagination. These constructed environments function as prototypes and spatial arguments in which identity remains fluid, systems remain visible, and the mutable body stands at the center of contemporary experience.
All digital and computational networks, no matter how immersive or virtual, are inseparable from the physical infrastructures, energy, materials, and bodies that sustain them, as well as from the layered cultural histories of imaginary worlds.
Within this framework, my methodology can be understood as the construction of poetic digital constellations. These constellations are compositional systems. They are architectures of relation that organize bodies, avatars, code, image, and sound into environments where tension becomes perceptible and experiential.
They operate as emotional infrastructures.
Ambiguity is deliberate. It reflects the instability of agency within technological life, the oscillation between control and surrender that defines contemporary existence.
We inhabit locked ecosystems, proprietary platforms, perpetual upgrades, and competitive corporate acceleration. Our perceptual habits, social behaviors, and even imaginaries are continuously reformatted. The question is not whether these systems shape us, but how interior space can be maintained within them.
My work constructs temporary counter-environments inside these networks. Not utopian escapes, but zones of expanded amplitude where perception slows, attention deepens, and self-awareness becomes tangible. In these spaces, individuals encounter themselves as capable of reflection rather than mere optimization. Agency is not declared; it is rehearsed.
Poetics, in this context, is structural. It means generating resonance within constraint, cultivating presence within compression, and sustaining imaginative capacity under conditions of systemic pressure. These constellations function as sensorial thought-forms that allow contradiction to coexist without immediate resolution. Seduction and critique, empowerment and fragility, immersion and exposure operate simultaneously.
What is at stake is not opposition for its own sake, but the preservation and expansion of agency. The environments I construct invite participants to experience possibility rather than reduction, to feel continuity rather than depletion. Hope here is not naïve projection. It is a disciplined orientation toward constructive potential within unstable systems.
Each project becomes a temporary laboratory for inhabiting computational culture differently. Not outside it, but from within it. In that position, interior space can still be claimed, relational awareness can still expand, and collective imagination can still be activated.
IZJAVA O DELU (SLOVENSKO)
Fraktalni laboratoriji in politika sintetičnega
Ustvarjam poglobljena sintetična bivališča, naseljena s spremenljivimi telesi in privlačnimi površinami, ki raziskujejo, kako se identiteta in medsebojni odnosi preoblikujejo skozi računalniške sisteme. V teh ekosistemih so sodobna telesa odsevno estetsko oblikovana, optimizirana in destabilizirana z algoritmičnimi strukturami, razkrivajoč napetost med kozmetičnim nadzorom in biološko kontingenco.
Moje delo gradi hibridne svetove, kjer se digitalna ekologija, tehno-organsko utelešenje in spekulativna percepcija prepletajo. Ta okolja segajo od virtualnih laboratorijev in sintetičnih vrtov do skulpturalnih kondenzacij in sistemov, ki temeljijo na avatarjih. Naseljujejo jih preoblikljivi liki, proto-mašinski organizmi in odzivne entitete, ki raziskujejo "post-human" preobrazbo, zaznavanje relacij in vedenjske logike mrežne kulture.
Navdihujem se v arhitekturah iger, rave kulturi, post-internet estetiki in znanstvenofantastičnih imaginarijih ter gradim poglobljene svetove, ki hkrati delujejo kot socialna bivališča, eksperimentalni laboratoriji in kolektivni opazovalni prostori. Projekti, kot so AVANTGARDEN BIOMES, SYNTHETIC WELLNESS MINISTRY in XENOSKIN, preoblikujejo platforme v performativne ekosisteme, kjer avatarji in sintetična bitja uresničujejo skrb, bližino in avtonomijo znotraj proceduralnih in algoritmičnih struktur. Humor, umetna estetika in pretirana poliranost delujejo strukturno, intenzivirajo interakcijo med privlačnostjo, kritiko in sistemsko razkritostjo.
Nedavni projekti raziskujejo post-antropocentrične in medvrstne okvire. Dela, kot so ONENESS, AVANTGUARDIANS in XENOSKIN, preučujejo sobivanje človeških in nečloveških oblik znotraj digitalnih okolij, prerazporejajo zaznavanje in ustvarjajo nastajajoče ekosisteme. Sintetične anatomije, fraktalni organizmi in hibridna telesa delujejo kot aktivni modeli sistemskih procesov, vizualizirajo preplet bioloških, tehnoloških in kulturnih sil. V delih, kot so ALPHA/DELTA, mutacija, groza in tuji "alien" videz, izpostavljajo materialno stanje bivanja v človeškem telesu, razkrivajo biološko krhkost, preobrazbo in entropijo ter hkrati prikazujejo, kako tehnološki, robotski in sistemi umetne inteligence delajo tako nas kot naše stvaritve tuje. V delih AVATAR STUDIES so "kawaii" in "chibi" estetike strukturne, izhajajo iz ekosistema, kjer platforme monetizirajo prikupnost, uporabniki estetsko oblikujejo sebe za algoritmične prednosti, wellness kultura pakira mehkobo kot zdravljenje in korporacije industrializirajo fantazijo za dobiček. Kljub temu te digitalne transformacije ponujajo začasno olajšanje od eksistencialnih omejitev skozi igrivo preoblikovanje sebe.
