FRI 18 NOV

Open Wave-Receiver

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

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.

Live collaborative radio with Mezcal

August Black

Mezcal is a web app for collaborative sound and live transmission that I have been prototyping and building in collaboration with https://wavefarm.org and multiple artists (such as Anna Friz https://nicelittlestatic.com/, Betsey Biggs https://www.betseybiggs.org/, and Peter Courtemanche http://absolutevalueofnoise.ca/?now).  In this 1 hour workshop, I give an overview of the software, its design intentions and practical implementations, and then split the group up into sections to create a live experimental radio session on-site. (note: this software is not YET free software, but lives in the web as a free service for free cultural institutions such as radio libre in Medellín, Colombia https://red.radiolibre.cc/ and Sound Camp in the UK https://soundtent.org/, among others)
https://august.black/mezcal/

August Black is a hybrid practitioner of art, design and engineering. He makes experimental spatial and acoustic situations, often by building his own technological artifacts and instruments in hardware and software. His past work focused on live networked audio, mixing FM radio with user input through online software. His current interests span the fields of the philosophy of technology, software studies, techno-politics, peer-to-peer networking and AI/machine learning. In the past, he’s been a member of arts organizations such as the ORF Kunstradio and the Ars Electronica Futurelab, as well as a former member of the engineering team at Cycling ‘74, makers of Max/MSP. He has shown works at festivals and venues such as Ars Electronica Festival, Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, Wave Farm, Transmediale, Pixelache, LA Freewaves, Piksel Festival, Polar Circuit and the Tasmanian Museum of Art, among others.He earned a BFA at Syracuse University and was an NSF IGERT Fellow at UC Santa Barbara, where he completed an MS and PhD. He’s taught media and art classes at UC Santa Barbara, University of San Francisco and CU Boulder, where he serves as Assistant Professor of Critical Media Practices.

https://august.black

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.

Futura Tropica

Sarah Grant, 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.

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 Artfrom 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.

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.

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.

VFRAME

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.

Coding : Braiding : Transmissions

Isaac Kariuki

CBT (Coding : Braiding : Transmissions) is a collaboration with Tamara 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.

Sensors and Pd

Kris Kuldkepp

Lecture and workshop on sensors and motion capture in new music and
multimedia performance.

The performer’s body is classically considered secondary in presenting a
musical piece. After all, the composer’s name and the idea of self-contained
artwork are predominantly the reasons for a concert visit rather than particular
performer(s) and their performing modes. Thus, for a classically trained
musician, it presents a conflict of being essentially a practical tool in the
service of a composer rather than a creative agent. However, the research in various music performance studies has resulted in a diverse quest for the importance of musical gestures and performers’ physical movements in transmitting the meaning. Do some movements or gestures of a
performer make the music meaningful? How could one classify musical gestures? How is acousmatic music perceived? How to understand electronic music in which the sound production is decoupled from physical gesture? … These and more are the open questions that circle in musical gesture research.
The focus on the importance of musical gestures has influenced composers and performing musicians to create pieces and improvisations that experiment with motion capture and various sensors to create musical experiences. The lecture introduces the usage of sensors and motor capture systems in new music and multimedia and discusses the philosophical concepts motivating the
research.

The lecture is followed by a practical workshop for absolute beginners in Pure Data (Pd) and programming for movement sensors.It will introduce the first steps for processing the data and the necessary algorithms.

The participants should bring their personal computers and preinstall Pure Data Vanilla (https://puredata.info/downloads/pure-data) as well as external libraries “Cyclone” and “else”.

In order to install the externals, please start up Pure Data and use Pd’s own external download manager:
— go to the “Help” menu
— choose the “find externals” option under the Help menu
— search for “cyclone”.
— Then click on the link to download the “cyclone” to your computer and specify the search path. (By default it should be ~/Documents/Pd/externals).
— Do the same process with the “else” externals.

Now the external libraries are installed in your computer

In order to load the libraries at the startup:
— go to “Preferences” menu in Pd
— choose Startup”,
— then click “New”, type “cyclone” and hit OK.
— Do the same with “else” library.
— Next time you restart Pd, the libraries will be loaded and ready to use.

Also, please download this folder with sound files into your computer. We use these sound files during the workshop as examples.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12znhQbAJnaXWWrMLFPtIS6CZ9h85QhPP

As sensors, we will use our smartphones, and participants should also preinstall an app PdParty (iOS) or
Sensor2OSC (Android) on their phones. A computer mouse can be used to
stimulate the data stream.
During the workshop, we will build examples in Pure Data that introduce the
first essential steps in creating music with sensors and what to do with the raw
data. No previous experience with Pure Data is required.

Kris Kuldkepp

Kris is Hamburg based free improviser performing on double bass, bass guitar, and live-electronics. She is a feminist performer and artist. Kris is currently completing doctoral studies at Hamburg University of Applied Science where she researches spatial sound, free improvised music, and posthumanism. She is an active soloist and ensemble performer and has participated in festivals such as StimmeX, Blurred Edges Festival, and Bruital Furore in Hamburg, LjudOLjud in Stockholm, Tallinn Music Week, St. Petersburg New Music Festival reMusic, Estonian Music Days, she has also been invited to collaborate in various constellations within Europe and throughout South-America.

Kris is also part of the free improvisation quartet ‘double bird’ that recently released an album ‘favourite galaxy’ and is active with the quartet EMN concentrating on performing graphic scores and performative compositions. Kris is a close collaborator of opera director Lisa Pottstock with whom she develops feminist performances focusing on finding new way of dealing with body, materiality, and sound.

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.