Marina
Herlop
(ES)
Classically trained pianist, composer, producer and vocalist Marina Herlop has established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music. Following two acclaimed albums that established her as a leading figure in the international experimental scene, the Barcelona-based artist spent three years touring the world. She now returns with Dja Dja, her boldest work to date. Conceived as a single interconnected piece, the album uses the Hero’s Journey as a structural framework for an intense musical exploration of transformation, inner struggle and self-affirmation – the crossing point of the X, where aggression and delicacy intersect. Herlop expands her sonic universe with new textures, brass arrangements and intricate musical architecture, while preserving the balance between radical experimentation and emotional accessibility. Her SONICA debut presents a completely reimagined performance, opening a new chapter in the career of an artist who continues to challenge the boundaries of contemporary music and cement her position as one of the most compelling creators of her generation.
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Vladimir Ivkovic
(DE)Vladimir Ivkovic is a DJ, or rather, someone with a particularly unique talent for selecting records and weaving them into a larger – and often unusually compelling – narrative. Whether he’s broadcasting on the radio or piloting the dancefloor, Ivkovic applies a curatorial mindset and a deep love of music to all his creative endeavours. Vladimir is a storyteller, a connoisseur and, most importantly, an artist. Born and raised in Belgrade, he began DJing in the mid-80s and later honed his craft through events like Selected and Substance, before finding his musical home at Düsseldorf’s legendary Salon des Amateurs. In 2015, he launched Offen Music, a label whose eclectic catalogue spans experimental Serbian rarities, ambient, synth-pop and other off-kilter sounds, reflecting his adventurous approach to music. A regular at the world’s top clubs and festivals – and a living icon!
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FUJI|||||||||||TA
(JP)FUJI||||||||||TA is a Sound Artist and composer based in Japan. He creates his unique sound art and music which takes various natural phenomena that respond to his interest in wanting to hear unheard sounds and noises. In 2009 Fujita hand fabricated an original instrument, a Pipe Organ. Since then, he has released a number of different sets, but what he have in common is that his expressions are mainly use the sounds of air and minimal. The release of album “iki” on Hallow Ground in 2020 led to greater recognition outside of Japan, and since then he has been active in Europe and North America.
His works have been presented in Rewire Festival(NL), Big Ears Festival(US), Send+Receive(CA), Variations Festival(FR), Volume Festival(AUS), Bourse de Commerce(FR), MODE(UK), Tectonics Glasgow(UK), Pioneer Works(US), and others. And some collaborative works with ∈Ｙ∋ (Boredoms), Keiji Haino, Rashad Becker and others. His albums are “iki” [Hallow Ground], “KŌMORI” [Boomkat Editions], “NOISEEM” [33-33], “MMM” [Hallow Ground].
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Estelle
Schorpp
(FR, CA) Estelle Schorpp is a French-born and Montreal-based sound artist and composer. Her multidisciplinary sonic practice has explored algorithmic composition, sound installation, interactive systems and experimental electronic music. Balancing rigor and precision with intuition and emotional sensitivity, her work navigates the tensions between minimalism and density, structure and expressivity, intellectual inquiry and sensual impact. Guided by deep listening and experimentation, she is particularly interested in the physical qualities of sound and in how sonic structures can generate intimate perceptual and emotional experiences. In 2024, her first album In My Ears (for Maryanne) was released on Los Angeles-based label LINE. Her work has been presented internationally at festivals such as La Biennale di Venezia (IT), Ars Electronica (AT), MUTEK (MX, CA, AR, JP) and others. She also composes for dance and films.
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Charline
Dally
(CA)Charline Dally lives and works in Montréal. A graduate of Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains (FR), their practice explores analogue video signals generated by electric currents to transform personal and scientific archival images. Rooted in exchanges with researchers as well as in intimate experiences, their work seeks to reveal otherwise invisible traces. Working with video, installation, sculpture, print and audiovisual performance, Dally explores water both as a vital source of life and as a means of repair. Their work have been presented at the Musée d’Art de Joliette and the PHI Foundation (Montréal), CTM Festival (Berlin), among others. Recent solo exhibitions include Chapelle XIV, Paris (dreamachine, 2026), Caravansérail, Rimouski (blue vessel, 2025) and Diagonale, Montréal (this womb of things to be, 2024). They are also a member of the AV duo le désert mauve.
