Duel Protocol is Aurimas Bavarskis (LT) and Yiannis Tsirikoglou (GR) based in The Hague, the Netherlands. They are/were students at the Institute of Sonology in the Hague – a famous school for electronic music – and both come from different adventurous backgrounds; Aurimas played in an indie rock band for over 5 years that received a lot of positive response in the underground scene of the Baltic states, while Yiannis is a member of the Thessaloniki-based critically acclaimed experimental band Eventless Plot. At the first edition of FIBER festival Duel Protocol took part in the DAY program. Martijn Savenije interviewed both sound artists and asked them to introduce themselves.

Martijn: Hi and welcome to you both, Aurimas Bavarskis & Yiannis Tsirikoglou. The last edition of FIBER festival you showed your work under the name Duel Protocol. How would you describe your work?

Aurimas: Our work is an exploration of digital sound and physical world. We exploit new models of sound synthesis and build relatively unconventional hardware interfaces that connect the two domains together. We are particularly interested in human-environment-machine interaction. We are currently focusing on building light/sound feedback systems trying to give them an autonomous evolution of processes, which are affected by the environment and all kinds of interactions between the participating components.

Martijn: How do you go about your work? I mean, what has interacted with you, so to say? What inspires you?

Yiannis: We are inspired by people like Lannis Xenakis (in music) and Richard Feynman (in physics) who were great innovators and amazing thinkers. We also particularly enjoy a number of contemporary artists’ work, such as but not limited to Ryoji Ikeda and Pan Sonic.

Martijn: Why did you choose to work together?

Yiannis: We as an artistic unit are influenced by each of our past musical practices and current interests. Both of us come from different backgrounds, so our artistic outcome is a combination of two different minds. Not only our taste differs, also we have different skills which we very successfully combine. Also, we are influenced by a lot of things happening around us, including our colleagues’ work and general artistic scenes.

Martijn: What does the work of Duel Protocol mean to you?

Aurimas: Our work always comes from an ambition. Ambitions are usually triggered by a desire to try something new, experiment, find new results, be surprised by the outcome. Thus, our work is a vital part of our lives – it’s satisfying our curiosity.

We’re always looking forward to sharing our work and aesthetics with other people (artists and audience), see new things, be inspired and and have fun.

LINKS
http://duelprotocol.info/
http://soundcloud.com/mintd/duel-protocol_liveatworm-040410-1
http://vimeo.com/19064683