PikselSavers – screensavers that makes a difference!

As part of the screening programme at the Meta.Morf Biennal in Trondheim oct. 7 – nov. 7 2010, Piksel has curated a special event under the label ‘PikselSavers’

PikselSavers is a series of short movies and software art, selected based on an open call for participation in conjunction with the biennial for art and technology in Trondheim, Meta.Morf 2010 – New.Brave.World!, arranged by TEKS – Trondheim Electronic Arts Centre.

PikselSavers use the screensaver as a point of departure and inspirational springboard connecting to the main festival theme ‘New.Brave.World’. We are looking for videos and software based on the screensaver format – short audiovisual (non)narratives made for endless looping. Possible thematic fields  includes but are not limited to: sustainable resource allocation, renewable technologies, energy harvesting, fair trade hardware, free content, open access, DIY economy, shared development.

PikselSavers series

The submitted works had to meet the following criteria:
– Format: digital video or executable software including sound made to run full screen at minimum 720p resolution.
– The work must be produced using free/open source software.
– Videos should be available in a free/open format (ogg/theora/dirac).
– Software works should be available as source code under a free/open license.

We got many great submissions and 10 works were selected to be part of the PikselSavers series.


1. MARK BEASLEY: SNOWSTORM

SNOWSTORM takes a keyword ?= and searches Twitter for live results, adding a snowflake for every tweet as it is used. Density depends on the frequency of the word and its current usage on twitter.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Mark Beasley is an active member of the chicago arts + new media community. Mark makes software, video, performance, and web art and has participated in exhibitions with organizations like Rhizome.org, Gallery-2 and Links Hall. He is a member of H3X3N, the computer witchcraft club that produces the IX series which has been exhibited internationally. Mark has also lead workshops in python, hardware hacking, micro-controllers, and html/javascript. He is currently a teaching assistant at Marwen, an arts middle/high school for under-served youth and a full-time web developer along with other freelance projects.


2. MARK BEASLEY: ICEMELT

ICEMELT is an arduino and CRT monitor powered off of a 12vdc car battery. The arduino measures the voltage of the battery as it entropies and draws a corresponding ice cube on the CRT. As the battery dies the ice cube melts until the battery looses the capacity to power either device.
Duration: 4-8 hours.


3. ANDY DECK: SPILL CYCLE

SPILL CYCLE responds to what has been called the United States’ worst ever environmental crisis. Following on the heels of a decidedly unsuccessful round of climate negotiations in Copenhagen, the months of news coverage of oil gushing into the Gulf have provoked widespread unease with business as usual. An oil spill disaster in Santa Barbara helped to establish Earth Day in the late 1960s. But the present crisis in the Gulf of Mexico demonstrates that neglect for the environment is a repetitious problem. As BP attempts to recover its public image and stock value, Spill Cycle loops as endlessly as the crude oil spilling in the Gulf.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
American media artist Andy Deck (b. 1968) lives and works in New York City. Deck is the founder of Artcontext, which aims to develop collaborative process in the context of art and connectivity. He makes public art for the Internet that resists generic categorization: collaborative drawing spaces, game-like search engines, problematic interfaces, informative art. Preempting regular programming, leveraging accidental freedoms, he attempts to demonstrate alternatives for Internet interactivity and interface design. Deck has made art software since 1990, initially using it to produce short films. Since 1994, he has worked with the Web using the sites Artcontext.org and Andyland.net.


4. JIM BIZZOCCHI: LONGFALLS

LONGFALLS is designed to invite reflection and contemplation through the constantly changing movement of the water as it falls, over and over and over, describing the endless cycle of life. Subtle manipulations of the image create a sense of depth and mystery, sustaining continuous viewing
over many loops.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jim Bizzocchi is a moving image artist living in British Columbia, Canada. His Ambient Video series of works ( http://www.ambientvideo.ca) explores a new genre for high-definition video. The prime characteristic for such work is that it be visually interesting and capable of supporting close viewing at any time. It should change, but not too quickly, and the details of any particular change should not be critical. Ambient video is the “slow-form” reversal of forty years of intense development of the fast-paced television “short-form”. Jim’s work has been exhibited globally, including Vancouver, Durham and Banff in Canada, London UK, Ann Arbor, Houston, Athens and Los Angeles in the USA, Byron Bay, Australia and Three Gorges, China.

At Simon Fraser University, Jim researches the visual poetics of large-scale, high-resolution video display, interactive narrative, game design, and the relationship between new media and innovative learning experience. His publications have appeared in such periodicals as the Journal of Moving Image Studies, Journal of Gaming and Simulation, Crossings Electronic Journal of Art and Technology, and conference proceedings for Creativity and Cognition, International Conference on Entertainment
Computing (ICEC), Association for Computing Entertainment (ACE), Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA), among others.


