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SEMINAR “PIKSEL XX. 20 years of Libre Electronic Art”

SEMINAR “PIKSEL XX. 20 years of Libre Electronic Art”

To celebrate the 20 Piksel Anniversary, join us at the seminar “PIKSEL XX. 20 years of Libre Electronic Art”. Focusing on the Free/Libre and Open Source movement as a strategy for regaining artistic control of technology, it brings attention to the close connections between art, politics, technology, and economy. The seminar revolves around artistic practices related to open-source biokitchen art, politics, and surveillance in information technologies, and visual/sound instruments made by electronics, using Free/Libre software and hardware (FLOSS).

Over the 20 years, Piksel has become a solid international network and annual event for electronic art and technological freedom. Part workshop, part festival, it is organised 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/libre technologies.

The seminar takes place on Saturday 19th at Kunstskolen i Bergen Auditorium in 2 different sessions. Dušan Barok is the moderator and the editor of the book.

Morning sessions (10:30-13h):
Grethe Melby (NO)
Malte Steiner (DE)
John Bowers (UK)
Paola Torres Núñez del Prado (PE/SE)

Afternoon sessions (15-17:30h):
Per Platou (NO)
APO33 – Julien Ottavi + Jenny Pickett (FR)
Marc Duseiller (CH)
Asimtria / Marco Valdivia (PE)
Maite Cajaraville + Gisle Frøysland (NO)

As the head of PNEK Stahl Stenslie wrote in The Experimental Emerging Art magazine issue Nº1, about the 2015 Piksel edition: “Piksel is more than a festival. It is a contemporary academy in the experimental arts. Organized by Gisle Frøysland and Maite Cajaraville, Piksel turns Bergen into a creative explosion of new, emerging forms of creative expression and strangely attractive experiments. The 2015 version saw anything from deep noise concerts to workshops in Do-It-Yourself, open source biokitchen art to electro-mechanical sculptures and surveillance bots. It was an event not just for visitors, but also an exquisite arena for the exchange of ideas and inspirations between artists. The feeling of the festival was intimate and local, yet a temporary home to a wide number of international guests from all over the world. Piksel is what PNEK is about: getting stronger through networking and building bonds across boundaries of thinking and acting.”

Locally and internationally Piksel has written the story of new media art using Free and Libre technologies, after 20 years there is a lot to tell to new generations.

Dušan Barok, the founding editor of Monoskop, a research platform for the arts and humanities, states: “Through the Piksel history we can know the history of Free/Libre Open Source and Software movement”, that is the importance of the Piksel festivals in Norway and its impact in the international arenas.

To preserve the history of contemporary art in Norway, the electronic and experimental art scene that Norway triggered internationally through the Piksel festival, and to open it to new generations is the goal of this seminar. The seminar also works as the pre-launch of the book “PIKSEL XX. 20 years of Libre Electronic Art” which is cooking in the Piksel oven.

Piksel KidZ Lab Messaging with lights in a not internet era!

Messaging with lights in a not internet era!

Saturday November 19th 10:00 to 13:00
Duration: 3 hours.
Age: 8-18 years old.
Place: KUNSTSKOLEN I BERGEN,
Marken 37 i Bergen sentrum, Bergen City

Gratis verksted for barn/unge i alderen 8-18 år for påmelding: piksel22(at)piksel(dot)no

Piksel KidZ Lab is supported by Bergen Kommune and Vestland Fylkeskommune and Fana Sparebank.

What would happen if we no longer had the internet or mobile phones? How would we send messages to each other? Drawing inspiration from insects and ancient forms of signalling using light, we will learn in this workshop how to create our own blinking firefly lanterns for wirelessly transmitting messages.

