Petko Tanchev is a visual artist who uses software systems and media content. His professional activities include a number of author’s installations for national and international festivals, digital performances, scenographic projects, mapping projections, video art works, interactive designs in the performing arts and advertising industry.
In his work Petko Tanchev combines spatial thinking and tools for visual programming. He experiments with various interactive technologies in the field of installation, performance and scenography. Many of his projects are site-specific and focus on art in a public environment. His virtual worlds rethink aspects of physical reality, filling it with new meaning and significance.
Many of his projects are site-specific and focus on art in a public environment. His virtual worlds rethink aspects of physical reality, filling it with new meaning and significance.
Since 2016 he has been teaching the discipline “Visual Programming Tools” in the same specialty. He is a co-founder of the Melvisator audiovisual group and the Senselab studio. In 2020 he started working as a set designer at the Plovdiv State Opera.
In 2009 he worked on the play “Four Rooms” at the Sofia Theater, awarded two Icarus Prizes in the categories “Scenography” and “Masterful Technical Realization”. In 2015 he created the large-scale interactive installation CNNCTR on the facade of the former Party House in Plovdiv, produced by One Design Week. Since 2016 he has been the curator of the module for digital arts Creative Media Lab, part of the program of the festival “NIGHT / Plovdiv”. In 2018 he created the scenographic project for the opera “Madame Butterfly” of the Plovdiv State Opera, for which he was awarded the Plovdiv Prize.
In the following year he worked on the visual environment of many projects from the program of the Foundation Plovdiv 2019 – European Capital of Culture. Among them are the performance “Odyssey” of the Plovdiv Drama Theater, which won the Icarus Award for masterful technical performance and two Plovdiv awards, as well as the audiovisual performance “Fire / Feast” of the Plovdiv State Opera, awarded Plovdiv in the category of Contemporary Multi-Genres arts ”. In 2021 he created the project for scenography and video design of the opera “Carmina Burana”, performed on top of the historic hill Bunardjik in Plovdiv.
Petko Tanchev often collaborates with Bulgarian and international artists from various creative fields. In the period 2017-2019, he developed interactive visualizations for three dance performances of the singer Ria Murphy and her studio Aerial Cirque, produced by Dublin Culture Night. In 2018 he took part in the one-month residency Laboratorio de Interactividad Corporal (“Interactivity of the Body”) of the Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance at the University of California, Los Angeles (R.E.M.A.P. – UCLA), held in cheLA . In 2020, he worked with director Chris Baldwin and artists Charlie Couchi and Andrew Alamango on the Valletta Pageant of the Seas project in Malta, produced by the Valletta Cultural Agency. In 2022 he was the author of the visual environment for the opening of the Tesla Festival of Light in Novi Sad, Serbia, as part of the official program of the Novi Sad – European Capital of Culture Foundation.