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Simina
Oprescu
(RO)
Simina Oprescu is a composer and artist working across electroacoustic composition, installation, and spatial sound. Her practice brings together music, materials, architectural acoustics, and psychoacoustic phenomena, focusing on how resonance shapes listening. Drawing on synthetic sound, field recordings, natural materials, and computational processes, she creates works in which architecture and matter become active participants in composition. In 2026, she composed the sound composition and developed the spatial audio design for Black Seas – Scores for the Sonic Eye, the Romanian Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. At SONICA, she’ll present her ongoing project Auric Atmographies.
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Black
Dot
(SI, HR)Black Dot are retrofuturist romantics Christian Kroupa (SI) and Le Chocolat Noir (HR), two artists with long-standing solo careers spanning festival stages and intimate clubs from Los Angeles to Tokyo. Formed through virtual collaboration in 2020, the duo soon released their debut Worlds Connect on Ljubljana’s KRI Records. Their music, a mixture of EBM, wave and techno, blends brutalist futurism and apocalyptic atmospheres with a belief in justice, love, communication and humanity’s desire to explore distant worlds. Their latest album Lust marked a return to KRI Records, following acclaimed releases on Mechatronica and Italo Moderni. Their tracks, most notably ‘Rainbow Children’, regularly feature in DJ sets by Helena Hauff, The Hacker and Dave Clarke, while Marcel Dettmann has remixed their music. They have also released music on Osare! Editions, Marguerite Records and Murder Records.
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Ribeiroia
(SI)A synth enthusiast, world-builder, producer, vocalist and DJ, Ribeiroia is one of the most promising names among a new generation of Slovenian electronic music artists. She is a member of the Ljubljana collective and label P-A-G-A-T, which focuses on contemporary electronic, audiovisual and artistic production, with a particular emphasis on IDM and its current offshoots. Taking a singer-songwriter approach, she explores various shades of contemporary electronica, moving fluidly between ambient, Warp-style electronics, glitchy frequencies, post-internet ballads and avant-pop. Echoes of artists such as Lorraine James, Tirzah and Laurel Halo can be heard in her sound. Her debut album Limerence (P-A-G-A-T, 2025) has drawn attention across the regional scene. Critics described it as an album that “reveals a promising talent driven by a strong desire to move beyond clichés, create outside conventions and build her own sonic worlds.”
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Matej
Mihevc
(SI
)Matej Mihevc is a Ljubljana-based artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans interactive virtual environments, 3D modeling, sculpting, animation, design, AI tools and various industrial production techniques. He holds a BA in Video and New Media from the Academy of Fine Art and Design (ALUO) in Ljubljana and is currently pursuing an MA at the same institution. His work frequently integrates elements of speculative fiction, worldbuilding and various pop culture tropes and codes. A recurring theme in his work is cultural production viewed as an autonomous, self-organizing mechanism, influenced by technological feedback loops and algorithmic reason. Drawing from post-internet art, contemporary philosophy, science-fiction and media theory, he examines how emerging technologies shape and engineer desire. He has presented his work in several solo and group exhibitions. He also hosts Modem, a radio show on underground internet music.
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Szymon Gąsiorek and Matej Mihevc are this year’s artists in residence.