Sarah Grant (US)

Sarah Grant is an American artist and professor of new media based in Berlin at the Weise7 studio. Her teaching and art practice engages with the electromagnetic spectrum and computer networks as artistic material, social habitat, and political landscape. She holds a Bachelors of Arts in Fine Art from UC Davis and a Masters in Media Arts from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Since 2015, she has organized the Radical Networks conference in New York and Berlin, a community event and arts festival for critical investigations and creative experiments in telecommunications.

Soft Control and body actuation

by Afroditi Psarra with the collaboration of Tingyi Jiang

The implementation of artificial intelligence and machine learning systems in all areas of technological artifacts, constantly challenges the ways in which we perceive and understand the world around us, our bodies, and our identities.

In this workshop, the participants will experiment hands-on with the idea of body control through the use of wearable technology and natural language processing, while discussing ideas around the construction of identity, and how algorithms dictate our gestures and movements. Specifically, the workshop will focus on contact improvisation with robotic actuators in an effort to explore the hybridization of human and algorithmic movement.

Participants: Dansers and anyone interested on interactivity and technologies.
Duration: 3 hours
Venue: Bergen Dansesenter
Date: 19th – 10-13h

Afroditi Psarra

Afroditi Psarra is a transdisciplinary artist and an Associate Professor of Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington. She holds a PhD in Image, Technology, and Design from the Complutense University of Madrid. Her research focuses on the art and science interaction with a critical discourse in the creation of artifacts. Her practice builds on and extends the work of Cyber and Techno-Feminism(s) and the idea of female (and feminized) bodies as matrices of information. Her work has been presented at international media art festivals such as Ars Electronica, Transmediale and CTM, Eyeo, Piksel, and WRO Biennale between others, venues like Bozar, Onassis Stegi, EMST (Greek Museum of Contemporary Art), Walker Art Center, and published at conferences like Siggraph, ISWC (International Symposium of Wearable Computers), DIS (Designing Interactive Systems), C&C (Creativity and Cognition), and EVA (Electronic Visualization and the Arts).

Techno-chiptune-jazz

Live coding party music by Servando Barreiro and Per-Olov Jernberg
Per & Servando are Audiovisual artists based in Stockholm where they often meet and collaborate in the local artist collectives.

Improvised Audiovisual collaboration
Tools used: Hydra, puredata, Nanoloop FM

https://possan.codes/
http://servando.teks.no
https://www.rumtiden.com/
https://www.blivande.com/
https://www.instagram.com/svartljus/

Servando Barreiro

Has a background is in Electronics, Sound and Audiovisual communication. He started his artistic career early on by showing a video performance in the Reina Sofía contemporary art museum in Madrid. From that point on, he continued self-educating about the subjects of Art+ science+ technology. He considers himself lucky to have been around Medialab Madrid, precisely when they started teaching and organizing lectures about media / technology / electronic art. A couple of years later, he moves to Berlin where he does various Artist in residencies. He has lived in Perú, Stockholm, México and California.
www.servando.teks.no

Possam

Polyglot programmer living in Stockholm, Sweden. Spending most of my time experimenting with new technology.

Creative PCB-design Workshop

Creatives, designers, painters welcome! No previous knowledge in electronics or circuit design is needed.

As a creative design / drawing workshop we want to explore how creativity can be use to make unique designs of fuctional electronic circuits. We also will discuss what means Open Hardware and why sharing detailed instructions can lead to a diversity of personal designs and improving the accessibility for DIY electronics workshops.

In this creative drawing workshop, we will learn the most basic introduction to read schematics of electronics circuits, and how to implement it as a functional PCB (Printer Circuit Board) where all the connections are drawn in copper. We will learn what are footprints of components and what are the different “layers” for preparing a PCB design for manufacturing (in China factory of DIY home etching).

This workshop also serves for re-thinking the diy-CAD methodology (do-it-yourself Children Aided Design) and applying it to the fork of the peepsy, based on the Continuity Tester by David Johnson-Davies. The peepsy circuit is based on the ATTINY85 functions as a continuity tester, the famouse “peeps” of every multimeter, that allows you to test if an electric connection is present, testing your aux cables, or debbugging other electronics. And it has a pink LED on it!

