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PikselXX, AI, AI, AI Celebrating 20 YEARS of New Media Art and Free/Libre technologies in Norway
The 20th edition of the Piksel Festival for Electronic Art and Free Technologies
November 17-20 2022
Bergen(NO)
Welcome to the 20th Edition of the PIKSEL FESTIVAL!
Piksel is an annual festival for artists and developers working with free/open source software, hardware, and art in Bergen, Norway.
Piksel slogans and festivals logos have over the years represented the ‘zeitgeist’ we are living in: from economical crisis – (Un) stable, Kernel Panic! – to the rise of new technologies such as artificial intelligence -Get A-life!-, from climate change – ZERO-level, e/co,li:b-re.bel – and biogenetic – Get infected! – to fake news -Buzzocrazy! – , bitcoins -We Take EmoCoin! – and the importance of the commons -fre {op} [en] able, Re: public-, while defending the use of free /libre technologies as a way to demonstrate equality and sustainability values.
We want to commemorate the 20 years with a program that reflects Piksel main themes presenting the electronic art practices through art projects, exhibitions, workshops, artists talks, and live concerts.
Join us from the 17th to the 20th of November in Bergen!
PIKSEL :: FREE AS IN ART!
Piksel is an international event for artists and developers working with free and open technologies in artistic practice. Part workshop, part festival, it is organized in Bergen, Norway, and involves participants from more than a dozen countries exchanging ideas, coding, presenting art and software projects, doing workshops, performances and discussions on the aesthetics and politics of free technologies & art.
PROGRAM
EXHIBITIONS -17th-27th Nov
Coping Strategies, curated by Sarah Grant, Critical Engineering Working Group.
@KIB, Kunstskolen i Bergen
Coping Strategies is a new program produced by Piksel, curated by Sarah Grant, Critical Engineering Working Group.
Sarah Grant in her curatorial statement, affirms that by now we begin to understand the extent to which our personal and professional interactions are mediated by the digital, from user interfaces to data harvesting networks of surveillance. As digital captives, we have little agency over our membership and the extent of our participation within these obfuscated systems.
How can we put some space between ourselves and these dominant structures? How can we push back and reclaim agency over the narrative that is written about ourselves and our communities by these intrusive technologies? How do we mitigate digital crisis?
Coping Strategies is a program of works, including presentations, workshops, and performances, that demonstrate artist-led approaches to recasting our role in the asymmetrical relationship between ourselves and the dominant providers of information technology.
By demonstrating concrete actions that we as individuals and as communities can take in response to these domineering information systems, Coping Strategies hopes to provoke excitement and reassurance that we don’t have to passively accept the default settings of our digital lives.
EXHIBITION Nov 17th -27th
Futura Tropica by Juan Pablo García Sossa
What do you want me to say? by Lauren McCarthy
TALKS Nov 18th
VFRAME by Adam Harvey
Futura Trōpica by Juan Pablo García Sossa
Coding : Braiding : Transmissions by Isaac Kariuki & Tamar Clarke-Brown
PERFORMANCE
Nov 17th Tango for us Two/Too by Joana Chicau
Nov 19th MTCD – A Visual Anthology of My Machine Life, Teresa Dillon
WORKSHOPS Nov 18th -19th
Open Wave-Receiver by Shortwave Collective
Messaging with lights in a not internet era! by Sarah Grant
Skogen, by Hillevi Munthe (NO) og Elisabeth Schimana (AT)
@Studio 2017 Nov 17th -27th
The forest is a collaborative project between Hillevi Munthe (NO) and Elisabeth Schimana (AT)
“The forest” is a spatial textile installation with incorporated electronics and metal wires with shape memory, so-called shape memory alloy (SMA) or muscle wire. The muscle wire creates programmed movement in the fabric.
In the gallery space, tubes of textile hang from ceiling to floor at regular intervals. They fill the room, but it is still possible to walk between them. The tubes are made of light, transparent silk partially felted with raw wool. The felted surfaces are PIKSELXX, AI AI AIknotty, bubbly and rough. At irregular intervals, the textile lifts up from the floor and stays there before slowly descending back towards the floor. Some are lifted a meter up, others two or more. The tubes are pulled together at the floor or ceiling, some in the middle. The promise happens quickly, suddenly, while the denial is slow. It is as if the installation breathes and lives. As the audience moves through the installation, they wear headphones with a field recording from the forest at Druskininkai outside Vilnius recorded with specially built microphones.
Hillevi Munthe (NO) has worked with electronic textiles since 2009 on her practical research project on e-textile materials and techniques carried out in collaboration with the Bergen Academy of the Arts titled Soft Technology. “The forest” is a continuation of this work.
E-textiles have become increasingly well known in recent decades and describe both the incorporation of traditional electronics into textile materials and the construction of textile components and electronic circuits. With textile material with current-carrying properties, you can knit sensors, embroider wires or sew entire circuits. E-textile is part of an open source and DIY tradition within electronic art and at the same time in a textile art tradition where knowledge of techniques for the construction of flexible surfaces is crucial for how the circuits are built. An embroidered or sewn circle can be shaped, expanded and stretched to the desired expression, and thus becomes a meaning-bearing unit in itself.
