ABOUT US
MAINFRAME is a project started by Synthetic State started in Vancouver, Canada back in 2017-ish by Navin, an electrical engineer by trade. He has since brought this work to Amsterdam in 2021. The whole idea started as he noticed that designing any user-facing system or product from an purely engineering mindset was insufficient. Functionally everything worked fine, but all other aspects such as emotion, the experience, usability, theme and aesthetics were sorely lacking. An artistic perspective was necessary.
Before MAINFRAME came The Beat Doctor, a DIY modular synthesizer. The intention was to explore how this artistic perspective can be synthesized with hybrid analog/digital architecture, creating a system that can "feel" like you are interacting with a human artist. One which can flow organically.
Something compelled Navin to explore the same concept but within the world of audio-visual synchronizing, so he pivoted focus towards MIDI to LED expression.
Eventually came MAINFRAME, the evolution of this early seed, which has seen taken a life of it's own.
There is a gap in the landscape of lighting & visual technology.
One one end they can be easy to set up, but lack depth and do not unify audio, visuals and interaction leading to a disjoint experience.
One the other end they can be feature-rich, but this comes at cost of high complexity and a steep learning curve making them not suitable for many applications.
What we have envisioned is a system that sits in the sweet spot between customizability and automation, depth and simplicity, emotion and logic.
With responsive personality, we are exploring a new form of experience able to transform your art, performance or space.
Technology shouldn't just execute commands anymore, but instead feel and express. This redefines human-machine interaction, shifting from control-based tools to organic, living systems that respond, evolve, and collaborate with artists, performers, environments and society itself.
We are proudly based in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
You can also email us at: info(at)syntheticstate.com