10 Questions with Sanja Star

Sanja Star worked over ten years as a Senior Graphic Designer/Art Director in an agency and the corporate environment - the latest she worked at eBay and premium eyewear ic!Berlin but in 2018 she started to focus her work more on visual-digital art and live performances.

She combines digital and traditional techniques, 3D art, and creative coding to create artworks used for her live performances. She creates audio-reactive visuals, which enables her to perform interactively with musicians creating an improvised audio-visual set. She performed with jazz and improv musicians Grgur Savic, Richard Scott, Rieko Okuda, Daniel Craig, Samuel Hall, Chris Hill, Sem Forma Fabíola, and contemporary dancers Sveta Bird and Daniel Dragoescu.

Since 2019 she is a part of an interdisciplinary art project Pitch Shifting Group with whom she performed in China at the 6th Silk Road International Art Festival and Multiversal Festival in Berlin, Germany. During COVID time, most of the scheduled performances got canceled, like LPM Festival in Rome, Italy., but she is currently preparing a performance for B.O.N.D. International Virtual Live Performance Festival (US/China).

Her work is at the intersection of art, design, fashion, and computer graphic. Her passion for design, fashion, music, universe, unknown, quantum physics, and her curiosity took her on the path of ever-evolving visual language.

www.sanja-star.com | @_sanjastar

Pitch Shifting - Silk Road China Festival, Sanja Star©

ARTIST STATEMENT

My passion for design, fashion, music, quantum physics, and curiosity took me on the path of ever-evolving visual language. Once a senior graphic designer and art director, I started exploring other visual expression paths because of the urge to put all my visual pieces together in one moving thing, preferably live, on the spot. My journey took me form my desk to the stage where I create improvised visual sets with musicians.

My work is at the intersection of art, design, fashion, creative coding, 3D, and computer graphic. Growing up, I mostly enjoyed Star Trek and fashion shows. Now obsessed with quantum physics, unity, and new technologies, I always seek new knowledge. My body of work presents humanity in the holographic reality of this day and age.

Pitch Shifting | interdisciplinary live art project

Pitch Shifting Duo is part of a larger multidisciplinary project - Pitch Shifting Group. Real-time visuals, while musical interactivity, has been crucial to Pitch Shifting's latest practice. Led by a Berlin-based saxophonist and composer Grgur Savic, the group explores different types of today's technology and live electroacoustic instruments to deliver high-quality musivisual language. Although this group started performing pure electroacoustic, improvised sets, a new journey begins with a new member, visual artist Sanja Star. The group sets itself into the new dimension creating an improvised audio-visual set.

Pitch Shifting Duo - Sanja Star & Grgur Savic - explores new media in visual art and music. After creating digital collages and animations, Sanja Star uses her visual instrument to create real-time, audio-reactive, and improvised live visuals. In the music spectrum, Grgur utilizes electronics and backing Saxophone sounds, spans from melodic passages to extended techniques like noise, aggressive confrontation and dissonance, IDM - computer manipulation and digital synthesis, minimalism, and electroacoustic music.

Blending various genres, from social music to electronic music, inspired by living in New York and Berlin, Pitch Shifting Duo presents a perfect balance of sound and visual contrast, which sets a unique mood. They want to explore the idea of no time and no space dividing old /new, ours/theirs. Their art, audio-visual performance wants to provoke feelings of unity and togetherness. In the world of separation, they want to look at a more positive future where humans live in peace, respecting, and appreciating their differences living together as a human collective.

Thematically, they tend to go up. Their approach is to set the perspective high - in outer earth perspective. Exploring galactic themes like space travel, space-time, and energy elevated consciousness, making them see a bigger picture.

INTERVIEW

What kind of education or training helped you develop your skillset?

I am a proponent of lifelong learning. Official education helped me a lot, but I learned the most by putting my imagination into practice. I hold a Master in graphic design, received visual art pedagogy certificate, a sustainable luxury fashion certificate, and did a web design course.

How did you begin making art?

As a kid, I used to draw a lot and everywhere. I started doing collage when I was in elementary school and made my clothes when I got to high school. By then, I was hooked on visual arts, and I knew I want to make it my lifelong profession.

You are passionate about design, fashion, music, and quantum physics. How do you successfully express your art with different mediums?

If you know yourself, your drive, and style, the medium is only an issue until you figure out how to use it technically. I love the freedom to express myself through different mediums. It’s fun for me to switch from medium to medium and enjoy the result, which can differ depending on the medium. Still, it’s always an extension of myself. I feel like a channel, and my design and art skillsets are just here to make sense of what flows to me to work with it.

What are you trying to communicate with your art?

I am very interested in the universe, new media, and energy. I like to inspire people to go beyond our current state of mind. There are so many things invisible to the human eye, and I want to bring this closer and make it more familiar. I am here to ask questions and to inspire you to see things from another perspective, hopefully. I am responsible for design and live visuals in the audiovisual art project Pitch Shifting, which I manage together with musician Grgur Savic. The group explores the human perception of space and space travel presented through visual art, music, and interaction. Together with other musicians, we use improvisation and interaction between artists combined with using electro-acoustic instruments and modern electronics in a progressive setup.

Do you have a role model that you’ve drawn inspiration from when working as a digital artist? Tell us more about your source of inspiration...

I love and follow many digital artists on Instagram, but the real inspiration is exploration and curiosity. I was inspired by art movements like Futurism, dadaism, and also space age in fashion. Many people inspired me through life, mostly musicians - like Gwen Stefani, and designers - like James Victore, but also reiki masters and everyday people.

How do you find connections between fashion and animation art?

I always felt drawn to combining and mixing, be it styles or techniques, so in that sense, I feel lucky I live in this moment in time in history where the lines are blurry, and the industries are more collaborating. We can see all kinds of collaborations mixing art, design, fashion, and tech. The connections that I make are more natural to me than following a more precise plan someone else did before.

How do you keep yourself up to date with the latest digital trends and technologies that have today a significant impact on your artistic production?

Social media is very good in that sense, but I also live in Berlin, so attending design, fashion, art, music or tech events weekly is my life. I am so grateful for that.

What aspect of your work do you pay particular attention to?

Channeling and improvisation. Let me explain. I consider myself a creative person, someone who makes new things, so it is important to be open and in flow, let myself be surprised by what I am creating, be free to try new things, and not be restricted by too much thinking. I also watch out that my art triggers positive emotions in people experiencing it. I like to inspire people and make them softer and less serious and guarded. That said, I love to try different things and go beyond what my mind thinks it’s possible. The mind makes conclusions based on the past, anyway.

What was the most challenging part of your projects?

The most challenging part of my projects was figuring out how to combine everything that I like to do and learn all those processes and software so I can express myself more fluidly. It’s a little bit intense juggling all those different ways of working and figuring out how to combine them more efficiently and how to make my own art process.

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations you are looking forward to?

I have a couple of shows in the pipeline with my audiovisual collective Pitch Shifting, and we just got invited to the 31st Music Biennale Zagreb, which will be in spring 2021. I am also preparing a launch of my fashion accessory label beginning 2021.

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