In 2015, Piksel Festival, the Bergen festival focusing on new media art and open digital culture, introduced Piksel KidZ Lab, an artistic laboratory for kids to understand and build new media artworks. After 8 years of experience working with kids and technology, the program is rooted in the autumn schools program.
Piksel kidz lab 2022 proposes three new workshops: Creating Audio and Visual effects with Code – LIVE Coding! with @Antonio Roberts, Messaging with lights in a not internet era! with Sarah Grant and Ewasteroid by Paul Granjon.
All the workshops are free attendance. To particpate send us an email to: piksel22(AT)piksel(DOT)no.
Inkluderende Digitalt Laboratorium for Eksperimentell Kunst (IDLE) is an innovative artistic and participatory project based on a digitally updated art venue space, Studio 207, in Bergen.
The venue’s audiovisual devices are controlled remotely through a virtual gallery. Artists and audiences can manipulate lights, videos, and sounds, to create different atmospheres through the Internet of Things technologies. The public designs spatial audiovisual experiences for those that are In Real Life at the venue and simultaneously in the virtual gallery!
IDLE intends to offer a creative virtual meeting point for school kids, youngsters, people with reduced mobility who wants to interact with the physical world, and all of those art curious lovers that want to look for new physical-virtual new experiences. The project explores new collaborations and forms of interaction between different art and cultural forms.
IDLE is an innovative project initiated by Piksel, in collaboration with CNDSD, Malitzin Cortés and Iván Abreu, APO33, Jenny Pickett, Julien Ottavi, and Romain Papion and Martin Koch. It is a 3 years project supported by the Municipality of Bergen and the Arts Council Norway.
PIKSELXX AI AI AI is presenting for the first time this experience to the world. To do the premiere in Bergen we have invited the artists and developers of the project CNDSD, Malitzin Cortés, Iván Abreu, APO33, Jenny Pickett, Julien Ottavi, and Romain Papion to create the first sound and visual, physical and virtual experience. Join us at Studio 207 and the @Piksel Cyber Salon on Thursday Nov 17th – 22-23h.
Skogen 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 knotty, bubbly and rough. At irregular intervals, the textile lifts up from the floor and stays there before slowly descending back towards the floor. 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.
Electronic textile
Muscle wire is a metal alloy of nickel and titanium that can switch between two states, activated by heating. When the metal wire is below a certain temperature, it is soft and flexible. At a certain temperature, it contracts to the shape it has been set to “remember” through a precise shaping process. By connecting it to an electronic circuit, I use resistance heat to activate the contraction and can program the intervals. The circuit is partly textile, partly made of traditional electronic components. I construct the textile components myself from conductive textile material. Incorporated into the textile, the muscle wire creates a fluid, organic movement that gives a surprisingly strong physical experience of the presence of something alive.
Textile Felting silk and wool together (nunofelting) makes it possible to work with transparency/opacity and structure in the surface in a completely unique way. In the felting process, the wool shrinks by about 40 per cent, while the silk does not shrink. With a very thin layer of raw wool (untreated wool directly from the sheep), the felted parts will shrink to the maximum and give a structured surface with knots and bubbles. The process is rarely completely predictable. After the tubes are felted, they are dyed with plant colors from leaves, plants and mushrooms. The material’s own color helps to determine the result of the dyeing, so that it is not possible to have full control over the result here either.
Sound The field recording is a displaced auditory memory from a concrete place. The sound recording from Druskininkai was made with a custom-built microphone: a mannequin head on a human-tall pole with the microphones placed near the ears. The sound has been recorded as a human would experience it, in a clear three-dimensional auditory space. In the recording of the forest’s deafening silence, you hear insects buzzing close by, frogs and the wind rustling in the trees. The silence of the forest is full of life.
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.
Elisabeth Schimana Schimana studied electro-acoustics and experimental music at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, computermusic-composition at the IEM, Graz and musicology andethnology at the University of Vienna. Her work concentrated for many years on space / body / electronic. She has ongoing cooperations with the Austrian Kunstradio. She also focus on research in the field of woman, art and technology. Elisabeth Schimana gives lectures and holds composition workshops all over the world.
Coping Strategies, curated by Sarah Grant, Critical Engineering Working Group.
