Seventeenth International Experimental Sound Festival
Prepared Surroundings 2025
(an informal dedication to John Cage)
«Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death.
One need not fear about the future of music».
John Cage «Silence: Lectures and Writings» (1961)
All the Beautiful Stories
The experimental sound festival Prepared Surroundings is once again released this year in the form of an informal digest of documentation of prepared works.
This year's theme: All the Beautiful Stories.
Authors are invited to treat this theme as creatively as possible in the context of sound-technological performance, narrative, or abstraction.
A narrative or anti-narrative can be woven from sound streams and wires. Something secret, which you have long wanted to tell - tell us through digital-to-analog conversions, write in crypto-code and let the choir sing it like notes. Your personal story, or a tale about a robot, or the quantum ontology of the universe - it is all beautiful.
As in the previous year - we support spontaneity and fleeting inspiration.
Those interested are invited to read the traditional manifesto, creatively refracting the theme: at this link.
If you haven't heard of PE before - look here.
A presentation with pictures for the festival's 15th anniversary is available: here.
festival co-curators: vitalina strekalova, dmitry morozov, sergey kasich
support: Harvestworks DMAC
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Below are the works selected by the curatorial group.
Videos are published in the order of receipt.
(you can also watch the playlist at this link)
[1] Choir(5) : Signals
video duration 4:31
author on the work:
We can view signals as signs - structural units of language, as Ferdinand de Saussure bequeathed to us. As disassembled signals: vowels, consonants, syllables, fragments of structuralist texts. In the video, we explore the civilizational (linguistic) as a part of, and at the same time, an opposition to vocal signals of pre-speech communication.
Suggestiveness on one hand, and the impossibility of the absolute, the truth of verbal communication on the other - we bring this to the grotesque by using megaphones as means of amplifying, processing, and distorting sound signals.
What can we sing, shout, whisper? How can we interact and transmit signals to each other? After halls, galleries, and libraries, will we be able to find consonance/dissonance, harmony/disharmony, noise/tonality in human vocal signals - pre-verbal, semi-verbal, verbal, noise, tonal?
author on self:
An independent association of performers, sound artists, musicians, and artists studying soundscapes, finally formed in the autumn of 2022. The choir's name is concise, not tied to anything, and gives room for freedom of action. The number is changeable and denotes the number of participants performing on a given day or working on the creation of a specific project.
The main composition of the choir includes Daria Buyun, Maria Geskina, Lyudmila Danilova, Ksenia Dyagileva, and Evgeniya Fomina. Co-authored with Anna Shakhova.
documentation:
[2] Nikita Shishkin : The Kite
prepared piano, korg monotron delay processed with pedals, samples/archival videos from the 1930s, as well as fragments of films from that time and own abstract footage.
author on the work:
The kite is the culmination of the heroine Willa's story. Her past gradually breaks her; the world she invented and the boy Tom crumble in her head, to the sounds of a prepared piano containing fragments of the play she escaped from. This is a story about how a broken person finds their footing, a border, a line from which their new life begins.
The video was created during work on an audio-visual performance based on the play "This Property is Condemned" by Tennessee Williams - at a certain moment, it seemed to me that this fragment is a small story in itself.
author on self:
Multi-instrumentalist, improviser, collector of field recordings. In my music, I work with various shades of found and overheard sounds — whether it is the sedate beat of train wheels, the mechanical rhythms of harvesting equipment during haymaking, or the chants of Siberian folklorists forgotten in time.
documentation:
[3] Olek Soldatov, Julia Korichina : body position unknown
Specially designed ultrasonic controllers - spatial position sensors (HC-SR04) - determine the proximity of an object in real-time and modulate oscillator parameters in Bespoke Synth via OSC. Movement is converted into continuous pitch control: distance → frequency, obstacle → timbre change. No graphical interface. No presets. Only signal, space, and response.
author on the work:
This is a story about a phrase that was spoken but never written down.
About a space where boundaries can be shifted but never erased.