What circuit will we do?

The example circuit is based on the peepsy, by Michael Egger (a.n.y.m.a.) and it has even a practical function as a continuity tester, the most useful tool to test if a connection is present, in a cable or on a circuit. It’s the “peep” that is one of the functions of all multimeters, and usually the one we use the most! The circuit is very simple, 1 capacitor, 2 resistors, 1 LED, a buzzer to make the “beep”, a coin battery holder and an µ-controller (the Attiny85). Due to the special software on the attiny, it will “sleep” all the time, and only use a little electricity when testing, so the battery last almost forever!

All the materials will be available on site, pen and paper, colors, footprints.

https://www.hackteria.org/wiki/Diy-CAD#Workshops

Marc R. Dusseiller

Dr. Marc R. Dusseiller is a transdisciplinary scholar, lecturer for micro- and nanotechnology, cultural facilitator and artist. He performs DIY (do-it-yourself) workshops in lo-fi electronics and synths, hardware hacking for citizen science and DIY microscopy. He also loves coconuts. He was co-organizing Dock18, Room for Mediacultures, diy* festival (Zürich, Switzerland), KIBLIX 2011 (Maribor, Slovenia), workshops for artists, schools and children as the former president (2008-12) of the Swiss Mechatronic Art Society, SGMK and co-founder of the new Hackerspace collective Bitwäscherei (2020) in Zürich. He has worked as guest faculty and mentor at various schools, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IN), UCSB (USA) and in Switzerland, FHNW, HEAD, ETHZ. In collaboration with Kapelica Gallery, he has started the BioTehna Lab in Ljubljana (2012 – 2013), an open platform for interdisciplinary and artistic research on life sciences. Currently, he is developing means to perform bio- and nanotechnology research and dissemination, Hackteria | Open Source Biological Art, in a DIY / DIWO fashion in kitchens, ateliers and in the Majority World. He was the co-organizer of the different editions of HackteriaLab 2010 – 2020 Zürich, Romainmotier, Bangalore, Yogyakarta and Klöntal, Okinawa and collaborated on the organisation of the BioFabbing Convergence, 2017, in Geneva and the Gathering for Open Science Hardware, GOSH! 2016, Geneva & 2018, in Shenzhen.

What to make [electronic] art about in 2022 and beyond?

Since the enthusiastic adoption of electronic technologies that characterised the electronic and new media art scene in the 1990s, several factors have crept in that changed the game for good and continue to do so. Open source technologies and the related ecosystem of forums, tutorials and downloadable knowledge is one. Another one is the increasingly heavy presence of climate crisis in all aspects of civilisation including the arts. Paul Granjon will will give an overview of his trajectory, from enthusiasm for early robotic art to contemplating the joys and challenges of off-grid living as an art practice.

Paul Granjon is interested in the co-evolution of humans and machines, imagining solutions for alternative futures and sharing his experience of creative technologies. He has been making robots and other machines for exhibitions and performances since 1996. Granjon’s work became known for a trademark combination of humour and serious questions, delivered with absurd machines that made use of recycled components. His Sexed Robots were exhibited in the Welsh Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2005. He performs and exhibits internationally. He regularly delivers Wrekshops, public events where participants are invited to take apart electronic waste and build temporary new machines from the bits they find. Granjon’s current work is driven by an ecologist, low-tech and participatory agenda. He teaches Fine-Art in Cardiff School of Art and Design, UK.

PERFORMING ARTS WORKSHOPS PROGRAM

Performing Arts Workshop program: electronics and free/libre technologies applied to the performing arts.

Piksels basic idea is that artists, across disciplines, should have control over their own production. Therefore, tools like free software / open hardware are seen as best suited to this. Internationally, Piksel is perhaps one of the important meeting place for players in this field.

