→Antoni Rayzhekov

Biography

Antoni Rayzhekov (b. 1980, Sofia) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Salzburg, working across sound art, electroacoustic performance and interactive audio-visual installation, frequently at the meeting point of art and science. He trained in theatre directing and acting (National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts, Sofia), jazz piano (Vienna Konservatorium) and vocational training in computer programming (LearningTree, London). Since 2004 he has been developing performative instruments and generative compositions in which the artistic concept determines the technology, the technology shapes the material and the material defines the interaction. Objects, bodies, landscapes and data serve as compositional input, and their physical properties are translated into sound through custom-built technologie. By embedding artistic intent directly into the technological system, he seeks to uncover hidden processes and entanglements, letting the artwork unfold here and now. A recurring method in his practice is the translation of non-musical structures, such as geographic data, news databases, biological signals or the contours of everyday objects, into sound through rigorous, self-imposed compositional constraints. In Pandemic Sound Map (2020), COVID-19 case data from 186 countries drove a corresponding number of virtual strings; in Fragile Perspectives (2021/22), 3D glass objects derived from clustered news articles were digitally scanned to excite tuned resonators. This approach treats data not as illustration but as material, much as a sculptor treats stone, where the constraints of the source generate musical form rather than merely representing information. Recent works include the interactive sound installation Polit-Pong (2026); The Evasive Choir (2021), a 30-channel fixed-media installation drawing on processed political speech, shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia and Kunsthaus Graz and acquired for the contemporary collection of the National Gallery of Bulgaria; Until the Last Drop: Trio (2022), a sculptural sound installation using water, IV systems and metal vessels, shown at Lothringer 13 Halle, Munich, and Gallery +359, Sofia; and The Distance Between Us Is Music (2023), an interactive 8-channel sound installation driven by computer vision, presented at Palatul Ștefania, Timișoara. His 5-channel installation Fragile Perspectives was named ISEA Artwork Laureate (Paris, 2023) and was nominated for the NTU Global Digital Arts Prize (Singapore, 2022). He also creates audio-visual performances, among them ARTIKULAT (2023), commissioned by NAMES Ensemble Salzburg; 10VE (2014), for two amplified bodies and an audience under surveillance (Content Award Vienna 2016); and SOMAPHONY (2016). They use self-designed and self-built performance systems for biosensors, generative sound and visuals, and have been presented at the Ars Electronica Center Linz, the ACT Festival in Gwangju, South Korea, and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Human-Computer Interaction, University of Salzburg, and a guest lecturer in Sound Art at the National Academy of Arts, Sofia. He co-founded the DALAB Foundation and advises the DA Fest biennial for digital arts. In 2026 he received the Jahresstipendium für Medienkunst of the Land Salzburg. Previous fellowships include Akademie Schloss Solitude (2016–17), a WimmelResearch residency at the Bosch Research Center (2018) and STEIM, Amsterdam (2013). His work has been presented internationally at MANIFESTA 14, CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, and the ACT Festival (South Korea), among many others.