Directing the Invisible

The author Stanisław Lem coined Fantomatyka in 1964 to describe fully artificial sensory experience. You're using handcrafted physical processes to achieve the same effect. Is that irony intentional?

The reference to Lem is inevitably ironic, but not in the sense of a contradiction. There is an interesting reversal at play: instead of constructing a fully artificial environment, real physical phenomena are used to produce a perceptual experience that can feel unreal. It is an opposite path toward a similar effect — not digital simulation, but an intensified experience of reality.

Lem is one of my favorite authors, and reading his work has often helped me decode certain sensations and stimulated my imagination in interpreting concepts that I then bring into my own work.

How do you compose a shot when you can't see what you're filming until you see it? Are you monitoring or do you have a sense of what is happening?

When you cannot truly ”see” what you are filming in the classical sense, composition is not a continuous verification of the image, but a form of physical anticipation. You are not monitoring a pre-built scene: you are observing a system in evolution.

In practice, I work with a combination of control and reading the behavior of the material. The camera becomes a translator, not a neutral observer. There is always a monitor, yes, but compositional decisions are made mainly before and during the physical event — not afterwards — and are based on tests and previous experience. The approach to composition is more empirical than scientific.

How do you direct something that has no actors, no blocking, no script? What are you actually controlling?

Directing something without actors means shifting the locus of control. You do not control a gesture, but conditions: gravity, viscosity, temperature, light, containment, time. The ”director” becomes closer to someone orchestrating physical parameters rather than someone staging a narrative action. The language is one of predisposition, not performance.

You say that real fluids and optical phenomena have a visual force CGI can't match. Is that an ethical claim or an aesthetic one?

It is not an ethical statement but an aesthetic and perceptual one. It is not about ”real vs. fake,” but about the uncontrollable complexity of reality: micro-variations, imperfections, instability. CGI tends to simulate regularity; reality continuously produces deviations. It is in those deviations that a visual quality emerges that is difficult to replicate.

In abstract visuals especially, I believe the most defining and hardest-to-reproduce aspect is dynamics — the way things move. Beyond imperfections, I believe that movement contains the secret that makes certain shots unique. I do not fully know why. But I believe it.

Your work lives in domes and immersive projection spaces. How does the architecture of the viewing space change what the film means?

The viewing space radically changes the meaning. In an environment such as a dome or an immersive projection, you are no longer looking at an image: you are inside a visual field that surrounds you. This removes the frame and therefore the critical distance typical of a screen. The image is no longer an object, but an environmental condition.

In this sense, the work does not only describe phenomena: it makes them spatially inhabitable.

The most difficult challenge when creating for immersive spaces is imagining how a shot that is initially flat will translate into that environment. Over the years I have experimented with compositing and optical distortions to adapt my work for these spaces while preserving the uniqueness of the images.

Fantomatyka is explicitly about the origin of consciousness — but it contains no narrative, no characters, no dialogue. How do you know when an abstract image is about something versus just beautiful?

Abstract images do not directly ”represent” something: they emerge as fields of interpretation. The criterion is not ”what does it mean,” but ”what kind of perceptual experience does it activate.” When an image is dense enough, layered, or ambiguous, it tends to generate conceptual readings in the viewer.

The origin of consciousness, in this sense, is not illustrated: it is evoked as a perceptual problem. I wanted to engage with something metaphysical — not because it is ”cool,” but because I believe that is where, if not the answers, at least the right questions are found, along with the emotions I experience when creating such works.

What's the failure rate? How many physical setups produce nothing usable?

The failure rate is high if measured through an industrial logic. But it is not a linear production/waste process. Many setups do not produce ”usable material” in the expected sense, but they still generate visual knowledge: understanding how light, density, fluid velocity, and surface interactions behave.

In this kind of work, the real output is not always the single shot, but the configuration that allows you to reach the next one.