After 20 years of existence, the Piksel Festival has shown a variety of performing arts pieces exploring creativetily interaction with sound synthesis, lights or video through pressure sensitive sensors and body movements. In collaboratin with Bergen Dansesenter, this program intends to facilitate performers, choreographers, actors, artistic directors, the integration of digital tools on their shows as a way to develop new dialogues with the audiences.

The program includes 2 workshops: Soft Control and body actuation by Afroditi Psarra with the collaboration of Tingyi Jiang, and, memoryMechanics by Karen Eide Bøen, Mads Høbye, Lise Aagaard Knudsen, Maja Fagerberg Ranten and Troels Andreasen. Both working with Artifical Intelligence trained to proccess natural language or AI as a place to play with memories.

PROGRAM

18th – 12-13h memoryMechanics by Karen Eide Bøen, Mads Høbye, Lise Aagaard Knudsen, Maja Fagerberg Ranten and Troels Andreasen @BIT Teatergarajsen, Strandgaten 205.

19th – 10-13h Soft Control and body actuation by Afroditi Psarra with the collaboration of Tingyi Jiang @Bergen Dansesenter.

All workshops are free

To participate send an email to: piksel22(at)piksel(dot)no

Soft Control and body actuation
Soft Control and body actuation
November 19, 2022 10:00 am
memoryMechanics
memoryMechanics
November 18, 2022 12:00 pm

memoryMechanics

by Karen Eide Bøen, Mads Høbye, Lise Aagaard Knudsen, Maja Fagerberg Ranten and Troels Andreasen.

memoryMechanics is an interactive sound installation that explores how we as humans embody memories.

The installation is based on an archive of memories that are collected from different people, by guiding them through sensory experiences and into physical poses that trigger embodied memories. Their recorded memories are then stored in the installation for retrieval through imitating their initial poses.

Artificial intelligence is used to record and retrieve memories from the archive. Through the installation, a synergy between human memory and computer memory appears. Artificial intelligence creates a mediated physical space in which the audience can walk around, position themselves in poses and hear the intimate stories of previous participants.

Participants: Dansers and anyone interested on interactivity and technologies.
Duration: 1 hour
Venue: BIT Teatergarasjen office (Strandgaten 205)
Date: 18th – 12-13h

memoryMechanics

memoryMechanics is a collaboration between exocollective and the duo Knudsen Bøen under the group umbrella term memoryMechanics.

exocollective is a research collaboration initiated by researchers at Roskilde University. The main agenda is to develop an experimental approach to researching the potential of new technologies and materials: Speculative explorations in interactive design, art, and technology. Maja Fagerberg Ranten, Mads Høbye, and Troels Andreasen. (https://www.exocollective.com)

Knudsen/Bøen is the collaboration between the two artists Lise Aagaard Knudsen (actor and MA in Theater & Performance Studies) and Karen Eide Bøen (dancer and choreographer). They work with body memory and exchange of memories between artists and participants, and the transformation of memory material into various artistic formats in their project called “I remember…”.

memoryMechanics was initiated as a part of “Staging the Future of Technologies vol. 2” with the following partners: Click festival, Catch, Haut and Roskilde University Center. Sponsored by Bikubenfonden & Copenhagen municipality.

Mads Hobye holds a PhD in interactive design from Medea, Malmö University and is a co-founder of illutron collaborative interactive art studio. He is conducting research into the potential of digital material exploration within art and technology. He has a keen interest in maker hacktivism and experimental electronic upcycling. He is an Associate professor at the Department of People and Technology at Roskilde University Center.

Lise Aagaard Knudsen is a performer and theatre practitioner, based in Copenhagen. In her practice she explores the archive of the body alongside a close relationship between the performer and her audience. She works internationally, mainly in Scandinavia and the UK, teaches performance theory as an external lecturer at University of Copenhagen and works a producer at the dAnish residency center HAUT.

MA in Acting from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, and MA in Theatre and Performance Studies from University of Copenhagen.

