Dr. Slavica Ceperkovic

DR. SLAVICA CEPERKOVIC

Dr. Slavica Ceperkovic (she/her) is an artist who creates unique, user‑focused, interactive, immersive digital experiences across multiple platforms. Her research interests in immersive storytelling include volumetric video in XR, speculative futures, machine learning and telexistence spaces. Her contemporary artworks have shown in museums including Palais de Tokyo, Grand Palais Museum and Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains. Dr. Slavica Ceperkovic has presented and published research papers at ISEA and CAA. Her artwork has been reviewed in Art Press, Liberation, Le Figero, Beaux Arts Magazine and books published by MIT Press. Slavica Ceperkovic was an invited mentor and juror at the MIT Reality Hack and the EAI ArtsIT Publications Chair at NYU Abu Dhabi where she was a Visiting Professor in the Interactive Media department.

Dr. Slavica Ceperkovic is a professor of Interactive Media at Seneca Polytechnic. She holds a PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from York University. MDes in Strategic Foresight and Innovation from OCAD University, MFA from Le Fresnoy Studio National Des Arts Contemporains and a BFA in New Media Studies from Toronto Metropolitan University.

Email slavica@gmail.com

PROJECTS

01 Music of Crafts

In collaboration with Dr. Carlos Guedes
VR Immersive Experience, 2024- Ongoing

The Music of Crafts Exhibition came from a collaboration between Qasr Al Hosn, the House of Artisans, New York University Abu Dhabi, and the Music and Sound Cultures (MaSC) Research Group. The Music and Sound Cultures (MaSC) research group is a collective of researchers focusing on the multidisciplinary study of music from the Gulf, having as a primary goal the study and dissemination of music from this region. The group currently hosts several projects that range from the preservation of collections of field or rare commercial recordings, to developing innovative ways of conducting musical heritage analysis, preservation, and dissemination.

The Music of Crafts VR research was presented at “The Future of Museums and Museology Practices In a Changing World” in Doha, Qatar and garnered an award at the Museum of Islamic Art in 2024.

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02 Looking

Live Video Projection Mapping, 2025

Building on Self Portrait, this work is a volumetric video projection mapped work where the artist is featured as the main subject.

Viewers can view the artist on the gallery architecture and engages with the audience member with passive glances.

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03 Mangroves

Machine Learning Installation, 2024

Mangrove sites in the Abu Dhabi region, as it a major focus of environmental research and conservation. The mangroves project examines site specificity and place based documentary storytelling to detail the process of conservation in an immersive way. This research focuses on how can XR and machine learning evolve to reflect changing social spaces and environments? In this photogrammetry research work scans the water sites of mangroves, and translates the 3D imaage into a symphony. The analysis of the growing plant uses machine learning to translate the images into a dynamic sound composition.

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04 FEELINGS ARE VARIABLE

Interactive AI Bot, 2024

“Feelings are Variable” is a chat AI bot prototype designed to have conversations about the future.
Showcased: Head Hi Brooklyn, NY, 2024

Feelings are Variable is an AI Chatbot prototype designed to have conversations about the future. Participants are invited to ask questions to the AI bot to have forecast understand a potential future.

The user is captured with a live webcam, and the question asked via the microphone is transcribed on the screen. Using keyword analysis, an AI bot tries to understand the question and proposes a response, framing a new future for the user.

The prototype was first shown at Head Hi in Brooklyn in conjunction with NYU New York in 2024.

05 AFTER PARTY

Live Performance Photogrammetry Instrument, 2024

“After Party” is part of a machine learning series using 3D photogrammetry field research to develop live musical compositions. Using the machine-learning data as an instrument and as input into a modular synth, it is then tuned for a live performance.

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06 DRONE KLUB

Performance, 2024-Ongoing

DRONE KLUB is a community-based participatory open music ensemble based in Toronto.

Collaborative and individual live improvisational performative sound is also part of ongoing experimental sound research.

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07 Tommorrow Tomorrow

Sound Projects, 2024- Ongoing

Available on Spotify and Apple Music
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Experimental electronic sound works published under the artist name “Tomorrow Tomorrow”.

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08 What Lies Beneath

XR immersive Experience, 2023- Ongoing

“What lies beneath” is a photogrammetry machine learning project that uses AI to 3-D landscapes photogrammetry into stories and songs.