@KIB, Kunstskolen i Bergen 17th-27th November
We are excited to present Coping Strategies, a new exhibition curated by Sarah Grant, Radical Networks. As part of the 3 years Piksel collaboration with The Critical Engineering Working Group, Coping Strategies joins the works of Lauren McCarthy, Juan Pablo García Sossa, Isaac Kariuki, Teresa Dillon, Shortwave Collective, Joana Chicau, and Adam Harvey. Coping Strategies is part of the PIKSELXX AI AI AI program, in Bergen from 17-27 Nov.
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.
PROGRAM
EXHIBITION Nov 17th -27th – opening 18-21h – rest of the days 11-18h Futura Tropica by Juan Pablo García Sossa What do you want me to say? by Lauren McCarthy
TALKS Nov 18th – 11-13h @KIB Auditorium Futura Trōpica by Juan Pablo García Sossa Coding : Braiding : Transmissions by Isaac Kariuki VFRAME by Adam Harvey
PERFORMANCE Nov 17th – 19h Tango for us Two/Too by Joana Chicau
PERFORMANCE Nov 19th – 18h MTCD – A Visual Anthology of My Machine Life, Teresa Dillon
WORKSHOPS
Nov 18th &19th – 15-18h Open Wave-Receiver by Shortwave Collective
Nov 19th – 10-13h Messaging with lights in a not internet era! by Sarah Grant
Talks
VFRAME by Adam Harvey
VFRAME.io (Visual Forensics and Metadata Extraction) is a computer vision toolkit designed for human rights researchers. It aims to bridge the gap between state-of-the-art artificial intelligence used in the commercial sector and make it accessible and tailored to the needs of human rights researchers and investigative journalists working with large video or image datasets. VFRAME is under active development and was most recently presented at the Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD) Mine Action Technology Workshop in November 2021.
Adam Harvey (US/DE) is an artist and research scientist based in Berlin focused on computer vision, privacy, and surveillance. He is a graduate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University (2010) and is the creator of the VFRAME.io computer vision project, Exposing.ai dataset project, and CV Dazzle computer vision camouflage concept.
Futura Trōpica by Juan Pablo García Sossa
| Futura Trōpica | is an intertropical decentralized network of grass-root local networks for lateral exchange of local resources and other forms of Knowledges, Designs and Technologies. It plays with the narrative of the Wood Wide Web and the way trees are interconnected, communicate to each other and redistribute nutrients with the help of fungi as mycellium. It uses the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) protocol to connect Rhizomes in Bogotá, Kinshasa and Bengaluru. Each Rhizome is composed of a raspberry pi-based wireless access point and web server in combination with a USB based distribution system similar to ‘El Paquete Semanal’ in Cuba.
Juan Pablo García Sossa — jpgs / Futura Trōpica Netroots (*Bogotá, COL) is a Designer, Researcher and Artist fascinated by the clash between emerging technologies and grass-root popular culture in tropical territories. His practice explores the development of cultures, visions, realities and worlds through the remix and reappropriation of technologies from a Tropikós perspective (Tropics as Region and Mindset). JPGS has been part of diverse research institutions and design studios and currently is a design research member at SAVVY Contemporary The Laboratory of Form-Ideas’ Design Department in Berlin and Co-Director of Estación Terrena, a space for Arts, Research and Technologies in Bogotá.
Coding : Braiding : Transmissions by Isaac Kariuki
CBT (Coding : Braiding : Transmissions) is a collaboration with Tamar Clarke-Brown as an experiment in speculative technology, combining the DIY practices of coding and braiding. CBT explores these two practices as tools for sending encrypted messages to escape totalising surveillance of black communities globally. The performance installation comprises of women braiding each others’ hair with a GoPro camera attached to their heads. The camera and accompanying software translates their hand movements into encrypted messages that the women send to each other throughout the performance.
Isaac Kariuki is a visual artist and writer whose work centres on surveillance, borders, internet culture and the black market, in relation to the Global South. His work has taken the form of image, video, lectures, writing and performance. He has exhibited at the Tate Modern, Kadist (Paris) and the Kampala Art Biennale among others as well as holding lectures at the Tate Britain and Yale University.
Performances
Tango for us Two/Too by Joana Chicau
<– Tango for Us Two/Too — > is a live coding performance that merges web-programming with the choreographic language of Tango. The script focus on the dialogical nature of Tango, using Google Translate with fragments of texts from interviews with Tango dancers and practitioners. It invites us to a pas-de-deux performed by the online interface and JavaScript functions which randomise search queries and present a series of (mis)translations. An algorithmic dance sustaining glitches between the techniques and poetics of Tango, each breath a step towards the emergence of a new vocabulary for the moving.