Coping Strategies, Sarah Grant

Curator Sarah Grant will introduce us to the special program “Coping Strategies” and guest speakers on the first talks sessions of the festival.

Sarah Grant is an American artist and professor of new media based in Berlin at the Weise7 studio. Her teaching and art practice engages with the electromagnetic spectrum and computer networks as artistic material, social habitat, and political landscape. She holds a Bachelors of Arts in Fine Art from UC Davis and a Masters in Media Arts from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Since 2015, she has organized the Radical Networks conference in New York and Berlin, a community event and arts festival for critical investigations and creative experiments in telecommunications.

Coping Streategies Curatorial Statement

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.

Additionally, our dependency upon these systems leaves us vulnerable in a way that can lead to crisis, in the event of critical communications infrastructure or platforms becoming unavailable or unsafe to use.

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. They exemplify:

Building infrastructure that centers community- versus profit-driven values

Creating datasets that seek to remove bias against marginalized communities

Reclaiming ownership over our digital selves

Restoring emotional intimacy to digitally mediated personal relationships

Creating new ways of encoding information in service to political activists

Prioritizing existing infrastructures that elevates knowledge and access above commodification and surveillance

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.

Piksel KidZ Lab Ewasteroid by Paul Granjon (UK)

Piksel KidZ Lab: Ewasteroid by Paul Granjon (UK)

November, Friday 18th and Saturday 19th, 10:00 to 13:00 h
Duration: 3 hours.
Age: 10-100 years old.
Place: KUNSTSKOLEN I BERGEN,
Marken 37 i Bergen sentrum, Bergen City

Gratis verksted for barn/unge i alderen 10-100 år for påmelding: piksel22(at)piksel(dot)no
Piksel KidZ Lab is supported by Bergen Kommune and Vestland Fylkeskommune.

Ewasteroid

The beauty and the ugliness of electronic waste fight it off in this workshop for curious people. Starting with a pile of electronic waste items such as printers, pc towers, DVD players the participants will build a spinning asteroid made of out of date components and found timber, mining the old machines for intricate and complex parts. The resulting temporary sculpture is both celebration of human engineering and sinister indicator of an extractivist civilisation gone in overdrive.

Expect improvisation, technological creativity, freestyle wiring, collaboration and low-tech solutions. In line with Granjon’s current methods, the machine will work off-grid, be made of 90% recycled or found components and use open source technology controllers (Arduino).

The Ewasteroid belongs to Granjon’s extensive practice of Wrekshops, participat. The events combine hands-on, fun making with grassroots conversations inspired by the material, its abundance and creative potential.

The participants do not need to have prior knowledge of electronics or programming, start age 7 (under 12 accompanied by an adult). The workshop can run for a few hours or a whole day or 2, with participants coming and going, or booking a slot. Max 7 participants at a time with 1 assistant.

The Ewasteroid will be exhibited as an installation after the workshop, before its parts return to the recycling plant.

The first Ewasteroid was tested during the Deershed Festival in the UK in July 2022, more info at https://www.zprod.org/zwp/ewasteroid/

Paul Granjon (UK)

Paul Granjon is interested in the co-evolution of humans and machines, imagining solutions for alternative futures and sharing his experience of creative technologies. He has been making robots and other machines for exhibitions and performances since 1996. Granjon’s work became known for a trademark combination of humour and serious questions, delivered with absurd machines that made use of recycled components. His Sexed Robots were exhibited in the Welsh Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2005. He performs and exhibits internationally, with recent commissions in Garage Museum Moscow and Azkuna Zentroa Bilbao. He regularly delivers Wrekshops, public events where participants are invited to take apart electronic waste and build temporary new machines from the bits they find. Granjon’s current work is driven by an ecologist and participatory agenda. He teaches Fine-Art in Cardiff School of Art and Design, UK and completed a practice-based PhD in robotic arts in 2022.