This current research project examines the role of AI and photogrammetry to understand images and translate to language and sound. Like volumetric video, photogrammetry capture can be defined as point cloud-based depth recording of a moving image. A central question originally guided the applied research work: How can AI sound generation inform 3D photogrammetry in extended media environments?

The site in particular focuses on the beaches of Zanzibar, with its extreme tides allowing for beachcombers to walk on the ocean floor.

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09 Volumetric Video

VR Immersive Narrative, 2022

Using both studio and field research, “Placemaking in Virtual Reality using Photogrammetry and Volumetric Video” is part of ongoing research developing immersive experiences with real world depictions.

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10 The Queen Of Cuba

Short Film, 2022

The Queen of Cuba is a short documentary of the dancers at the only LGBTQ+ resort in Cuba. It features dance styles from Traditional Cuban, modern contemporary and also showcases the only drag queen of Cayo Coco.

Screening:
2023 Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival Market, France

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11 The Swallows

Film, 2019

In “The Swallows” we find three shape shifting female swallows: Alma, Alta, and Amantea. They visit the city of Amantea, where the youngest of the birds originates and is named after. Amantea is thinking about leaving the flock to stay permanently in the region. The characters all speak as birds. The film is subtitled in English and Italian.

La Guarimba International Film Festival, Italy, Filmmaker in residence

12 Healing Crystal

AR Installation, 2018

The Healing Crystal is a mobile augmented reality work. The crystal can only be seen through a smart phone or tablet. Through this lens, the viewer is now able to see the crystal hanging in the space glowing a bright shade of blue. Fog begins to appear below the crystal, and snow begins to fall.

The work can be seen in a private setting, or public. Here we see that the crystal is a set in a gathering place, where animals and people congregate around the crystal as a healing space.

The crystal can only be seen through the tablet or mobile device for as long as the viewer would like to observe the crystal.

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13 Hairy Place

Projection Mapped, Installation, 2018

In “A Hairy Place”, a large building is mapped with an animation of a hair tossing from left to right shaping the building facade.

The software transforms the building, changing its appearance and animating its form to a fuzzy active ball of hair.

Exhibited in 2018 in collaboration with Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Centre

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14 Mermaid

Projection Mapped, Installation, 2018

The Mermaid is a public projection map work proposed for a site specific location by the waterfront.

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15 Self Portrait

VR immersive experience, 2018

Self Portrait is a volumetric video VR work, where the artist is featured as the main subject.

Viewers are guided through a VR experience of a golden world where the artist is featured and engages with the audience member with passive glances.

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16 Companion

Interactive VR Experience, 2017

In this VR work, the user is given a companion to accompany them on an interactive experience. Users are given the opportunity to go through a landscape.

The VR experience creates small tasks for the user such as navigating through walled hallways in the landscape provided a guiding way to move through the environment. Users were able to go through the environment and witness events such as rooms of golden horses.

Documentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cadr6MvTPbM

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17 Echo

Interactive VR Experience, 2017

This VR work explores task and non-task based interaction explored in a landscape.

In this VR work, the user is dropped into a maze, and they are initially blocked with a box in their path. In order to move forward, they are required to use their tool, in this case a gun like apparatus that is shooting hammers. With this trigger they are able to push through and move through the maze using projectile hammers to move through progressive obstacles to a final staircase. Once outside the maze the tool is no longer needed and users are free to walk roam the barren landscape. Users can continue to exert work buy shooting various objects in the landscape, however it has no purpose or effect. Users could choose to walk around the landscape with no purpose, or choose to return and enter a staircase and move back into the maze and work through the landscape with their tool functioning again.

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18 Night Walker

VR Immersive Experience, 2017

The “Night Walker” is a looped Virtual Reality (VR) work that takes audiences on a tour of a glass landscape. Moving through the landscape users move between two fields of glass and explore a guided tour lit by the moon. It examines a cinematic rail experience where viewers are on a guided VR tour, with an ultimate immersive event within the VR landscape.

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19 Swan

Interactive Sound Installation, 2017

Swans is a geographic cinema work embedded in google maps as a temporary exhibition with York University Cinema and Media Lab. It looks at a reflection of personal histories and traces of a remote part of the city rarely visited by the Artist. The audio portion of the work discusses the Swans that inhabit the Island and circle the city as a personal narrative.

