Bergen, Norway 21-24 Nov– Art lovers in Bergen are buzzing with curiosity as they observe a decline in exhibitions featuring diverse groups of artists and artworks. Many galleries have shifted their focus to solo exhibitions or site-specific projects, leaving the community to ponder: where are the exhibitions that unite multiple artists and provide a broader, more panoramic perspective on contemporary themes?
Amidst this shift, Piksel, the festival for electronic art and technological freedom, continues to stand strong in this guerrilla warfare of creativity. Now in its 22nd edition, the Piksel festival is set to arrive in Bergen with a robust lineup of artists presenting a significant electronic art exhibition. The festival will feature two nights of audiovisual performances at Østre, workshops, and presentations at Studio207—a shared space located at Strandgaten 207, home to both Piksel and Borealis, as well as various venues around the city.
Piksel is where new media, art, hacking, and DIY culture converge. This year festival presents the opportunity for local artists to connect with active media labs based in Europe. Artist-researchers from APO33 (France), MADLAB (Cyprus), and STWST (Linz) will gather in Bergen to present a new edition of MEDIA()MESS, an intermedia artwork that explores the disconnections in our mediated realities through audiovisual performances, media activism, and collaborative research.
The festival also highlights sustainable ocean research and seafaring. Three visionary artists and engineers are behind the groundbreaking Ohanda.One Project, a utopian zero-emission ocean vessel designed to revolutionize sustainable ocean research. This mobile collaborative workspace and research platform aims to connect artists, scientists, and environmental organizations, fostering innovation while promoting open knowledge and environmental awareness. The ongoing workshop at Strandgaten 207 will serve as a hub for creative minds to tackle the pressing challenges facing our oceans.
The exhibitions will showcase more than 20 artists, theming video games and poetry, artificial intelligence warfare, privacy and the deep net, society defense strategies, and the ethical and environmental impact of technology. Visitors can expect interactive installations and experimental media, alongside live electronics, witnessing a fusion of technology and art that redefines live experiences.
Join us at the Piksel Festival 2024 from the 21st to the 24th of November in Bergen, and be part of a transformative artistic journey that challenges perceptions and sparks dialogue around the pressing issues of our time.
Exhibition – “Silent Vegetal Thoughts” – by María Castellanos and Alberto Valverde May 24th – June 28th @ Studio 207, Strandgaten 207, Bergen.
Exhibition Opening May 24th 18:00- 22:00 @ Studio 207. Exhibition Period: May 25th – June 28th Opening Hours: Wednesday – Sunday 12:00-18:00
Ever wondered what goes on in the minds of the plants surrounding us?
In this site-specific installation at the Studio 207, plants take control of the environment by manipulating technological elements such as lights, sounds, and mechanical systems created with relays, including the Piksel studio’s internet-controlled lighting system.
Entering the exhibition, visitors becomes mere spectators, detecting patterns in plant behavior through observation.
The Exhibition opening takes place May 24th 18:00- 22:00 @ Studio 207.
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In the month of May and June, Piksel once again invite the general public, artists and thinkers alike to attend a series of interesting activities during the Piksel Fest Spill.
Satellite event in Bergen produced for the International conference for Live Coding in Shanghai (ICLC). International performance by Blaž Pavlica (SL) and Flor de fuego (AR/DE) Live Event at the Piksel Cyber Salon and at Studio 207 in Bergen. (https://idle.piksel.no)
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June 20th
15-18h IDLE Virtual Instruments Workshops
18h: Art Experiences Performances with General public performances. High Schools students, art students and general public.
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June 28th
20 h: Exhibition Program Closure
22 h: Final JAM IDLE Performance
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Welcome to Piksel09 – the 7th annual Piksel festival!
This years theme – f[re](e){op}[en]able – is a play on the words free, open and able. This is our way of celebrating the 7th festival with a meta theme which in a poetic way express the fundamental topics that have been the main focus of Piksel from the start – artistic practice built on technological freedom!
With representatives of more than 13 nationalities, heated discussions in German, Spanish, Dutch, English and Norwegian took part in the week long code-fest that was piksel04. The size of this unique event, which now functions as an essential get-to-gether and brain-storming session for artists and developers involved in free software on all platforms, is good testimony to the popularity of such approaches for audio, and primarily video work. Subtitled FLOSS (Free Libre and Open Source Software) in motion, piksel04 has most definitely snowballed from last year’s more modest gathering which was more about a close grouping of a small number of video developers pursuing a common set of concerns around interoperability.
In short, piksel04 was more about mutual inspiration amongst developer-coders, rather than a structured public event. Aside from the hefty schedule of presentations, most artists and developers were happy to show both work and coded underpinnings as larger groups of intrigued parties would group around their busy laptops, peering eagerly over onlookers’ shoulders.
