PIKSEL

“You are 4.3 billion kilometres away from the nearest human, what would you like to do?”

Naked on Pluto is a text-based multiplayer game on Facebook. You are stranded on the planet Pluto, naked, alone. Your world is empty except for fragments of data, objects relating to your past life on social networks – but seen through the distorted lens of the game world. You can explore this world, at first alone and later in the game you’ll be able to invite and interact with friends. You can add and manipulate objects you encounter, interact with others and bots. Once you enter deeper into this world and web of data, you become aware of increasing complexity, characters appear you may recognise – are they friends or animated bits of data? Information is substituted and modified in subtle ways. Is it possible to remember what was ever real in the first place?

The game explores the limits and nature of social networks from within, slowly pushing the boundaries of what is tolerated by the companies that own them, carefully documenting this process as we go. Story and play are combined with an investigation on how exposed we are on social networks, and how our data are being used. (continue reading…)

Funware Shared Artist in Residence:
Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam (NL)
BALTAN Laboratories, Eindhoven (NL)
Piksel, Bergen (NO)

CALL

BALTAN, NIMk and Piksel have launched an open call for proposals as part of the exhibition project Funware. We are looking for interesting new software art projects that can be developed in the period of June – November 2010 through a shared residency. The new work developed during the residency will be presented in the Funware exhibition at MU in Eindhoven, at HMKV in Dortmund and as part of the Piksel festival 2010.

This residency is a collaboration between three labs, based on a desire to investigate the ways and potential of working within a network of labs that support the exchange and sharing of resources and knowledge. The form of this collaboration aims to provide the most specific and relevant support to artists working on art and technology projects in residence. Knowing the capacities and competences of each lab/organisation, the residency exchange will offer targeted support (in the form of resources, space, technical support, local context and time) to be provided at different stages of the research and development of the project specific to each organisation. Off- and online dissemination of form and content via this partnership and the building of structural relationships are crucial to the collaboration. (continue reading…)

Perte de Signal :: Rustines | Lab (Montréal, Canada)
Open call – Open Source research residency

*December 1st :: Open Source research Residency :: Rustines|Lab*

Workshop, residency centre, and venue for dissemination, Rustines|Lab is a creative research-creation lab dedicated to supporting media arts, new media, and audio art projects. The lab’s primary purpose is to provide our community with a place to connect with various actors and
practitioners in both local and international contemporary art scenes. It is also devoted to providing emerging artists with production spaces,
technical resources, and programs for research-creation to assist in the production of performance and installation projects. (continue reading…)

As part of Piksel’s collaboration with the BALTAN Laboratories in Eindhoven, we put out an open call in the summer for proposals from artists who were specifically interested in working with the tracking and mapping technology Open Computer Vision. We received a number of high quality proposals through this call and in the end, Piksel and BALTAN selected the project Flick Flock by Wendy Ann Mansilla and Jordi Puig. Wendy Ann and Jordi participated in the OpenCV workshop that was held at BALTAN in September and are now back in the labs for a 4 week residency. The results of their work will be presented at the Piksel09 exhibition at Gallery 3,14 from November 20 2009 to January 10 2010.

Flick Flock

Flick Flock defines the meaning of the body and its linkage to the continuous transformation of the urban place and the way it can construct and deconstruct society. It is reflecting the interconnections of bodies and space, reshaping each other to form such an unbound relationship. Using stereoscopic and ambisonic 3D technology, Flick Flock recreates the digital urban space we are living in to allow us to immersively experience the role of the physical body as a vehicle of expression and knowledge. (continue reading…)

Open Call for Proposals

BALTAN Laboratories and Piksel collaborative research and development residency

++ Deadline: August 31, 2009 ++

As part of BALTAN Laboratories’ Blueprint research programme investigating the roles and forms of the art and technology laboratory of the future, BALTAN and Piksel are collaborating to explore the relationship between hard and software developers working on free and open source tools for artistic production, and the artistic use and development of these tools in a laboratory setting.

One artist will be selected from this open call to produce an artwork using tools developed in collaboration with local and international developers of the Piksel Community, together with BALTAN and Piksel, through workshops and a residency at BALTAN. The Piksel/BALTAN collaboration will run from September until December 2009.

(continue reading…)