Kruno Jošt

The research-art project “Concerto Quieto,” named after the Italian name for the Mirna River in Istria, is one of those increasingly present contemporary artistic practices that call for a transdisciplinary approach to the relationship between humans and the natural environment, where natural sciences are at a standstill, opening up new worlds and possibilities. Kruno Jošt, a multimedia artist who has been applying such a practice for years, deals with the interrelationships of science, art, and sustainable development on his permaculture estate near Lovinac in Lika.

One such approach is the form of a scientific laboratory through which Kruno Jošt explores how remediation of the river is created through the medium of sound, i.e., how microbes (non-humans) can help in the decomposition of the river’s toxic sediment without intrusive impact on the environment.

He applies a similar approach to the micro-location of the Mirna River’s flow and estuary. Its area abounds with rich flora and fauna and is an important location for the migration, overwintering, and nesting of water habitat birds. Regardless of the fact that the Mirna (still) is not a polluted river, due to erosion processes, wastewater from settlements, and artificial fertilizers, its natural biological and landscape diversity is endangered year after year.

For the needs of the exhibition in the Rigo Gallery, Kruno Jošt visits the Mirna River several times. In doing so, he collects water and sediment samples, stays alone with the river, listens to it, observes its flows, writes notes, and makes photo documentation. Jošt observes the micro-world from the collected samples of the Mirna River through a microscope. Based on the enlarged living “images” of microbes, he singles out those in which he finds abstract forms that he transfers to the medium of photography. In this way, he transforms the invisible world of microbes into visual forms that, with Jošt’s subsequent interventions, also gain a sound background – a composition for the micro-world of the Mirna River. Inspired by the findings from scientific research on sound frequencies that favor the numerical growth or reduction of individual microorganisms, Jošt creates a composition for the micro-world of the Mirna River.

Composition for River Mura offers a unique journey through a series of photographs, videos, and sound compositions linked to four distinct locations along the Mura River: Sveti Martin na Muri, Podturen, Goričan, and Legrad. This multimedia exhibition masterfully blends art and science, creating an aesthetic experience that blurs the lines between the river, the laboratory, and the gallery, inviting visitors to explore unseen ecosystems functioning in their own rhythm and balance.

Jošt’s approach is deeply rooted in transdisciplinary practices, delving into the local context down to the micro-level. His work, which includes extensive field research, laboratory analysis, and digital processing, is not only artistically significant but also serves as valuable documentation, particularly relevant in our times of climate change and ecological crises. This art actively observes, maps, and becomes a space for change.

Supported by MURAI center for culture and education and Bioinstitut d.o.o. for expert and technical assistance, the project highlights the crucial dialogue between science and art as a shared language for analyzing reality and creating new artistic expressions. Kruno Jošt, an artist focused on ecological contextuality, permaculture, and sustainability, has studied at prestigious institutions and exhibits internationally, developing artistic and educational programs that explore the interrelationships of science, art, and sustainable development.

MSF at Stützpunkt ​Teufelsberg gallery, Berlin, is an installation that uses renewable energy, plant, light and sound to create elements that are presented in need of questioning relations of “us” and “nature”.

Installation produces light and sound frequencies that are beneficial to the plant. It is a mobile installation that is powered by sun light over photo-voltaic panel. Electricity is than stored in a battery that powers recycled mobile phone playing specific frequencies for the plant. Battery also powers a light that shines trough red and blue led diodes benefiting plant growth and fruit development.

MSF is art that is beneficial to the plant. It is not solely here to be an art piece for human observation. thus, it is asking a question of art production – who is it for and why, art institutions – who they present art and why, and reasons for art in Anthropocene.

Installation that utilizes sound, light and living plant, “Sound  Fertilizer” is presented at Cologne gallery Tiefgarage situated in multicultural Ebertplatz, between 22. and 26. July 2018.

Zucchini plant is positioned at the middle of the gallery, a light bulb above and two mobile phones with sets of frequencies placed next to the plant. Zucchini has been planted in the straw bale at Center for Creative Solution in Croatia and after few months transported with  car over the half-borders (borders running only on one side of the neighboring countries) to Cologne. Cucurbita L has no known origin, some coming from USA and some from India. Its multiculturalism resembles every large EU city with its multicultural inhabitants and especially Cologne’s Ebertplatz where it is situated. 

Light used has spectrum of 4000K that enables growth and flowering, while two recycled mobile phones (non functioning, used only as sound players) play sets of frequencies created especially for zucchini plant.

Sound Fertilizer encourages plant to grow in healthy and stable conditions, inside the gallery. Technology enabled art for the plant can also pos3e a question of its environment – anthropocentric culture that grows on both neo-liberal capitalism and/or social state of liberal humanism, while neither of options are furthering away from unbalanced relationship of people as subject and plants as object.

