Žiga Palčar: Križanje // Cross-breeding
Published on October 23rd, 2025opening 28. 10. 2025, 20.00
opened 29. 10. 2025, 17.00 – 20.00
closing 30. 10. 2025, 20.00
Cross-breeding is a project created as the practical part of my diploma thesis at VIST – Faculty of Applied Sciences, under the mentorship of Peter Rauch. The work consists of various hardware and software elements primarily intended for the reproduction of an image. In its current iteration, it is composed of a photocopier, scanners, printers, computers, and devices for sound production.
The idea originates from establishing a relationship between devices for capturing and transferring images. The photocopier and the scanners, with their image-capturing surfaces, are oriented toward each other so that the glass surfaces of the photocopier and the scanners touch, mutually copying and scanning one another. The photocopier captures the interior of the scanner and fixes it onto paper, while the scanner captures the photocopier in operation and, through a computer interface, prints and stores the result on a hard drive.
Through this operational loop, a multitude of variations of the same image is created, as the light sources illuminating the capture surfaces meet at different points. Thus, devices that repetitively perform the process of copying continuously generate new images. The scanning and printing process is automated, establishing a loop that repeats indefinitely and, with each cycle, produces a new reproduction—printed, saved, and projected into the gallery space. Cross-breeding, like reproduction itself, does not retain a single form but tends toward constant transformation.
The visual part of the installation is complemented by sound. The devices are amplified, and their sound is processed and returned to the space through software for sound manipulation and production. As with the visual part, the sonic component is also subject to chance: within the chain of effects, algorithms randomly alter sound parameters, generating ever-changing sonic landscapes.
Despite its technical foundation, Cross-breeding does not merely aim to showcase the capabilities of (obsolete) machines. The installation also addresses the question of mass image reproduction and paraphrases the persistent drive of contemporary information society toward the production and reproduction of visual content. By establishing a hybrid analog-digital system, the work opens a space for reflection on the relationships between digital and analog, between original and copy, and on the role of the image within a contemporary social context.
The reproduction of reproducing thus becomes a concrete, operational, and symbolic gesture that reflects our relationship with the contemporary image—one that constantly shifts, disperses, and reshapes within the networks of information flow. The place where one might expect the original is instead occupied by the very act of reproducing – the reproduction of reproduction. The surface that would normally hold the original has been overtaken by reproduction itself—pulsating in the rhythm dictated by the programs within computational organisms.
Sponsor: 001
Technical support: Jurij Podgoršek, Marko Batista
Acknowledgments: Lina Rica, Rožle Palčar, Peter Rauch, Peter Gorenšek, Andreja Slavič, Julij Zornik (001), Kolektiv Študio, Anže Grabeljšek, Maša Pungartnik, The Canyon Observer
