When Rosi Grillmair talks about vvvv (pronounced v4), it sounds like she’s talking about a way of thinking, a way of seeing, or we’d even say, a way of being.

The Austrian artist-slash-programmer-slash-synesthete (yup, she sees sounds as colors — more on that later) first heard about TUMO back in 2017. Her Iranian friends were running an Augmented Reality and New Media Art learning lab at the Yerevan Center, and Rosi dialed in over video as part of the learning lab. That call turned into six workshops, six cities, and a long-term situationship with Armenia’s tech scene.

Rosi at TUMO Stepanakert, 2022

So what even is vvvv? Imagine if Unity and Pure Data had a neon-coded baby that spoke in sensors, skeletal tracking, audio, etc. With vvvv, Rosi builds everything from generative animations to particle fields to museum exhibits and live data art. Sometimes she maps human emotions. Sometimes she teaches teens how to break the rules of reality.

“vvvv is the interface that ties it all together,” Rosi says. “It helps me turn messy data into something poetic — whether it’s a leaf, a tree, or a soundwave.”

Rosi’s approach to her work in vvvv is minimal input, maximal everything. She starts small — a leaf, a shape, a cell — and then lets the work grow organically in its complexity until it forms a living, breathing visual “organism.” Her teaching philosophy is to build small, step-by-step, and treat each of those steps like it could be the final piece.

My art school drawing teacher always said: “Paint like it’s already finished.” And I still live by that.

Rosi at TUMO Yerevan and Gyumri, 2022

For Rosi, sketching is just the warm-up. The real magic starts when the computer kicks in — speeding this up, blowing things out, making one idea multiply into a whole new visual system. She’ll often start with what she calls a “cell” — a single detail, like one leaf — and then use vvvv to imagine the entire tree.

Or flip that. Start with the whole organism, then zoom into one tiny piece and rework it from the inside out.
But the part where she really gets excited is the glitches, the limits, and the hard rules. “Pixel sorting is one of my favorites,” Rosi says. “You take a picture and you dissect each pixel. Analyze its brightness, then reassemble it by swapping each one around depending on its neighbor’s lighting. What you get is this gorgeous, trippy gradient. All from a simple command: ‘Switch places if the neighboring pixel is brighter.’”

Rosi is full of metaphors. It’s how she makes sense of the code.

“vvvv is like watching a film adaptation of a book and then realizing they nailed the character. That feeling — when what’s in your head suddenly exists — that’s what vvvv gives me.” As she puts it.

Rosi at TUMO Koghb and Kapan, 2025

Plot twist (okay, not really — we kind of mentioned this already): Rosi’s brain runs on a slightly different operating system. She’s part of the 4% of people with synesthesia, which means she sees sound — literally. Colors, patterns, motion — all triggered by music. No wonder her vvvv projects feel more like dream sequences than code.

Back in art school, she tried everything: woodworking, painting, metalwork, textiles, photography, video, graphic design. But something was missing. The glue. The bridge between analog and digital, between code and crafts. “Artists are like seismographs,” she says. “We feel the shifts before they happen. When technology started syncing with culture, I knew I had to learn the tech side to understand its creative potential.”

Rosi at the Koghb Art School

Of all the work she’s done, one project stands out: a 3D emotional map of Vienna, created with Studio 3E8. Users could drop pins on the city and log how they felt at each spot — where they felt safe, where they didn’t, where they wanted change. “It is a map for activists to visualize the invisible. Vienna’s full of people who care deeply about their city, and I wanted that to show up in data, in visuals, in space.”

For Rosi, TUMO just makes sense. It ticks every creative box: project-based learning, teaching that’s hands-on, and the joy of watching someone light up when they suddenly get the science behind the art — or vice versa. “When I first heard about TUMO, I felt it in my gut — this is what’s been missing in education. It’s bold and grounded at the same time. Of course teens in Armenia should have access to this.” as she puts it.

Yerevan, Gyumri, Stepanakert, Dilijan. That was 2022.

Now she’s expanding her TUMOgraphy (no, not the photo contest — though that’s cute) with new learning labs in Koghb and Kapan, stretching her creative footprint deeper into southern Armenia.

Rosi jokes that she talks too fast during her learning labs — and she’s not wrong. “It’s the TUMO effect. The students are so curious and sharp that I can’t help getting hyped. And honestly, my Armenian assistant deserves an award.”

What she loves the most about TUMO students? The balance. They’re humble, but they ask the big questions. They listen, but they challenge ideas. The vibe keeps her on her toes.

TUMO also did what Rosi didn’t expect: it changed how she feels about big institutions. “I used to think that the bigger something gets, the colder and more bureaucratic it becomes. But TUMO’s different. You can feel that they care about the students, the staff, the future.”

She doesn’t fly anymore — climate reasons. Instead, she takes the scenic route: Austria to Armenia by train. One week, maybe ten days. Through Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia. A soft arrival. A deliberate one. “Coming here is not just a form of travel, I’d say it’s also a ritual. Armenia became my escape, my creative reset. I love that I can get here by train. I love that it takes time.”

See you soon, Rosi. New center, new form of magic.