AVX: the Polish festival that treats technology as material

There is a difference between using technology to beautify a work and using technology as its own material. The AVX, an audiovisual art gathering organized by the studio Ksawery Komputery in Gdynia, in northern Poland, is built entirely on the second idea. The name comes from Audio Visual Experiment, and the middle word is the one that rules.

The program does not separate maker from presenter. Installation, performance, concert, live coding and workshop take place in the same space, XVY Studio, and much of what appears there is built in front of the audience. LED tape, laser, environments generated in real time from sound and virtual reality do not enter as an effect applied at the end: they enter as the material with which the piece is made, just as a sculptor chooses stone.

Entry is free, with limited space and registration required, and the organization brings together studios from different countries. Next to Ksawery Komputery, Lumus Instruments from the Netherlands and AUSGANG Studio from Slovakia appear, along with solo artists such as Michał Jurgielewicz and Piotr Ceglarek. The sum matters: each arrives with a different tool, and the meeting is where they intersect.

Chaos and order, in two folders

The most direct performance of this principle is that of XCES VR, a project by composer and performer tOmO. He improvises alone, with MIDI controllers inside virtual reality, and starts from scratch: there is no ready track nor prearranged structure. What exists is a large set of instruments and digital effects, divided into two groups he himself names, chaos and order.

It is from this division that the set is born. It descends into the darkest atmospheres, traverses digital glitches, commands a drum machine and bass lines that do not ask for permission, and ends on a wall of noise. The light responds to the sound at the same instant, and the hanging LED strips become a red curtain that moves with the music. The recording is by Hollylook.

Choosing the tool is already choosing the work

AVX is not a music festival with projections behind. It is a place where the technical decision and the aesthetic decision are the same decision, made live. This challenges the habit of treating technology as a final layer, applied after the work is already finished, which is how much of the market still operates.

For those who build brand experience, exhibitions, or stores, the lesson is practical and somewhat uncomfortable: the tool chosen at the beginning determines what the piece can be. Swapping the order, and choosing technology at the end, is what produces that result that works but does not move anyone.