tekhnē

Skaņu Mežs 2025 will happen on October 3-4 at Hanzas Perons (16A Hanzas Street). This festival edition is headlined by hyperpop singer and producer Sega Bodega, experimental rock band These New Puritans, iconic avant-garde soprano Joan La Barbara, and the duo of modern jazz stars Shabaka Hutchings and Hamid Drake.

“Phytomorphic Topographies” is a suite of audio-visual works exploring the delicate ecosystems of Latvia’s wilderness through immersive 3D visuals and near-field sound recordings. In June 2025, the artists spent a week in the forests, bogs, and nature reserves of east-central Latvia, guided by botanist Līga Pentjuša (from the Latvian State Forest Research Institute “Silava”), conducting botanical surveys using photogrammetry and field recording techniques.

By engaging with these landscapes across multiple scales – from satellite imagery to micro-level sensory detail – the project offers a fresh perspective on our relationship with nature and challenges conventional notions of human integration within fragile ecosystems.

Following the performance on October 3, the work will be exhibited as an installation at Hanzas Perons for the duration of the festival.

Pierce Warnecke is a multidisciplinary digital artist at the intersection of experimental music, digital arts, and video art. He has presented his work in the form of performances, concerts, and installations at Mutek, ZKM, CTM, Elektra, KW Institute, La Biennale Nemo, Sonic Acts, Martin Gropius Bau, MAC Montreal, Gray Area SF, Scopitone, LEV Festival, SXSW, FILE, etc. He co-curates the emitter micro label and festival with Kris Limbach and Seiji Morimoto in Berlin since 2011, in addition to co-curating Le Signal Festival in France with Louis Laurain. His music has been published on raster (DE), Room40 (AU), and Contour Editions (US).

Matthew Biederman has been performing, installing, and exhibiting works which explore themes of perception, media saturation, and data systems from a multiplicity of perspectives since the mid-1990s. Biederman was the recipient of the Bay Area Artist Award in Video by New Langton Arts in 1999, and First Place in the Visual Arts category of Slovenia’s Break21 festival. He has served as artist-in-residence at a variety of institutions and institutes, including the Experimental Television Center on numerous occasions, CMU’s CREATE lab, the Wave Farm, and many more.