About tuning the environment with such precision that it might catch a lost signal... even if that signal manifests only as a barely perceptible frequency fluctuation, a moment before complete silence sets in.
author on self:
Olek Soldatov is an engineer of fragile systems. He designs sound instruments where physics acts as a mediator between intent and embodiment: a body in space, an impulse in a wire, a word that almost forms but never arises. He works with ultrasonic fields, individual sound synthesis, and the aesthetics of almost complete silence.
documentation:
[4] Konstantin Sukhan and Mila Sukhan : Sweet Bone
Played on trumpet and string using analog effects.
Recorded and filmed live with subsequent video editing.
The sound remained untouched.
author on the work:
It is not us telling with sound
but sound telling us
This is a love story
Of Love that loves you
and it will fill you
With its Light
and here you are in the heart
of Light
One Love
author on self:
Konstantin Sukhan - avant-garde trumpet improviser, leader of the formation TOPOT dark trio and TOPOT arkestra.
Mila Sukhan - sound artist, part of the trio Singing Stones and the ideological inspirer of the art project Native Speech.
documentation:
[5] Jedi Tom : Artifact (Starbase)
Portable autonomous device with built-in speaker and light indication, reproducing a looped mixed-type audio signal (noise, speech, radio interference, musical fragments); video documentation of field seizure made on a mobile phone.
author on the work:
This object was recorded near the Starbase launchpad as an anomalous signal source. The signal was direction-found by the Spaceport Federation - a structure representing the interests of the Universe's spaceports and engaged in cataloging and examining artifacts found on their territories. Jedi Tom was ordered to seize the object for initial examination and record the conditions of its discovery.
The artifact is a portable speaker reproducing a continuous sound stream resembling accidentally caught radio frequencies. A dialogue between two scientists about the homeostatic Universe is distinguishable in the radio transmission - a world in which any deviation is compensated, and an attempt to change the course of things meets the resistance of reality itself. This conversation is interrupted by fragments of popular love songs appearing as interference and emotional leaks in the flow of the scientific narrative. Along with this, a repeating signal is present in the sound fabric, having no obvious earthly source and not amenable to unambiguous interpretation.
The entire sound composition unfolds against the backdrop of the real Starbase space: wind, sea, distant industrial noises of infrastructure designed for humanity's exit beyond Earth.
Comment by Federation representative, Jedi Tom:
«The artifact contains not a completed narrative, but a fragment of a beautiful story caught in the moment - about the fragile coexistence of the rational and the vulnerable, scientific thinking and love, cosmic expansion and human longing, the attempt to explain the world and the impossibility of doing so completely».
author on self:
Jedi Tom is a field researcher cooperating with the Spaceport Federation.
As an Earth representative of the Federation, Jedi Tom is authorized to detect, seize, and initially interpret artifacts near launch sites. She collects anomalous signals, unidentified fragments, and emotional frequencies surrounding the space infrastructure of the early 21st century.
According to the Spaceport Federation policy, Jedi Tom regularly makes documentation of discovered artifacts available to curious Earthlings.
At times she sends reports to the Federation as well. More often — she simply looks at the stars and drinks beer.
documentation:
[6] Yulia Baranyuk (Takismana) : Keyring Orchestra
Sounding keychains, amplification - microphone and piezo sensor. Kalimba with built-in pickup passed through a distortion pedal, while other effects on a separate pedal were applied to the microphone. Filmed in a studio with a mixing console and speakers.
author on the work:
Beautiful stories can lie in wait for us at every step. Once, my beautiful story became an obsession with squeaking and creaking toy keychains in the form of musical instruments. My dream was to assemble an orchestra from them - thus the Keyring Orchestra project appeared. Yes, these instruments are cheap toys from China that often break, their batteries run out, sometimes they refuse to turn on, and sometimes they refuse to turn off. But therein lies the charm of their unpredictability - you don't always control the story, sometimes it moves in its own direction. The keychains have no backstory - they were delivered new upon order, wrapped in film - their story unfolds right here, in the process of an exciting game. Typical mass-produced toys, with well-chosen amplification, suddenly acquire a voice, and playing them becomes a real ritual. Helping this orchestra are my favorite electro-kalimba and percussion - bamboo dishes from a distant tropical journey, where we sat on rocks by a mountain river and boiled water on a fire for the most delicious coffee.