Materials: Cell phone video, audio recording, online geolocative mapping

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20 Swarm

Interactive Robotic Installation, 2006

In Swarm an ecosystem of flying robotic drones that gather to create a cluster only to separate and reform in the gallery.

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21 Sputnik

Film Installation, 2007

Aerospace Museum, Toronto

In celebration of space flight in collaboration with the Canadian Space Society, held at the Toronto Aerospace Museum, “Sputnik” is a short film loop created for the 50th anniversary of Sputnik an event produced by Critical Media.

Presented at the Aerospace Museum, Toronto, 2007

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22 Ville Blanche
Film Installation, 2003

Ville Blanche, explores language and its ability to transform an environment. The title comes from the direct translation from Beograd, where the city was named for appearing from the fog on the Danube. The scene takes place in front of the cityscape of Belgrade, a city that has been rebuilt 38 times in its history. A woman invites the viewer to speak, constructing a the gallery into a listening space. Waiting she starts to speak of the meaning of the name Belgrade (white city) and compares it to a puzzle she created. As she speaks, snow begins to fall on her and the city, building and piling until the screen goes to white.

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23 Weep

Interactive Sound Installation, 2002

At the base of the weeping willow situated by the canal, tables fill the coffee shop terrace of the cultural center, over looking a growing line up of tourists waiting by the dock for their boat cruise tour of Brugge Using the two wood tables next to the tree as speakers, a couple is heard discussing a story of the weeping willow The couple comment on the extent to which she cries, how lonely she is and how tourists gaze at her just to pass and simply float on her tears for a better view of other things. They discuss how her out reached arms touch the water, as the tourists sit huddled together in the line up and in boats, and how in summer she goes green with envy. The extent of the conversation from tactile table is about 5 to 10 minutes and plays every hour.

Exhibited:
Location: Brugge Cultural Center, 2002
.wav festival Brugge, Cultural Capital of Europe 2002.

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24 Melt

Telematic Interactive Installation, 2002

Melt transforms the gesture of touch to heat that can felt half way around the world. A table with embedded sensors registers the touch of the gallery visitors in France, simultaneously it is transferred and translated through the Internet and activates heat sensors embedded in a block of ice in Canada. The ice traces the presence of the visitors through melting and refreezing. The image of the ice melting can be seen with a live web stream projected in the space in France so the visitor can see their impact.

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25 Nape

Interactive Video Installation, 2002

In “Nape” the viewer is confronted with a cross section of the throat of a female giant. The viewer sees a twisted neck, a pale completion, and pink lips that speaks with white breath. Her breath explains that she is cold, and that the space is cold. As viewer passes behind the screen, the air on the nape of her neck are amplified, gently swaying the figure’s hair and moves in relation to where the viewer is in the space. As more viewers gather the movement of the hair blows between the viewers creating a relationship between viewers in the space and to the body of the mythic figure

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26 House

Web streaming performance 2000

A weekend of ambient electronic theatre and live art activities from parallel performance spaces in Toronto, Moss (Norway) and Amsterdam joined through the internet. (2000)

Organizers of the event were Motherboard in Moss, the KeyStroke development team from The Society of Old and New Media in Amsterdam and Toronto Metropolitan University Toronto.

Presented: Momentum Festival, Bergen Electronic Centre Moss Norway and WAAG, Society for Old & New media

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27 The Latest

Video Art Work, 1999

A video short describing the death of a first pet.

Screened, Videoarchoeology International Art form for video and New Media, Sofia Bulgaria. National Canadian tour with Images festival ‘V is for Video” retrospective 2000/2001

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28 Threaded White
Interactive Video Installation, 1999

As viewers first enter the gallery, they notice a blank white projection. On a closer inspection of the projection, a knife appears and slowly begins to dissect the screen from behind. The closer the viewer goes to the screen, the deeper and higher the cut. As the viewer leaves the gallery, the screen begins to stitch itself up, reconstructing the hole made by the viewer. If the viewer sees this, and returns to the screen, the seam begins to unravel.
If the viewer does not act, there is no image and the screen will disappear back to white.

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