CIFRA builds everyday pathways for media art discovery

CIFRA curated – CIFRA is reshaping how digital art is encountered by designing it for daily life—through curated playlists, editorial guidance, and a global Artistic Vision Council—starting with a playlist exploring mythology, technology, nature, identity, and perception.

For years. the screen in art life has come with a deal: go somewhere specific. at a specific time. and look in a focused way for a fixed audience. CIFRA starts from a different assumption—that people are already looking at screens constantly. not just in galleries. but at home. in transit. in waiting rooms. hotels. offices. cafes. and public spaces.

In that everyday glow, the platform argues that digital art doesn’t have to wait for the museum cycle. Media works can live inside the visual environments people move through all day. Instead of being event-based. they can be encountered casually. repeatedly. and alongside routines—turning discovery into something closer to habit than appointment.

CIFRA is building a curatorial ecosystem meant to support that shift. It brings together artists. curators. institutions. and audiences in one place. blending access to works with curated selections. editorial framing. and long-term visibility. The platform moves across formats including video art. sound works. AI-based practices. audio art. and other forms of contemporary media art. positioning digital culture as an environment that keeps changing rather than a product that lands and disappears.

Crucially, CIFRA is not selling discovery as a stream guided by algorithms. Its platform is described as a curatorial environment shaped by human expertise. with audience participation and discovery structured through public playlists. editorial pathways. and guided explorations. The goal is intentional engagement—less passive scrolling, more guided attention. Works are presented in ways that invite gradual discovery and revisiting over time. including being experienced in different contexts and through different modes of perception.

That editorial direction is shaped by an international Artistic Vision Council. bringing together figures in media art and digital culture: Olga Shishko. Lev Manovich. Daniela Arriado. David Elliott. Christiane Paul. Oliver Grau. and Martin Honzik. Their role, as described, is to help steer CIFRA’s editorial direction and seasonal programming.

For this latest playlist. the curatorial thread is mythology—treated as a form of knowledge—alongside questions about technology. nature. identity. and perception. The playlist is curated by Olga Shishko. Chair of the Artistic Vision Council. and it moves through works that turn familiar ideas into new viewing experiences.

Mariano Sardón’s The Wall of Gazes was created through an experiment conducted in Buenos Aires. It tracks the eye movements of viewers observing portraits of other people. and Sardón highlights the areas that escape perception—the “blind spots” in human observation. The work reflects on the limits of visual knowledge and suggests that understanding another person requires more than sight alone.

Sergey Kishchenko’s The Duck Test. set within the ruins of an industrial factory. follows the figure of the Duck Man moving through a landscape marked by labor. destruction. and transformation. Soil mixed with sweat, oil, and blood becomes a symbolic terrain where identity is unstable and constantly shifting. The work explores mythic cycles of creation and collapse.

Angelika Markul’s Deadly Charm of Snakes combines mythology, politics, beauty, and violence through the symbol of the snake. Referencing both the political atmosphere of the Trump era and ancient representations of feminine power, the film explores fear, aggression, and the enduring force of nature.

Almagul Menlibaeva’s Steppen Barocco focuses on female identity in Central Asia. It follows seven women whose connection to natural forces establishes continuity with ancestral memory, spirits, and the landscape of the steppe.

Giuliana Cunéaz’s Quantum Vacuum is set within a virtual environment performed by an actor. It merges ritualistic and religious references with digital space, creating a hybrid environment between spirituality and technology.

Bjørn Melhus appears twice in the playlist. In Auto Center Drive. he uses reconstructed voices of cultural icons—including James Dean. Janis Joplin. Marilyn Monroe. Elvis Presley. and Jim Morrison—to recontextualize familiar figures from popular culture and examine how media continues to shape collective memory. In Sugar, set in a post-apocalyptic future, the humanoid robot SUGAR attempts to restore human touch and emotional connection. Encountering a man isolated in an underground techno-environment. the robot tries to lead him outside. raising questions about self-awareness and isolation in contemporary capitalist society.

Chen Zhou’s The Story of Nanka Gulu and Iron Hawk follows a drone that escapes from a factory in search of ancient wisdom. After being adopted and renamed by Nanka Gulu. the machine gradually reconnects with nature. reflecting on technological alienation and the human desire to return to the natural world.

Alexandra Dementyeva’s Alien Space combines imagery of aliens, robots, and television culture. The installation explores how myths evolve within technologically driven societies. imagining “space” as a symbolic realm populated by new gods and fictional beings. and questioning the boundaries between imagination. media. and belief.

Between the playlist’s works. you can feel the same preoccupation showing up again and again: what we think we know—through images. through voices. through machines—has gaps. biases. and transformations built into it. The works don’t ask viewers to step outside everyday life; they ask what everyday life already contains when screens. histories. symbols. and technologies collide.

CIFRA’s pitch is that this collision doesn’t belong only to galleries or major events. The platform’s structure—curated playlists. editorial pathways. and guided explorations—aims to make media art feel less isolated from daily experience and more woven into the visual language of contemporary life itself.

CIFRA media art digital culture curated playlists Olga Shishko Artistic Vision Council mythology technology nature identity perception video art sound works AI-based practices audio art