author on self:
Performer, dancer. I also compose music and extract unusual sounds from amplified objects.
documentation:
[7] Olesya Rostovskaya : Theremin and the Onion from the Windowsill
Interspecies ensemble improvisation: an onion connected through a special plant biopotential registration device to a virtual synthesizer - and a human improvising on a theremin, creating a melody to the accompaniment improvised by the onion.
author on the work:
I wanted to create an improvisation together with an aloe from the windowsill. I developed the concept of the piece "My Grandmother's Aloe", where I would use the biopotentials of the aloe - an immortal plant whose daughter shoots retain complete identity with the mother plant - to emphasize the connection between past and present. But on the day this was planned, it turned out that a tortoiseshell butterfly was hibernating on the aloe. In an ordinary apartment, leaning against a cold window and holding onto an aloe leaf with its paws. I felt sorry to disturb its sleep. So I took an improvisation with an onion, recorded five years ago.
This is how the present forces us to turn to the past)
author on self:
Composer, multi-instrumentalist, guardian of a sleeping butterfly.
documentation:
[8] Marina Zaitseva / Call them Joe: Feast / Family table
The work is based on found recordings recorded on a Sony dictaphone. The recordings were digitized using a Zoom H5 recorder and processed in Ableton Live, where the music was also written. The video was shot on a Canon EOS 1100D camera and edited in Adobe After Effects.
author on the work:
My beautiful story is about voices from the past.
The track is made from recordings from a dictaphone I bought for 300 rubles at a flea market. This money turned out to be the best investment because the dictaphone is full of recordings from village feasts, songs, concerts, and some dialogues. I never had a dacha or a house in the village, so in a sense, these recordings gave me an experience I never had, but which many of my friends and acquaintances had.
While I was making the track Family table, I painstakingly listened to recordings from the dictaphone, digitized what was needed, then listened again while cutting excerpts. And listened many, many more times while writing the track. This track turned out frightening because while I was writing it, I thought a lot about the fact that someone recorded these songs because they considered it important, and then this dictaphone ended up at a flea market. Are those people alive, is the previous owner of the dictaphone alive? The track turned out to be about voices from the past - they weave into one choir.
In the video, I wanted to show the dictaphone as an artifact. I also transferred the principle from the track to the video — we see many ghosts of the dictaphone, just as we hear many voices. The video is shot in one take and originally lasts 12 minutes.
author on self:
My name is Marina, I am a musician and sound artist. I work with electronic music, found recordings, and field recordings. I pay special attention to atmosphere and love creating soundscapes.
documentation:
[9] Salixy and nikki778 : feyayayayaya
Schmitt triggers inside
author on the work:
feyayayayayayayayayayaya
magical
pulsates with a miracle and your desire in a casket of memories squeal of trains and explosions of heels on that very parquet and running in the grass and noise some noise is it future summer or the tender cry of snowdrops at your dacha or the whisper of streetlights when you sleep in a night bus or look out the window thatatatatatatttttttt ttt oooaaa tttt sound you recognized
feyayayayayaaa she is I you miracle play your memories on me and I will fulfill your wish with my light with my red of my eyes
feyayayayaya - semi-conductor of spirits
author on self:
media artists, engineers, researchers of electricity and algorithms
documentation:
[10] Elizaveta Telnaya : Soulhacking machine
The project uses a mechanical robotic arm assembled by me, as well as a reduced copy of my body printed on a 3D printer. The video sequence is complemented by macro shots made using a microscope: natural structures, objects found on the seashore, fragments of skin and hair, mechanism elements.