Zgodnja faza AVANTGARDEN je temeljila na gradnji začasnih spekulativnih con, navdihnjenih z optimizmom "space-age" dobe in utopičnimi industrijskimi imaginariji sredine dvajsetega stoletja. Monumentalne megalitske 3D strukture so delovale kot eksperimentalna miselna orodja in arhitekturni predlogi za tehnološke prihodnosti, oblikovane s kolektivnimi aspiracijami. Ta temeljna faza je vzpostavila prostorsko in skulpturalno logiko, ki se zdaj razvija v spremenljive habitate, preoblikljive identitete in odzivne ekosisteme.
V virtualnih svetovih, instalacijah, skulpturalnih razširitvah, zvočnih kompozicijah in živih digitalnih srečanjih moja praksa preučuje, kako računalniška kultura preoblikuje utelešenje, kolektivno prisotnost in ekološko domišljijo. Ti konstruirani prostori delujejo kot prototipi in prostorski argumenti, kjer identiteta ostaja fluidna, sistemi ostajajo vidni in spremenljivo telo stoji v središču sodobne izkušnje.
Vsi digitalni in računalniški sistemi, ne glede na to, kako virtualni ali poglobljeni se zdijo, so neločljivo povezani s fizičnimi infrastrukturami, energijo, materiali in telesi, ki jih vzdržujejo, ter z večplastno kulturno zgodovino imaginarnih svetov.
Znotraj tega okvira je mojo metodologijo mogoče razumeti kot konstrukcijo poetičnih digitalnih konstelacij. Te konstelacije so kompozicijski sistemi. So arhitekture odnosov, ki organizirajo telesa, avatarje, kodo, podobo in zvok v okolja, kjer napetost postane zaznavna in izkustvena.
Delujejo kot emocionalne infrastrukture.
Dvoumnost je namerna. Odraža nestabilnost delovanja znotraj tehnološkega življenja, nihanje med nadzorom in prepuščanjem, ki zaznamuje sodobno eksistenco.
Naseljujemo zaprte ekosisteme, lastniške platforme, nenehne nadgradnje in konkurenčno korporativno pospeševanje. Naše zaznavne navade, družbena vedenja in celo imaginariji se nenehno preoblikujejo. Vprašanje ni, ali nas ti sistemi oblikujejo, temveč kako znotraj njih ohranjati notranji prostor.
Moje delo znotraj teh omrežij vzpostavlja začasna protiokolja. Ne kot utopične pobege, temveč kot območja razširjene amplitude, kjer se zaznava upočasni, pozornost poglobi in samozavedanje postane oprijemljivo. V teh prostorih se posamezniki srečajo sami s seboj kot zmožni refleksije, ne zgolj optimizacije. Delovanje ni razglašeno, temveč preizkušeno.
Poetika je v tem kontekstu strukturna. Pomeni ustvarjati resonanco znotraj omejitev, negovati prisotnost v pogojih kompresije ter ohranjati imaginativno kapaciteto pod sistemskimi pritiski. Te konstelacije delujejo kot senzorične miselne forme, ki dopuščajo soobstoj protislovij brez takojšnje razrešitve. Zapeljivost in kritika, opolnomočenje in krhkost, potopitev in razkritje delujejo hkrati.
Na kocki ni nasprotovanje samo po sebi, temveč ohranjanje in širitev zmožnosti delovanja. Okolja, ki jih konstruiram, vabijo udeležence k izkušnji možnosti namesto redukcije, k občutku kontinuitete namesto izčrpanosti. Upanje tukaj ni naivna projekcija, temveč disciplinirana usmeritev k konstruktivnemu potencialu znotraj nestabilnih sistemov.
Vsak projekt postane začasni laboratorij za drugačno naseljevanje računalniške kulture. Ne zunaj nje, temveč iz njenega notranjega prostora. V tem položaju je notranji prostor še vedno mogoče vzpostaviti, relacijsko zavedanje razširiti in kolektivno imaginacijo aktivirati.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone who contributed to the installation and realization of the exhibition in the Match Gallery.
Curator: Jani Pirnat
Public Relations: Maja Čehovin Korsika
Gallery Staff: Julija Hoda, Petra Radoja (Galerija Vžigalica)
Technical Assistants: Danilo Onchevski, Jernej Volk, Tomaž Žnidarčič
Special thanks to the following institutions for equipment and logistical support:
Društvo Ljudmila
Projekt Atol
Kapelica / Kersnikova
Mladinsko Gledališče
Strip Core
