Proud to support this amazing @dbf_edvardrusjan team from the University of Ljubljana already for the second year in a row. 🏆 Slovenia's University of Ljubljana just claimed first place at AIAA's 30th Design/Build/Fly competition in Wichita, KS, and the way they did it is seriously impressive. Their aircraft, the BRVINC, dominated all three missions against a record-breaking field of 1,179 students from 89 teams across 12 countries. But what set Ljubljana apart wasn't just their flying, it was the science behind it. ✈️ The team ran thousands of computer simulations and built their own custom Python programs to optimize every aspect of their aircraft's design. The result? Team captain Jakob Erhatič confirmed their simulations were 99.4% accurate. That's not luck, that's elite engineering, art and science. 🎯
Competing over three days, teams had to complete missions modeled after real charter aviation operations: flying without payloads, simulating passengers (rubber ducks 🦆) and cargo (hockey pucks 🏒), and, for the first time in competition history, deploying and releasing a banner mid-flight. Ljubljana executed all three flawlessly, even as tornado warnings disrupted day one and crosswinds caused crashes on the final day. For a team that poured countless hours into coding, simulation, and design, hearing "it all went exactly as planned" from their captain says everything. This is what the future of aerospace engineering looks like. Onward. 🚀
#AIAA #DesignBuildFly #Aviation #AerospaceEngineering #STEAM @univerza_v_ljubljani CollegiateCompetition Engineering Innovation FutureOfFlight @feelslovenia@aerospaceamerica
STAR VALLEY (SIRIUS), 2016
Matthew Biederman @matthewbiederman & Marko Peljhan @systemics.mx
STAR VALLEY uses two #spark-gap #transmitters in endless conversation, generating military operation and program nicknames through a #neural network trained on DoD and NATO datasets. Each transmitter receives the same nickname but generates different descriptions, revealing how language shapes, and is shaped by, the machinery of secrecy.
The work pairs the earliest form of wireless transmission with then-emerging AI - this time a word RNN, prior to today’s ubiquitous LLMs - to interrogate the encode/decode cycle. Who controls classification systems when they become performative rather than procedural?
In the current geopolitical and national shifting in the US, the algorithm has been replaced by ego, zeal and disregard of the Laws of War. NICKA’s randomization dissolved into names designed to intimidate, to brand, to sell. In 2001: NOBLE EAGLE. ENDURING FREEDOM. The nicknames of visible events were always also used to communicate them to the public, but there has been a visible shift in 2025 and 2026. “EPIC FURY”continues in Iran, “SOUTHERN SPEAR” for Venezuela, algorithmic neutrality is now theatrical branding. Names that are focus-grouped for maximum cable news impact.
STAR VALLEY has been exhibited at Ozmoza (SI), @arselectronica (AT), and @bozarbrussels (BE) / @startseu
Created with the support of:
@lecalq@mzk_rs@canada.council@mestnaobcinaljubljana ENCAC, @lelieuunique@projektatol
#earthgazesback
#exhibition 2.4-10.6 2026 / 10.00-17.00
#artandscience #environment #crisis
Artists:
@baran.caginli@cesarandlois@feliciahonkasalo@mkk_kuus@kotrynaula Minna Långströn @tenetz@systemics.mx
The international group exhibition, which brings together art, science & the European cultural sphere, reises one of the key questions of our time: how to live with, think about & observe THE PLANET at a moment when climate, social & political crises are becoming increasingly entangled.
SIJANJE / THE SHINING
Matthew Biederman, Marko Peljhan, Pierce Warnecke.The project is part of the ISOLABS EMBEDDED S3 (SCIENTISTS, SORCERERS, SHAMANS) program and will premiere on December 2, 2025, at the EPIC Center in Nova Gorica.
Opening at 19:00; the exhibition will remain open until December 7, 2025.
SIJANJE / THE SHINING is a project in a series of situations based on remote-sensing data of the Soča River basin with a resolution of 3 cm/px, collected as part of the SPEKTR-Z laboratory’s activities from 2022 to 2025.
THE SHINING is computationally and procedurally designed using Gaussian splatting. The process begins with acquiring remote-sensing data using satellite and unmanned aerial vehicles, followed by key preprocessing steps such as radiometric correction, geometric alignment, and camera pose estimation using the Structure-from-Motion method. These processes produce cleaned and georeferenced data along with a sparse 3D point cloud. Each point is then transformed into a small three-dimensional Gaussian primitive containing position, shape, transparency, and color; these primitives serve as the initial structure for scene reconstruction. The Gaussian elements are then optimized through discretized rendering until they form a 3D radiance field. Through real-time processing, these fields are transformed in such a way that the original scenes present THE SHINING never mathematically repeat in exactly the same form, and as such, the system ad infinitum continually “creates” new views, processes, and results.
In addition to the visual processing, THE SHINING also includes a sound composition whose source data consists of recordings acquired during residencies by participating artists QOA, Segundo Berceteche, Dimitry Morozov, Marko Peljhan, and Antti Tenetz. The procedural processing of the sound image and its connections to the visual processes were created by Pierce Warnecke, Matthew Biederman and Marko Peljhan.
Oleksandra Viacheslavivna Matviichuk is a Ukrainian human rights lawyer and civil society leader based in Kyiv. She heads the non-profit organization Centre for Civil Liberties (Nobel Peace Prize 2022) and is a campaigner for democratic reforms in her country and the OSCE region. Since October 2022, she has been VP of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). Matviichuk is a member of the Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy, a project of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Here she is speaking at De Balie in Amdterdam, a venerable institution where a lot has happened also in my worlds... @avalaina_ua@center_for_civil_liberties@fidh
Robert Wilson's work had and has an enormous influence on my generation's work in theatre, performance, art. Together with his collaborators he opened up new horizons of possibilities of what art can be and how it can forever change our perception of the world, creativity, dimensionality, perspectives. Seeing the third reconstruction of Einstein on the beach in Frankfurt back in the 90's changed me forever too. Forever grateful. #robertwilson #byrdhofmanschoolofbyrds @bob___wilson Excerpts are from the fantastic film by Chrisann Verges and Mark Obenhaus Einstein on the beach: The changing image of opera (1984), chronicling the first reconstruction at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Robert Wilson's work had and has an enormous influence on my generation's work in theatre, performance, art. Together with his collaborators he opened up new horizons of possibilities of what art can be and how it can forever change our perception of the world, creativity, dimensionality, perspectives. Seeing the third reconstruction of Einstein on the beach in Frankfurt back in the 90's changed me forever too. Forever grateful. #robertwilson #byrdhofmanschoolofbyrds @bob___wilson Excerpts are from the fantastic film by Chrisann Verges and Mark Obenhaus Einstein on the beach: The changing image of opera (1984), chronicling the first reconstruction at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Robert Wilson's work had and has an enormous influence on my generation's work in theatre, performance, art. Together with his collaborators he opened up new horizons of possibilities of what art can be and how it can forever change our perception of the world, creativity, dimensionality, perspectives. Seeing the third reconstruction of Einstein on the beach in Frankfurt back in the 90's changed me forever too. Forever grateful. #robertwilson #byrdhofmanschoolofbyrds @bob___wilson Excerpts are from the fantastic film by Chrisann Verges and Mark Obenhaus Einstein on the beach: The changing image of opera (1984), chronicling the first reconstruction at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