PIKSELXX, AI AI AI Main Exhibition
@KIB
Pillow Talk, Miller Puckette, Kerry Hagan (US)
ORDER OF MAGNITUDE and/or DEFICIT OF LESS, Ben Grosser (US)
VastWaste: Data-Driven Projection Art and VR Installation, Ozge SAMANCI (US)
Vis.[un]necessary force_1, Luz María Sánchez (MX)
BITS AND BYTES, Marko Timlin (FI/DE)
The Linguistic Errantry, Tansy Xiao (US)
Rewriting History: I keep forgetting faces, Malte Steiner (DE)
Going Viral, Derek Curry, Jennifer Gradecki (US)
@Strandgaten 205
memoryMechanics memoryMechanics, Mads Hobye, Lise Aagaard Knudsen and Karen Eide Bøen (DK/NO)
@ Marken 13 A
We are FM, August Black, Betsey Biggs (US)
@Marken 13 B
Process Pages, Nick Montfort (US)
@Piksel Cyber Salon
Web deformation, Max Alyokhin (RU)
Compost listen center, August Black (US)
Precipitating Dread [PPT-Dread], Dominic Aidan Vetter [artist name: leclerq] (FR)
Boogaloo Bias Derek Curry, Jennifer Gradecki (US)
Minus, Ben Grosser (US)
The primacy of constructive methods over subjective imagination, Przemyslaw Sanecki (PL)
Fake or far away, Becky Brown (US)
Local time, Julian Scordato (IT)
Rewriting History: I keep forgetting faces, Malte Steiner (DE)
The Care and Feeding of Your AI, Joshua Westerman (US)
The Audio Composting app, August Black (US)
Going Viral, Derek Curry, Jennifer Gradecki (US)
Futurabilities, Azahara Cerezo (SP)
Drought, Claude Heiland-Allen (UK)
Uploaded to the Cloud, Kate Hollenbach (US)
Power&Bytes, Jerry Galle (BE)
PIKSELXX, AI AI AI AV PERFORMANCES
@ Østre
E-09, Alexandra Macia + Seamus O’Donnell (SP/DE)
screenBashing, Magno Caliman (BR/IT)
robotcowboy, Dan Wilcox (US)
CNDSD, Iván Abreu + Malitzín Cortés (MX)
Solar Return, Jenny Pickett + Julien Ottavi (FR)
YupanaSimi, Marcos Valdivia + Milagros Saldarriaga (PE)
John Bowers solo, John Bowers (UK)
Pleasure Force, Dr Nexus + Kris Kuldkepp (DE)
Ventriloquist Ontology, Afroditi Psarra + Tingyi (GR/DK)
Meta Music Machines [Fluorescent Markov Beat], Oskoff (ES)
@ Piksel Cyber Salon @Pikselfliks LIVE!
Akira, Shawn Lawson + Ryan Ross Smith (US)
Incidental Effects, Giuseppe Torre (IT)
Mimoidalnaube, Michał Seta (CA)
Strip & Embellish, Daniele Pozzi (AT/IT) + Hanns Holger Rutz (AT)
Intersections, Mauricio Roman + Alejandra Tapia (BR)
Usurpation Rite, Angel Salazar (EQ)
The Gesturewriter, Joseph Knierzinger (DE)
@KIB Auditorium
Tango for us Two/Too by Joana Chicau (PT/UK)
@Studio207 @IDLE
Media()Messe xX Jenny Pickett + Julien Ottavi (FR) + Iván Abreu + Malitzín Cortés – (MX)
PIKSELXX, AI AI AI SEMINAR
To celebrate the 20 years we plan to do the “PIKSEL XX. 20 years of Libre Electronic Art. Celebrating Art and Free/Libre technologies” seminar focusing on the Free/Libre and Open Source movement as a strategy for regaining artistic control of the technology, but also a means to bring attention to the close connections between art, politics, technology, and economy.
The Piksel 20th edition wants to be a celebration of the main Piksel theme: Electronic art and Free/Libre technologies.
Piksel topics have been revolving around artistic practices related to open source bio kitchen art, politics and surveillance in information technologies, visual/sound instruments made by electronics, using Free/Libre software and hardware (FLOSS), and open networks for 20 years!
The anniversary program will develop these topics through a seminar. We have invited some of the artists that have share these topics with us through the 20 years of history of Piksel.
Seminar
Per Platou (NO)
Grethe Melby (NO)
Dusan Barok (SK/NO)
John Bowers (UK)
Marc Dusseiller (CH)
Malte Steiner (DE)
APO33 – Julien Ottavi & Jenny Pickett (FR)
Asimtria / Marco Valdivia (PE)
Paola Torres Núñes del Prado (PE/SE)
PIKSELXX, AI AI AI WORKSHOPS
Introductory workshop for patching for sensors in pure data, Kris Kuldkepp (DE)
Open Wave-Receiver, Shortwave Collective (UK/FR)
Intro to PdParty, Dan Wilcox (SE/DE)
Online
Prototyping DIY smart robots with Arduino and Machine Learning, Ivan Iovine (DE)
Neural Networks in Pure Data, Alexandros Drymonitis (GR)
Building web apps with free software, the composting audio app, August Black (US)
PIKSELXX, AI AI AI TALKS
Pillow Talk, Miller Puckette, Kerry Hagan (US)
Digital Culture & Cyborg Bodies, Idun Isdrake (SE)
Taper, An Online Magazine for Tiny Computational Poems, Nick Montfort (US)
BITS AND BYTES Marko Timlin (FI/DE)
ShadowPlay, Dan Wilcox (SE/DE)
Creative PCB Design for Manufacturing using SVG2Shenzhen, Budi Prakosa (ID)
Haptic Box and its entangled flows, Dave Riedstra (CA)
Ritmo 2021: a code generated experimental/animation short film, Luis Fernando Medina Cardona (CO)
Journey to the Planet of nuclear Chewing Gum, Vera Sebert (DE)
I make music and videos with statistics software, MusikeR
PikselXX is supported by the Municipality of Bergen, Arts Council Norway, Vestland fylkeskommune. Piksel22 collaborates with Kunstskolen i Bergen KIB, Bergen Dansecenter, PRODA and, Critical Engineering Working Group/Sarah Grant.