Szymon Pimpon Gąsiorek
(PL)Szymon Gąsiorek aka Pimpon is a Polish drummer and composer whose genre-bending music ranges from heavy drum grooves and electronic sequences to noise, improvisation, field recordings and static textures, as well as modern pop sounds produced with synths and autotuned vocals. He graduated from the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen and currently lives in Slovenia. In 2022, he released his solo debut Pozdrawiam (Pointless Geometry) and continued his explorations with the b-day EP (Love & Beauty Music, 2023). He leads bands such as Pimpono Ensemble, Cześćtet and E/I, and is also a member of several experimental duos, including Alfons Slik, Czajka & Puchacz and Wood Organization. His music has been released by labels including Orange Milk Records, Pointless Geometry, mappa and Instant Classic, among others.
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Szymon Gąsiorek and Matej Mihevc are this year’s artists in residence.
Litošt
(SI)After a decade-long hiatus, the Litošt machine is back as a fully electronic unit, without former drummer Bojan Krhlanko. Versatile guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Vitja Balžalorsky (Laibach) and acclaimed saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Boštjan Simon (Etceteral), both active in numerous ensembles in Slovenia and abroad, bring their shared love of modular synthesis to the project. Their singular sound exists at the intersection of predetermined structures, intricate electronic processes and spontaneous decisions. The machines’ bubbling, crackling, popping, whistling and hissing sounds grow into impressive compositions that continually surprise with their detail and unexpected twists. Stylistically, their music combines the aesthetics of the early IDM, contemporary modular explorations and free improvisation. At SONICA, Litošt will premiere their forthcoming album Xioxio, which will be released digitally on Kamizdat and will also be available on vinyl.
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Eric Raynaud
(FR)Eric Raynaud is a French artist whose practice explores the design of perceptual systems through sound, space, image, and physical phenomena. Working across composition, spatial audio, generative imagery, light, software, and installation, he creates performances and immersive environments in which these elements operate as parts of a single experiential system.
Sound and its relationship to space form a central axis of his research, extending into a broader investigation of resonance, perception, and presence. Rather than working within a specific medium, Raynaud develops the tools and systems required by each project, approaching composition as the organization of relationships, phenomena, and intensities.
His works seek not to represent reality, but to temporarily alter the conditions through which it is experienced. Through states of contemplation, absorption, and perceptual intensity, his research explores how interactions between sound, space, light, and bodies can give rise to new forms of perception and shared experience.
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Martin Bricelj Baraga
(SI)Martin Bricelj Baraga is an award-winning artist and curator. He creates works and sculptures that explore spaces between the environment, nature, technology and humans – his installations and interventions are often placed in unusual urban contexts or natural environments. His works in public spaces are included in permanent and temporary collections of the cities of Ljubljana, Geneva, Wroclaw, and St. Petersburg. He has exhibited in many art venues worldwide: Venice Biennale, the History of Science Museum in Geneva, ICA in London, Manege in St. Petersburg, the NEMO Biennale in Paris, Sonar in Barcelona, Columbia University in New York, FACT Liverpool, Centro cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Kunsthaus Graz, Museums Quartier in Vienna, and ArbatFest Almaty, among others. He has received several international awards for his works, including awards from the GLOW festival, WRO Media Art Biennale, Europrix Multimedia Award, Memefest, and Baltimore Magazine, as well as a Plečnik Medal. He is the director of the MoTA – Museum of Transitory Art, the founder of the SONICA Festival in Ljubljana, and a member of the research-oriented art collective Nonument Group.
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Zvèn
(SI)Tilen Mavrič is a DJ, record collector and member of the Cosmic Sex collective, which has been throwing club and open-air parties in Ljubljana and beyond for almost a decade. A dedicated music enthusiast, he has quickly established himself as one of the more promising names of Slovenia’s younger DJ generation. With a sharp ear for various genres and the finer nuances of electronic music, he moves effortlessly between different settings and sensibilities. His wide-ranging selections build bridges between psychedelia and euphoria, while his curiosity extends to the region’s musical heritage, particularly Yugoslav and Eastern European jazz, folk and rock. Alongside regular club appearances in Ljubljana, he has played at festivals including Fusion, Butik and MENT. His SONICA debut promises an extended warm-up set ahead of the night’s headliner, Vladimir Ivkovic.
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