About
About Synthetic State and the MAINFRAME project.
Our History
MAINFRAME is a project started by Synthetic State in Vancouver, Canada, around 2017 by Navin, an electrical engineer by trade. He brought the work to Amsterdam in 2021. The project began after realizing that designing user‑facing systems purely from an engineering mindset was insufficient. Functionally, everything worked, but emotion, usability, theme, and aesthetics were missing. An artistic perspective was necessary.
Before MAINFRAME came The Beat Doctor, a DIY modular synthesizer. The intention was to explore how an artistic perspective could be synthesized with hybrid analog/digital architecture—creating a system that can feel like you are interacting with a human artist and flow organically.
That same concept pulled the work toward audio‑visual synchronization, so the focus pivoted to MIDI‑to‑LED expression. MAINFRAME is the evolution of that early seed, now a project with a life of its own.
Why MAINFRAME Exists
There is a gap in the landscape of lighting and visual technology.
On one end, tools can be easy to set up, but they lack depth and do not unify audio, visuals, and interaction—leading to a disjoint experience.
On the other end, tools can be feature‑rich and powerful, but the complexity and learning curve make them unsuitable for many applications and users.
We envision 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.
The Big Picture
Whether we like it or not, technology will no longer just be a tool, and we are at a critical crossroads. We are the generation that gets to decide how we will interact with the technology of tomorrow, the principles and philosophy that guide its design, and the relationship we will have with it.
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.
MAINFRAME is a part of a larger vision by Synthetic State, which includes lighting work for the design industry and research into novel processor architecture - see syntheticstate.com for more information.