#LiViDO (Linux Video Dynamic Objects) plugin framework
#streaming solutions, with Ogg Theora very much in favour,
#open source artistic apps, from the venerable Pd (Pure Data), PDP (Pure Data Packet) and Super-Collider to GePhex and the extrava-gantly named Gullibloon.
Decoding Black Magic. Interventions in Infrastructure
Piksel Festival 2021 15th of November to 12th of December
Critical Engineers Working Group exhibition “Decoding Black Magic. Interventions in Infrastructure” will take place from the 15th of November to 12th of December 2021, showing well known artworks plus new works in progress by the artists Bengt Sjölén and Danja Vasiliev. Black Book of Wireless (2020), Unintended Emissions (2019), Vending Private Network, WannaScry! [work in progress] and FakeDeeper – Portrait of three critical engineers (Bengt Sjölén, 2021)
Black Book of Wireless
The Black Book of Wireless is intended to be a book of the dark magic that antennas and radios is, with pages that are circuits and PCB trace antennas (copper traces on PCB material) and of which some examples are shown in this iteration. The piece tries to describe the physical connection between form and function in high frequency electronics such that all the traditional passive electronic components can be implemented with just the shape of copper on a substrate: a resistor being the thickness and length of trace, a capacitor a gap in a trace, a coil literally being a spiral or coil shaped trace and more obscure shapes like filters, couplers, transmission lines. The more obscure parts of this is things that are not fully understood or even if you can model and simulate how you think they will behave you have to try them out to see how they actually behave. For examples in the pictures see e.g. the UWB antennas that look like little faces or funny cartoon shapes and the fractal antennas with funny shapes and turns trying to maximize their length in a finite space or the Vivaldi antennas curved shapes where the maximum and minimum gaps between the copper bodies define the range of frequencies the antenna is tuned for while not even being connected the input – the input is on the opposite side of the PCB being coupled and in that way conveying the received signal.
Black Book of Wireless receives and decodes radio signals present in the local environment such as Air Traffic transponders for airplanes flying past, AIS transponders from ships, GSM communication between local cell towers and phones, Wifi communication between devices and base stations. Decoded information as well as description of other artefacts such as pcb trace antennas and a software radio system that can be a rogue GSM baase station (the white beagle bone and the white usrp software radio board with gsm antennas) is continuously printed on terminal style min screens distributed across the table.
Inserted into urban environs, Unintended Emissions captures, dissects, maps and projects radio emissions invisibly shared by our portable wireless devices.
Unintended Emissions reveals meta-data such as make of device, networks the device previously connected to and Internet connection requests transmitted by the device out into the air, employing two arrays of directional Yagi antennae the project attempts to determine positions of Wi-Fi devices in the vicinity.
Similar to surveillance and tracking systems such as StingRay, Unintended Emissions places mobile Wi-Fi users on a 2D map indicating the kind of device user has, time of appearance, user’s network activity and other user-specific meta data. This information can be further analyzed to determine the user’s identity and movements within a locality and the Internet.
Using methods and technologies known to be deployed by federal, surveillance initiatives, the intervention seeks to engender a “healthy paranoia” in the interests of an increased techno-political subjectivity.
Vending Private Network
A vending machine for selling VPN internet access via gateways located four countries not involved in FIVE- NINE- ELEVEN-EYES internet surveillance program.
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have come into increasing demand in recent years, providing route encryption through hostile networks. In China, Vietnam, Turkey and Pakistan they also serve to mitigate government censorship, such that foreign sites otherwise blocked by state firewalls are made available to VPN users (Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, activist sites and digital libraries being the most common).
Vending Private Network takes the form of a condom vending machine, such as those typically seen in public toilets, nightclubs and bars. Equipped with mechanical buttons, a coin-slot and USB ports, it offers 4 VPN routes, each with an animated graphic depicting the route as a fantasy destination.
Audiences are invited to insert a USB stick into the slot, a coin (1 pound or euro) into the machine, and to select a VPN destination by pressing a mechanical button. In doing so, a unique VPN configuration file is then written to the USB stick. Special instructions (in the form of a README.txt) are also copied, explaining how to use the VPN in a special ‘sheathed’ mode that evades detection methods (namely Deep Packet Inspection, or DPI) used by corporations and state-controlled infrastructure administrators. This is the only means known to work against state controlled firewalls.
Vending Private Network is especially designed for use in wealthy countries; only then can its ulterior motive come into play: leveraging economic and cultural privilege to benefit those less fortunate. With each VPN config paid for, another ‘shadow config’ is generated, to be later shipped to dissidents, activist organisations and others in Turkey, China, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran (other countries to be confirmed) such that those that need it most can enjoy protection and access to the open web.