The sound composition is entirely built from processed sounds of the robot and my voice. The full version of this video art will be exhibited in Italy, Pordenone at the "Alter Ego" exhibition and in London.
author on the work:
The trajectory built by the work can be read as a map of strained thoughts and suppressed desires.
It is formed not from a linear narrative, but from a group of metaphorical patterns in which forward movement is accompanied by a return to experienced states. In this cycle, desire does not find completion, but merely changes form, preserving the memory of feelings.
Modern experience of intimacy is increasingly connected with imagination. We have learned to fall in love with people we have never seen, to construct whole images existing predominantly in the head and supported by a minimal set of signals. Real presence in such connections turns out to be secondary to projection.
In “Soulhacking machine”, the technological connects with the organic as a form of sublimation. The image of futurism here is not opposed to the human, but saturated with it: a body, a gesture, a gaze, a doubt are embedded into the mechanical structure. The machine becomes a carrier of projection, and the human - part of a technical scene in which feelings are reproduced without a guarantee of response.
The sound fabric of the work reinforces this state. All percussion elements are created from the robot's own, "native" sounds and my voice, subjected to processing. The mechanical and the human merge here at the acoustic level, forming a rhythm devoid of emotional climax, but saturated with repetition and expectation.
Thus, the work unfolds as a reflection on intimacy existing in the mode of imaginary involvement. This is a space where the image turns out to be more convincing than real presence, and desire - more stable than contact.
We live in a paradigm of progress and are all involved in a competitive chase for a technical fata morgana, without slowing the pace of this relay. In fact, we have long resembled madmen who have intensively and enthusiastically positioned themselves before a panel and press thousands of buttons: the press must give a huge and spectacular result. It doesn't work out - meaning, one needs to press even more buttons, connect them more directly to the result, accelerate the feedback.
Contact with the machine becomes the central element - restrained, functionally verified, and emotionally neutral. Its movements imitating care are the movements of a "living" system with the presence of multiple feedback loops without mutual permeability of feelings. From the point of view of cybernetics, such a system can be considered "alive" thanks to the presence of multiple feedback loops. Where human intimacy is based on mutual permeability of feelings, function and efficiency prove powerless.
The process of soul tissue regeneration turns out to be especially difficult in such conditions. The work can be viewed as an experience of living through distance: tension is not resolved and does not lead to discharge, but is preserved to the end - just like in real relationships.
author on self:
I do sound art, create soundscapes for exhibitions, installations, foley effects for films, work on analog equipment, and experiment with voice.
documentation:
[11] Mitry Grankov : Improvisations on a Barrel
Single-channel vertical video with sound.
Video documentation of improvisations on several barrels. In the first two episodes (May 2025) the sound was picked up by piezo sensors, in the first a delay effect was used, the last episode was recorded simply on a phone in December 2025.
Recordings were made in the "Fabrika" Center for Creative Industries workshop.
author on the work:
"A story starting with a rusty barrel and several strings..."
This is a story about sounding, about vibrations born in strings, and about a barrel becoming a vessel filled with sound.
This is a beautiful story of the transformation of a utilitarian metal object, which receives a second life in the form of a musical instrument.
The last two barrels from which I made musical objects arrived in Moscow from Argentina, they contained juice, and this is a story about a journey halfway across the planet.
author on self:
I am an artist, musician, and designer. I invent musical objects, sound installations, and experiment with sound. Laureate of the Sergey Kuryokhin Award (St. Petersburg, 2021), resident of "Factory Workshops" (Moscow, 2025).
documentation:
[12] Boris Shershenkov : Klangerute
The electroacoustic part of the instrument combines elements of a fishing rod, active sonar, aeolian harp, and string resonator, connecting the performer with the water and air environment via nylon strings / fishing lines.
