Dmytro Tentiuk

Dmytro Tentiuk (1997, Kyiv, Ukraine) is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, researcher and designer whose video installations and audiovisual live performances explore the boundary between digital and physical realities. A graduate of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (BA 2019, MA 2021) in Kyiv. Dmytro is a member of the Ukrainian ‘PHOTINUS’ media art formation, later he co-founded the experimental electronic music group ‘_mediaklub’ and collaborated as video artist and real-time systems advisor for award-winning ‘Chornobyldorf’ opera. In 2025, he participated in the Venice Architecture Biennale as part of the ‘Circularity on the Edge’ project.

NetBeat: A Device for Networked Musical Performances

As part of my Tech Fellowship at the Rijksakademie, I have developed the NetBeat, a standalone plug-and-play device for networked musical performances. It enables participants to interact during musical and audiovisual performances, regardless of their physical location. This research is based on the online performance experience of the ‘_mediaklub’ group, which since 2022 has brought participants together in the digital space, maintained our creative connections, and helped sustain our artistic practice during Russia’s war against Ukraine. Before 2022, the collective operated in a conventional offline format but was forced to adapt to new circumstances and seek alternative approaches.

NetBeat does not eliminate the issues of network latency or unstable connection quality, it significantly enhances the user experience through a plug-and-play concept, built-In control interface and simple setup: you only need to connect the device to the network, and all services start automatically. The hardware platform is based on a Raspberry Pi 5 combined with a HiFiBerry DAC+ ADC Pro, an Adafruit 128×64 OLED screen with a joystick, and a custom Linux image.

Using software such as Pure Data for real-time network interaction, Sonobus for low-latency audio streaming, and a combination of Node.js with Open Stage Control, I have created a flexible web interface that can be easily adapted to various performance formats. All of NetBeat’s software is open source, ensuring transparency, adaptability, and collaborative development of the platform.

With this tool I hope to make online collaboration and improvisation as seamless and intuitive as live performances, allowing artists to focus on creativity rather than technical set-ups and configurations. Field tests of NetBeat were conducted with participating artists from Maastricht (NL), Kyiv (UA), Uzhhorod (UA), Edinburgh (GB), Hamburg (DE), and Berlin (DE), and their hands-on experience has been used to refine and fine-tune the system. Comprehensive open documentation will enable anyone to reproduce, modify, and extend the platform.