The coins inserted into the vending machine also directly fund the VPN running costs, whose tally is displayed on each screen of the vending machine. Should a particular VPN not have enough money deposited to pay for monthly server hosting costs, it is shutdown, with a white on black notice on the display that it no longer functions due to insufficient public funding. Should money sufficient to cover costs be donated the dormant server will boot back to life and public service continues.
Just as one might expect to see on a condom vending machine, Vending Private Network is adorned with the sticker “Get Protected”.
WannaScry! [work in progress]
WannaScry! is a video-conferencing server that operates from an exhibition venue and publicly displays and stores video calls conducted through it. Real-time and recorded video-chat are projected inside a Palantir*-like scrying ball.
*Palantir is a Techie Software Soldier Spy, Big Data’s scariest, most secretive unicorn in Silicon Valley1
FakeDeeper – Portrait of three critical engineers (Bengt Sjölén, 2021)
Photo manipulation has existed as long as photography has existed. Recent research has leveraged machine learning to do things such as face swap to replace the face of a person in a video with another persons face or to be able to drive one persons face with the motion of another face thereby e.g. making it look like a persons says or a reacts in a way that they didn’t do.
With our visual culture, in news, politics, social media etc, the ultimate proof of that something actually happened, or what someone actually said, has for many decades been the moving image documenting the event – what used to be perceived as the unquestionable absolute truth.
We have now rapidly moved into a time where this is no longer the case, where images and videos are malleable and easily edited to misrepresent events, to literally put words in someones mouth that they never uttered, or place people at a scene in which they never were.
This obviously has far-reaching implications in a society that puts the ultimate trust in the image be it a surveillance camera, a news coverage or a video posted on social media. FakeDeeper demonstrates this in a simple and direct way by having the face of a visitor drive the faces on 3 still images making them move their mouths, pose and facial expressions as the visitor does in front of the camera in real time. The live situation also allows for weird deformations and glitches and the possibility to easily break the illusion in ways that a deliberate fake video production would of course edit away but then also hints at artefacts that can reveal the fake while also emphasizing how much can be done easily with readily available code, machine learning models and only still images and a webcam.
Current variant:
3 screens (or a projection) shows 3 faces. A camera tracks faces of visitors in the space in front of the three screens. As the system locks to your face the 3 faces on the screens start moving in concert as your face does – you control all 3 faces in concert, if you smile they smile, if you lean your head to the right they do to, if you open your mouth they open their mouths mimicking you. The faces can be glitched and deformed e.g. by hiding part of your face, make strange faces or turning it almost away from the camera making it hard for the machine learning system to catch the pose and expression on your face. This also means that typically as you turn and walk away from the camera the last frame would typically be a weird deformed and glitched triptyc of faces.
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Piksel is glad to announce a special collaboration program with the Critical Engineers Working Group within the next 3 years. As a result, Piksel will host several exhibitions, workshops, and presentations led by CE components. The program will be developed within the Piksel Festival and Piksel Fest Spill activities along the years 2021-2023. Starting in November with an exhibition and 2 workshops. Stay tuned!
In 2011, a group of artists and engineers published the “Critical Engineering Manifesto”, since translated into 18 languages. In true avant-garde fashion, the “Manifesto” launches by describing Engineering as “the most transformative language of our time, shaping the way we move, communicate and think”, thus, it is the work of the Critical Engineer “to study and exploit this language, exposing its influence”. Further, a Critical Engineer “recognises that each work of engineering engineers its user”, considering “any technology depended upon to be both a challenge and a threat”. And so the manifesto unfolds.
Nearly ten years later, the relevance of the “Critical Engineering Manifesto” has only become more evident, as an ever-growing public becomes aware of the techno-political implications of using – and depending upon – integrated systems and complex, networked technologies. Today, one can find its 11 points listed on the walls of hacklabs, museums, engineering and media-art academies, and in a great many texts, the world over.
Around the manifesto, originally written by Julian Oliver, Gordan Savičić and Danja Vasiliev, gathered a larger group – the Critical Engineering Working Group – now including also Sarah Grant, Bengt Sjölén and Joana Moll.
Piksel will start a series of works inviting some of the representatives of the group Critical Engineering Working Group to work in Bergen.
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We’re excited to share some positive news: thanks to your support, we’ve secured in funding from the city about one-third of what we usually received before cuts, which has allowed us to regain our operational footing. This is an important milestone, and we’re truly grateful for your solidarity. Thank you for believing in Piksel and our mission. Let’s keep working together to build a vibrant future for art, technology, and society. Warm regards, The Piksel Team https://chng.it/hGQKNgV99F
AUDIOVISUAL PERFORMANCES / ONLINE CONCERTS @ PikselFest Streaming now: The Way of Schesa, Ryan Ross Smith and Shawn Lawson https://www.twitch.tv/pikselfest