With ArtyGeneration, my first goal had been to open a window on the Russian creative scene so that my European friends could have a more accurate representation of the country, and above all of its’ people. Now that I’m back in France, my desire is even stronger to create a true dialogue between Russia and the global community of creators. In this context, it was a sincere pleasure to see that the Playtronica collective, that was part of our Creative matches program with the French Institute during the last FIFA Wordcup, is now based in Moscow, Berlin and Paris. It was a great opportunity to discuss with its founder, Sasha Pas, and understand the depth of their research about the future of sound.

Meet Sasha

Today a musician and a designer, Sasha Pas seems to owe a lot to his humanities background. After studying sociology, he worked 10 years in theaters as a creative producer. With the company Le Cirque de Charles La Tannes, he worked on site-specific immersive shows and managed creative collaborations. Famous for the show Cops on fire, they were the first to play hip hop on a theater stage in Russia, adding loud music and bad language to the mix, experimenting beyond mainstream codes.

Six years ago, he moved to Barcelona to complete his education and study cultural projects production and funding. Living in this inspiring city was an education in itself and Sasha dove gladly into its cultural program : Sonar and Primavera music festival, film and theater marathons, …

For his masters degree, he conducted an extensive research on the need for children’s education to make electronic music. While researching the subject, he came across a basic tech allowing to link daily objects just by connecting them. “It was mind blowing, cheap and easy”. He bought 5. Playtronica was born.

About Playtronica

Today, Playtronica is a collective of artists, engineers, designers and musicians. From filling the lack of electronic music education to creating new musical instruments, Playtronica is now focusing on how senses can be played with to make music. Sight, taste, smell, warmth are not directly connected to music. How can we reprogram it so that people can play music, very intimately and emotionally, with their bodies and senses ?

Six years ago, after his “wow” moment, Sasha had an opportunity to give workshops in Moscow. Step by step he found a team of DJ and musicians, as enthusiastic as he was about children’s education. Step by steps they did small films, clips, took part in events, festivals. At the Science Festival they curated a special zone and invited other experimental initiatives merging tech and education. In a short six months, they became known and started working for the event industry.

“Whether it was for a festival or a product launch, we used the same energy, the same flow, to show the audience that there is still place for magic. By creating magic with ordinary things, we give people a chance to get away from their screens and laptops to come back to the simple act of tactile communication : playing, feeling textures, following the game and the rhythm, without any specific rules, without the fear of making mistakes.”

Traveling to Europe and the US, they looked for new community members, and found them.

Olga is a musician. She tours a lot with her band 16 pineapples. She moved to Paris…
...and met Vincent. They decided to develop the same model of events in France, which he is curating.
Together with Aglaya, who is the designer of original shapes of Playtronica devices but also create images for Playtonica’s installations and exhibitions…
Sasha moved to Berlin and has been working with programmers on new devices.

In Russia, the collective is active, both for Playtronica and their personal projects :

Jekka, DJ, created Parallels, a community of women musicians.
Vita, musician and educator, is working on the indie rock electronic music scene. He is also very committed to children’s education and offers workshops in summer camps.
Andrei, former curator of Strelka educational project, is dedicated full time to the collective and manages the production and the sale process of our two devices, Playtron and Touch me.

After an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 2019, an event for Hermes gathered the whole team in New York in 2020. What a cool reunion !

About changing society

Launched as an educational project that turned into a playful and event oriented one, Playtronica is now moving towards research.

“I always have this inner conflict between entrepreneur and artist. I feel as a social entrepreneur, I need to bring value to the market that is much more than money based”.

In 2018 at the Solyanka Gallery with the Fujin - Play with the wind installation, and then in 2019, when taking part in the Reference Festival in Berlin, Sasha started formulating the political importance of exploring other senses and being not so dominated by sight.

“We also had this project called Human Orchestra. We find a city to collaborate on a project, and make a call for 20 to 30 local performers, to be part of it as music instruments. Then, we record local sounds by walking in the city, assign it to each person and install them on a stage. Everyone is invited to touch the people and hear the sounds of the city. The idea behind it is that, normally, you are not allowed to touch strangers. But, in this situation, you take part in an artistic concept that turns a daily gesture - touching each other - into a mindful one, creating emotions and sounds. If you expand it to other senses than touch, this is also true : in the city for instance, we are missing the true sounds. Try recording city sounds : it is highly polluted by extraneous sounds.”

The ambition of the collective is now to explore how touch - and the absence of it - can change society, from small things like daily communication, to big ones like borders.

“Touch me is a very powerful device that, on a small scale, can explore reality. Not with numbers, but just by touching and playing. We are now working on a sensory room in Moscow. In museums, people are overloaded by visuals. This space will be a room to switch to other senses in a pure and abstract way. We can train senses, just as we exercise at the gym. We started to trust our sight ever since the Renaissance and the rise of architecture. At that time, what we saw - buildings - was the most stable element. Now let’s flashback : when we were living in a forest, sight was pretty useless. Whereas with sound and smell you could feel events happening. Today, with all the screens and modified pictures, we cannot trust our eyes only and need to switch back to our other resources. With smell and sound, you cannot be fooled. Our brain makes instant decisions based on what it receives.”

To go further on this fascinating field of research, Playtronica is even working with a society of people with synesthesia.

About developing a cross cultural project

While developing worldwide, Playtronica is still deeply involved in Russia, through its team, partnership such as Garage, and special events.

About doing projects in Russia, Sasha is pretty cautious :

“The Russian music community has been quite strong since the 60’s. Working with the state usually equals hassle but if you work in your own bubble, you can produce good material. Until something very bad happens, like this pandemic, and you see again that there is no safety net, what makes the whole community vulnerable”.

The decision to expand in Europe seems like a strategic choice, in light of this analysis. As well as the philosophy to be an open community. “Initially, the idea is that Playtronica is not a business company. No boss, nor hierarchy. We are an horizontal community. If you want to do it in Brazil or Australia, we are open to share the basics”. This open approach has proven to be the most rewarding for Sasha : “I am really proud to create communication channels and fill the gap between different cultures. To make the project global, you have to understand the local context and share your understanding of it. With our installation, we connect to the core of each culture in a very funny way :

in Spain, there are usually many hugs and excitement,
in Russia, when invited to touch each other in an installation, two guys began fighting,
in Norway, we showed our device to an influencer crowd, invited them to try and no one moved a toe,
French people give direct feedback : they say immediately what they feel,
German people are often suspiciously looking and trying to understand the mechanism,
South american people are very emotional. In a free and playful environment, people are more inclined to express themselves.”

Let’s follow and support Playtronica in their search for a freer reality, more connected to our full 5 senses capacity !

To follow Palytronica, head to their Instagram account or dive into their Youtube channel.