Joana Chicau is a graphic designer, coder, researcher — with a background in dance. In her practice she interweaves web programming languages and environments with choreography. She researches the intersection of the body with the constructed, designed, programmed environment, aiming at widening the ways in which digital sciences is presented and made accessible to the public. She privileges the use of Free-Libre Open Source software, and collaborates with various international practitioners in the fields of art, design and technology on both commissioned and self-initiated projects. She has been actively participating and organizing events with performances involving multi-location collaborative coding, algorithmic improvisation, discussions on gender equality and activism.
MTCD – A Visual Anthology of My Machine Life, Teresa Dillon
MTCD is a monologue in which the artist and researcher Teresa Dillon takes one “machine’ from each year of her life. From radios to home recording devices to her first experiences on the Internet, reflections on techs uses and misuses, failures and breakdowns, highlight the glitchy realities and contextual relations in which the key “machines” that shaped her technological know-how and imagination, play out.
MTCD originally premiered at Berlin’s transmediale in 2018 with further presentations in 2019. This updated but stripped back version is a special edition for PIKSEL 20th birthday.
Teresa Dillon (IRL/UK/DE)
An artist and researcher Teresa’s work explores the interrelationships between humans, other species, technology, cities and our environments. This currently manifests through three evolving programmes: Repair Acts (2018-) explores restorative cultures and practices by connecting past stories of care, maintenance and healing, with what we do today and how we envision the future. Urban Hosts (2013-) a programme that plays with civic conversational, encountering and hospitality formats and Liminal Routes (2020-) a mixtape and sonic tripping series for cities. Experienced in producing software and hardware projects, Teresa has also written on subjects such as open source processes, music, technology and design, sonic materiality’s and folklores, multispecies relations, surveillance, governance and the smart city, repair economies and artisan repair professions. As a Humboldt Fellow (UdK and TU, Berlin, 2014-16) her work documented artistic approaches to making the electromagnetic spectrum in cities audible. Invited to co-curate transmediale (2016) and HACK-THE-CITY (2012) for the former, Science Gallery, Dublin, since 2016 she currently holds the post of Professor of City Futures at the School of Art and Design, UWE, Bristol.
| Futura Trōpica | is an intertropical decentralized network of grass-root local networks for lateral exchange of local resources and other forms of Knowledges, Designs and Technologies. It plays with the narrative of the Wood Wide Web and the way trees are interconnected, communicate to each other and redistribute nutrients with the help of fungi as mycellium. It uses the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) protocol to connect Rhizomes in Bogotá, Kinshasa and Bengaluru. Each Rhizome is composed of a raspberry pi-based wireless access point and web server in combination with a USB based distribution system similar to ‘El Paquete Semanal’ in Cuba.
What do you want me to say? by Lauren McCarthy
Exhausted by Zoom calls, I created a digital clone of my voice to replace me. This voice allows me to puppet myself, using it to say all the things I hadn’t previously been able to embody. I feel a sense of power owning the data of my own voice. I am taking it back from the tech companies, constantly collecting my conversations, sampling and analyzing and archiving my speech for future use yet unknown. Instead, I offer the ownership and control of my voice to others.
Upon collecting and visiting the work, you are asked by my voice, “What do you want me to say?” However you reply, my voice responds by speaking your own words back to you. Then it asks again, “What do you want me to say?”
This work considers vulnerability, ownership, and authenticity in a time of rapidly advancing virtual reality. As I open access to my voice, I reflect on the ways femme voiced virtual assistants are commanded and controlled by their users and their developers. And the ways we can feel heard and (mis)understood by those that listen.
Lauren Lee McCarthy is an artist examining social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living. She has received grants and residencies from Creative Capital, United States Artists, LACMA, Sundance New Frontier, Eyebeam, Pioneer Works, Autodesk, and Ars Electronica. Her work SOMEONE was awarded the Ars Electronica Golden Nica and the Japan Media Arts Social Impact Award, and her work LAUREN was awarded the IDFA DocLab Award for Immersive Non-Fiction. Lauren’s work has been exhibited internationally, at places such as the Barbican Centre, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Haus der elektronischen Künste, SIGGRAPH, Onassis Cultural Center, IDFA DocLab, Science Gallery Dublin, Seoul Museum of Art, and the Japan Media Arts Festival.