This installation makes plant a subject, as sound is artistically produced and intended for a plant.

3 weeks of workshops with Srishti University for Art, Design and Technology students resulted with an exhibition opened on 14.12.17.  in the complex of RMZ Ecoworld in Banglaore, India’s most rapidly growing city that has it’s devastating effect on the environment. As Bangalore is known as Silicon Valley of India, its population is growing at amazing rate. RMZ IT Park, with office spaces, health activity facilities, shopping, dining, amphitheatre and art gallery, promotes itself as “work-leisure sustainable environment where natural and architectural forms are symbiotically integrated using responsible planning and precise engineering”.

Site specific installation “Ecocentric” juxtapositions its organic aesthetics to human engineered pavilion that proudly announces its ecological concept. A small forest was created, mulched with coconut leftovers from Bangalore street vendors. After that it was inhabited with multi-plant life that was “fed” by the custom frequencies from small speakers placed in the soil.

LCD screen was informing public on ecocentric activities dating all the way back to beginning of 20th century, proposing sound as a genuine organic fertilizer for the plants.

16 Channel sound Fertilizer presented at Büro für Bestimmte Dinge, Berlin, in April 2017, with opening talk by Kruno Jošt.

16 small speakers are connected to multichannel sound card run by the computer. Each channel plays a sound or song that was researched as the one beneficial to the plants – from classical to binaural, from high frequencies to traditional sitar sounds. This conglomerate of sounds was not intended only for human gallery visitors, but for the plants as well.

More photos can be find here >>

Close Encouners is interactive sound sculpture produced in collaboration between Karl Heinz Jeron and Kruno Jošt for Potato Day of Lovinac municipality. Name of the sculpture comes from a cult movie, but now with a set of frequencies it is not aliens communicating to us, but potatoes.

16 Channels at Invisible Cities evnt in Gorizia, Italy.

Spatialized sound installation using 16 channels reproducing piano composition by Kruno Jošt in geodesic dome setting.

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki is a showcase of works answering the question How would you host an ancient alien? The artists in the exhibition responded to an international call for proposals inspired by Zecharia Sitchin’s Earth Chronicles, a book detailing how the human species originated from extraterrestrial beings. These distant relatives are scheduled to return to the earth in December 2012.

Participating artists have proposed a variety of convivial acts to welcome Annunaki families from the planet Nibiru upon their return visit to earth after a 3,600-year orbit. The projects take a variety of forms, from an intergalactic calling card to a bed away from home, collegial gestures of kindness that reveal the customs that we embrace as human citizens of earth.

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki provides a constructive take on Sitchin’s mythology, one of the many associated with the year 2012. Exhibition is held in Open Space Artist Run Centre (Victoria, Canada), November 16, 2012 – December 21, 2012.

Among many, I am am the one, who has been contacted by Annunaki, many times, sometimes while asleep, sometimes awake. They inform me over and over again of their visit, and I know I have to await for them and clean my temple. I have to await and take care of the temple that will host them. And that temple is me.

Most of us are unaware that Annunaki is/are not of mater, but of spirit, and to host them you do not clean the interior of your house, but interior of your self. One cleans it with rigour, spiritual and mental, in taking out the trash, and taking in the health and beauty.

When Annunaki comes, we greet It to our temple, we let It to ourself, and we carry It where we go, we feed It what we eat, It sleeps when we sleep, It sees what we see. That is why if we host them we have to restrain from bad habits, we have to restrain from manipulative toughs, we have to restrain from hurting ourself and others. When we host It we do it with pleasure and It lives trough us.

CR installation 2.0 at SESC Sao Jose dos Campos in Brazil followed 1.0 that was installed at HAIP festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia. CultureRobot is interactive installation that rises awareness about maps, open spaces and borders. It invites visitors/users/participators to rearrange, open or close borders and thus interact with the map inhabitants – CultureRobot (simple robots powered by batteries, moving randomly on the map) allowing them to consume more or less of different cultural aspects. CR is interactive installation made to raise awareness of social and political sphere that is affecting autonomous cultural sphere, synergies and correspondences in geo-techno-socio-political topology.

CR 1.0

CR 2.0

Check extensive blogging with video, photolog and process description on CR  here>>

Manifestacija Operacija grad:Jedinstvo otvara PRIVREMENI ILEGALNI CENTAR ZA KULTURU I MLADE u bivšoj tvornici Jedinstvo na Savskom nasipu u Zagrebu. Tokom manifestacioje održat će se Impronedjeljci (improvizirani experimentalni glazbeni sessioni) i video instalacija TVTurnoffWeek.
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