5. CLAUDE HEILAND-ALLEN: MANDULIA

MANDULIA explores the intimate relationship between the Mandelbrot set and its Julia sets. It zooms in/out/around the Mandlebrot set, plotting Julia sets in its local neighbourhood. The Julia renderer is implemented in C compiled with GCC, the Mandelbrot/Julia viewer is implemented in Haskell compiled with GHC using OpenGL.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Claude Heiland-Allen is a digital artist focussing on complex emergent behaviour of simple systems, higher dimensional geometries and hyperspaces, and much more besides. Live performing with Pure-data and custom software since 2005, using free software is a liberation and writing it a means to enlightenment. Member of the international GOTO10 collective devoted to the collision of free software and art.
http://claudiusmaximus.goto10.org


6. OSVALDO CIBILS: 54 DINAMIC BODY BACKGROUND

54 DINAMIC BODY BACKGROUND is an online animation work, developed in java script, and based on animated GIFs and sound. Developed between 2006 and 2010.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Osvaldo Cibils is visual and sound artist, born 1961, in Montevideo, Uruguay. He now lives and work in Rovereto, Italy.
http://osvaldocibils.com


7. RALPH KISTLER: SCREENSAVER

SCREENSAVER literally shows a screen saver. As in real life, when there is no one in the office any more, the cleaners will start do their job.
The work is made with CanonEOS550D, Cinelerra2.1, Ubuntu 10.04, Lives (for sound import to Cinelerra).
Duration: 1:24 min

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ralph Kistler is born 1969 in Munich, Germany.
He now lives and works as artist in Canary Islands and Munich. He has participated in festivals and exhibitions like ARCO07, Madrid, Piksel07/Hello Hackability, 8.1/CAAM, Las Palmas de GranCanaria,
paraflows08 UTOPIA(Viena), ShadowDance, KadE Kunsthal, Amersfoort (2010)
http://www.subtours.com


8. YVES DEGOYON: EVIL FISH : : :

EVIL FISH ::: is a little Pure Data patch illustrating that nature is not always as friendly as it seems and that time has come for us stop spoiling our little planet – otherwise the fish will get even more angry…
It also says not to feed the animals as there is a risk that you will change their natural diet.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Yves Degoyon was born in 1965 in Epinay s/seine ( 93, france ) and lives/works in Barcelona since 2003.
Yves Degoyon is a musician/performer and an open-source developer working on ‘collaborative tools for social networks’, a set of interconnected tools connecting media, live activities of the multitude to visible representation on the web. After developing some free software package for the processing of media within the frame of Pure Data, he worked on the practical use of these tools to help the emergence of free media platforms like GISS (Global Internet Streaming Support) ( http://giss.tv ), which nows broadcast more than 300 free permanent radios and video streams for special events.

As a musician, he performed under the name d.R.e.G.S. on his own, and also with the collective
r3 (bcn), Elpueblodechina, Andy Bolus (Evil Moisture) and Xname. His performances tends to disentangle noise soundscape, decompose it’s elements and reconstruct a new soundscape, some tendencies to self-destructing sounds have also been noticed (like in ‘/bin/rm -rf /* : f*** the system’ ).
http://ydegoyon.free.fr


9. WAYNE CLEMENTS: BRAVE NEW WORLD WAR

BRAVE NEW WORLD WAR is a reversible text (also known as an ambigram).
The words ‘Brave New’ reverse to spell ‘World War’.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Wayne Clements is an visual artist and writer based in London, UK.
In 2005 he completed a doctorate in Fine Arts at Chelsea College of Art and Design (2005), based on a practical study which explores the relationship between art and computers. His own works are primarily made with PERL and published as free software, and were recently exhibited in Madrid, Barcelona and Athens.
http://www.in-vacua.com/


10. THOMAS THIERY: 10 MINUTES

The Pure Data program 10 MINUTES will produce 10 pieces of one minute, according to the standards of modern popular music both in production and in terms of the composition. Download the program, set your sound card and build yourself your album.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Thomas Thiery, as an artist, concerns himself particularly with the sound medium. After his physics degree, he continued with his studies about sound and image in the « Université de Provence ». At the same time, he got in touch with graphic programming in general, and more particularly with the software Pure Data. Equipped with sensors, he collaborated as a sound programmer for audiovisual installations and dance performances. With Thierry Coduys, he completed his training at the Kitchen in Paris and worked on graphic scores with the help of Pure Data and IanniX. Since then, he has focused his sound research on new forms of musical writing. To continue his work, he particularly relies on free and open source software which give him more open advantages. In 2006, still willing to explore other sound approaches, he directed himself towards improvisation techniques and created the duo Aide Auditive with Mysth-R. Since 2007, he studies Electroacoustic composition in Marseille. In 2008, he created some open project like Blank Pages , Larseneurs and How to Make Noise.