Workshops
Open Wave-Receiver by Shortwave Collective
Building Open Wave-Receivers enables DIY communications reception, and allows anyone to freely listen to the broad spectrum of radio waves around us. All you need are a few easy-to-procure supplies and, if you want to try it, a neighborhood fence or other receptive antenna proxy.
Why a fence? Antennas are necessary for radios to receive signals, and many things can be antennas. Fences can make great, and very long, antennas! Other materials can work well too; even a tent peg can become a useful part of a radio. Open Wave-Receivers allow us to explore the relationship between different combinations of materials, antennas, and radio waves, creating a new technology literacy, a new medium for artistic expression, and a new way to explore the airwaves in our communities.
We have found making Open Wave-Receivers to be a fun adventure. The ability to use simple scraps to create variety and personalization in each radio makes this a great maker project for anyone wanting to play with radio.
Shortwave Collective is an international, feminist artist group established in May 2020, interested in the creative use of radio. We meet regularly to discuss feminist approaches to amatuer radio and the radio spectrum as artistic material, sharing resources, considering DIY approaches and inclusive structures. Members include Alyssa Moxley, Georgia Muenster, Brigitte Hart, Kate Donovan, Maria Papadomanolaki, Sally Applin, Lisa Hall, Sasha Engelmann, Franchesca Casauay, and Hannah Kemp-Welch
Privacy is intimacy is an artwork composed of two silver chains on each of which are engraved the halves of two PGP key pairs. On each chain is written a public key and the private key associated with the other chain’s public key. Thus, it is possible to establish a secure and encrypted connection between two people, allowing them to communicate without their privacy being compromised, making Privacy is intimacy the ultimate jewel for lovers !
Born in 1994, Louis Frehring is a French contemporary artist working in the transdisciplinary field of new media art, sculpture and visual arts. His work is mainly composed by heteroclite installations and crafted devices that deal with technology both as material and subject. Frehring’s work is focused on getting the viewer more knowledgeable of what technology is, how it works and what it changes in nature, in society and in our proper selves.
Piksel KidZ Lab workshop: Creating Audio and Visual effects with Code – LIVE Coding!
Tuesday 25th – Friday 28th October 2022: 15-18h
Duration: 3 hours, the workshop repeats every day. Age: 10-18 years old. Venue: Studio 207, Strandgaten 207, Bergen Gratis verksted for barn/unge i alderen 10-18 år for påmelding: piksel22(at)piksel(dot)no
Piksel KidZ Lab is supported by Bergen Kommune and Vestland Fylkeskommune and Fana Sparebank.
The internet is full of ‘open-source’ free software that we can use to create exciting sound and visuals. This workshop for children aged 10ish will introduce Live coding to the kids. Live coding is an audio visual performance practice that revolves around the creation and modification of code and algorithms in real-time.
Antonio Roberts will introduce the group to the Estuary live coding platform, with the aim of writing computer programs “on the fly”. The fast feedback loops and improvisatory spirit of live coding can result in complex and encouraging sound and visual effects. Throughout the 3 hours workshop the kids will experiment programming with very simple code sounds and visuals. The workshop intends to de-mystify technology and reveal its design decisions, limitations, and creative potential. Kids will produce a final performance all together at the end of the workshop.
Antonio Roberts (UK)
His work has been featured at galleries and festivals including databit.me in Arles, France (2012), Glitch Moment/ums at Furtherfield Gallery, London (2013), Loud Tate: Code at Tate Britain (2014), glitChicago at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago, US (2014), Permission Taken at Birmingham Open Media and University of Birmingham (2015-2016), Common Property at Jerwood Arts, London (2016), Ways of Something at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017), Green Man Festival, Wales (2017), Barbican, London (2018), and Copy / Paste at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2019).
He has curated exhibitions and projects including GLI.TC/H Birmingham (2011), the Birmingham editions of Bring Your Own Beamer (2012, 2013), µChip 3 (2015), Stealth (2015), No Copyright Infringement Intended (2017). He is part of a-n’s Artist Council, is an Artist Advisor for Jerwood Arts and from 2014 – 2019 he was Curator at Vivid Projects where he produced the Black Hole Club artist development programme.