The sounds of the instrument's strings are generated by the wind and modulated by waves and the river current. Environmental sounds are amplified, transmitted to the strings through special transducers in the float, and then, enriched by string resonances, are picked up by four contact microphones on the fishing rod. The performer can control the pitch and intensity of the acoustic sound entering the electronic system using specific gestures to change the tension of the strings balanced between the rod and the float.
author on the work:
Klangerute is a speculative design project of a gestural musical instrument / technobioacoustic interface, reimagining relationships between humans and inhabitants of the underwater world in contexts of coastal environments, based on such a traditional practice of interspecies interaction as fishing.
The instrument's sounds contain data about the environment and the performer's movements, are processed taking into account bioacoustic signals of local underwater fauna, amplified and transmitted back into the water, offering new forms of harmless biocommunication through sound and gestures, as well as exploration of the potential of non-human music.
author on self:
Independent artist and researcher, PhD in technical sciences, teacher, and constructor of musical instruments. Focused on projects developing new methodologies in technological and sound art and combining modern technologies and media-archaeological research.
documentation:
[13] acea : slow
audio-visual essay-research
author on the work:
perhaps it is even naive and too obvious, but for the last 3 years I felt that everything became faster and more meaningless. it took me 3 years to edit this 2-minute slow story about slowness, and this was, perhaps, a necessary and desired lesson. it is also my first sound in forced «deafness», which came with the arrival of dark times.
the thing is that wherever I «uploaded» this work, there was no place for it, it is too slow. no one will watch it to the end because little happens in it, and also it is filmed in a format too wide for a phone. well okay.
and yet I think a lot about slowness, and about slow storytelling, slow writing of one's name, slow walking — and about their slow value.
to be a slug, a swamp, moss.
author on self:
communicating vessel
documentation:
[14] Evgeny Pisarchenko, Lidia Osipova : Practice of Useless Movement
Homemade contact microphones are fixed on a car and connected to an audio interface for signal amplification, its subsequent processing, and sound system feedback control.
author on the work:
This work is a fragment of an abstract dialogue between two partners about a visit home after a long separation. About a frozen present which, although it resembles the past, has managed to become something else. The communication process occurs through extracting sound from the metal skeleton of the auto via contact microphones, controlling their feedback, and digital-to-analog sound processing. Interaction with the object and signal feedback are an exchange of phrases.
The performance took place within the framework of the "Deconstruction" event (Tyumen, 2025)
author on self:
Lidia Osipova is a movement researcher, dance artist, choreographer, and performer. Evgeny Pisarchenko is a sound artist, composer, and electronic music artist. As a duo, the collective has conducted performances in Istanbul, Tbilisi, Almaty, and Tyumen.
documentation:
[15] beriln, nullermaend : II-18
A system of shortwave radio, plates, microphones, and transducers, encompassed by feedback. Recorded in one take.
author on the work:
And things have many of their own stories. What if we seat them at a table, turn on the radio for them, and let them converse?
author on self:
Researchers of sound phenomena
documentation:
[16] ::vtol:: : rise
video duration 0:54
author on the work:
A fleeting etude. A small story of a mobile phone with generative noise, left in an elevator to use its doors and shaft as a “gate” and “envelope”. A short performance for a closed void, decomposed into components in Max to become a prepared basis for the next performance.
author on self:
:vtol:: / Dmitry Morozov - artist, teacher; member of the SA community since 1998.
documentation:
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message from co-curators:
[ Dear colleagues and friends! This year we received many applications, among which, as always, there were a certain number of purely audio-visual works. The PS festival is already 17 years old, and despite the fixed media format we have been using for the last two years - PS is not focused on audio-visual art. Nevertheless, we find some A\V works sent to us this time interesting and worthy of mention. In this regard, we are publishing a separate playlist of several purely audio-visual works, and we suggest everyone consider this a special project of PS-2025. ]
[ special project PS-2025 : All the Beautiful Audio-Visual Stories ]
participants:
nika sür-mä
Samorokov Anton project Toki
Boris Yushmanov
Nicanurca
Danila Korytko
R.dy
Anastasia Bedina