PIKSEL

You and I, You and Me

Number of Participants: 15
Place: Bergen Dance Center, Georgernes Verft 12, 5011 Bergen
Time: Thursday 18th of November from 12-14h
Duration: 2 hours

This workshop is part of the Performing Arts Workshop program, electronics and free/libre technologies applied to the performing arts. It is a Piksel initiative in collaboration with Bergen Dansesenter – resource centre for dance in Vestland.

To register please send an email to: piksel21@piksel.no with your name and the name of the workshop you want to attend.

You and I, You and Me
by Mindaugas Gapsevicius (LT) and Maria Safronova Wahlström (SE)
http://triple-double-u.com/you-and-i-you-and-me/

Imagine the future. Humans, computing machines, and various types of hybrids share the space they live in. Senses are altered, some are inextricably linked to computing devices. Electricity is used to control the space and beings living in it. Humans take responsibility to reshape social ties to avoid being controlled by corporations and machines.

The project You and I, You and Me explores the impact of the environment through electricity. How far could electricity help in understanding the other? Is there a possibility to alter human senses by electric impulses? During the participatory event, the audience is invited to experience the environment, including other humans, by wearing jewellery, shoes, and headwear.

The project production was supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture, and the Nordic Council of Ministers
https://youtu.be/NmVE_78Y43o

The workshop will guide through the different wearables objects: jewellery, headwear and shoes which leads to different public interactions:

Collection of wearables

Jewellery
The collection of jewelry questions the impact of differently charged ions on humans. By definition, an ion is an electrically charged particle produced by either removing or adding electrons from or to a neutral atom being in every solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. These differently charged subatomic particles, while interacting, generate electric current. Consequently, humans also generate electric current. What are the abilities of humans to generate electric current and, while using it, experience the environment?

The jewelry pieces hold within it a small LED powered by the human body. Being very sensitive, the flashing of the LED depends on humidity, temperature, contact to the body, and other parameters that affect the components used for the circuit.

Headwear.
The project was inspired by research on brain-to-brain interfaces, including the study “A Brain-to-Brain Interface for Real-Time Sharing of Sensorimotor Information” by Miguel Pais-Vieira et al. Following the research, the collection of wearables questions the boundaries of empathy. Aesthetically, the project refers to traditional headwear and the role of headwear in signalling human identity to others.

The headwear uses medical strategies based on brain cell communication: the electrical impulses are detected while using electroencephalography (EEG), and brain stimulation is triggered by passing DC current through electrodes (tDCS), a non-invasive method to treat depressive disorder, increase empathic abilities, or decrease antisocial behaviour in violent offenders.

Shoes
The collection of shoes uses excess human heat, which is turned into electricity to generate sound. At the same time, shoes refer to daily clothing, something humans wear to protect themselves from unexpected environmental obstacles, including other organisms that are not necessarily always friendly to humans as well as cold. While being affected by the ambient temperature, light, and movement, the shoes suggest rethinking human’s relationship with nature.

Furthermore, the collection critiques the hype surrounding renewable energy, which often pollutes the environment no less than the energy obtained from burning gas or coal. Could excess human heat be considered renewable energy?

About Mindaugas Gapševičius
http://triple-double-u.com/you-and-i-you-and-me/

Mindaugas Gapševičius (born 1974) lives and works in Berlin, Weimar and Vilnius. His workquestions machine creativity without presuming that the human being is the sole creative force. He has completed MA studies at the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 1999 and received a Master of Philosophy degree from the Goldsmiths University of London. He is a creative fellow at the Bauhaus University in Weimar since 2015. Gapševičius was one of the initiators and founders of Institutio Media, the first Lithuanian media art platform (1998), as well as the European Migrating Art Academies network for emerging artists (2008). Along with colleagues from the TOP association, he initiated the first TOP community biolaboratory in Berlin (2016). In 2019 he established Alt lab, a laboratory for non-disciplinary research in Vilnius. Gapševičius’s works have been shown at the Ars Electronica festival in Linz (2019, 2020), the National Gallery of Art and MO Museum in Vilnius (2019), Piksel festival in Bergen (2018), RIXC art and science festival in Riga (2016), Pixelache festival in Helsinki (2015 and 2016), Pixxelpoint festival in Nova Goritsa (2014), KUMU Museum in Tallin (2011).

Responsive Body | Responsive Tech

Number of Participants: 10-15
Place: Bergen Dance Center, Georgernes Verft 12, 5011 Bergen
Time: Saturday 20th of November from 10-14h
Duration: 4 hours

This workshop is part of the Performing Arts Workshop program, electronics and free/libre technologies applied to the performing arts. It is a Piksel initiative in collaboration with PRODA-professional dance training/Bergen Dansesenter – resource centre for dance in Vestland.

To register please send an email to: piksel21@piksel.no with your name and the name of the workshop you want to attend.

https://www.roosnaflak.com/

Responsive Body is a dynamic system created by Roosna & Flak based on listening to yourself and the environment, training sensitivity and coordination as well as strength and stamina. Its purpose is to develop a strong, resilient and intelligent body that is open to internal and external impulses.

Roosna & Flak created the training from a need to prepare for a wide range of challenges. The system is under continuous evolution as a result of an ongoing movement practice and teaching.

The training starts with a gentle warm-up to access the breath and the joints, before bringing up the pulse and working through the major muscle groups. This is followed by a section focusing on more complex coordination and use of space, preparing for individual and partnering work, where the focus is on creating movement material based on listening to impulses from both outside and inside the body. This leads to more in-depth investigation into both creating and organizing material into choreographic structures.

Towards the end of the workshop sensor technology is brought into the game, enabling the research of a new set of connections between movement and sound. For this we use our own set of sensors.

Workshop leaders would offer a hands-on introduction to performing physically with movement sensors, developing the necessary sensibilities for producing sound and movement as an integrated whole.

About the dancers and choreographers:
https://www.roosnaflak.com/

Internationally active choreographers and dancers Külli Roosna (Estonia) and Kenneth Flak (Norway) have been collaborating since 2008. Whether they are creating their own choreographies or collaborating with others, their work deals with the narratives and technologies of the body. They have explored a wide range of themes, including deep ecology, Viking mythology, totalitarianism and internet culture. The core of their work is human experience in interconnected realities. This is often explored through the dancing body’s possibilities and limitations, in a constant dialogue with the digital technologies and discourses that extend and counterpoint it.

They have performed their works all over the world. Additionally, they teach Responsive Body movement technique, composition, and sensor programming at various universities and festivals, adapting their methodology and content to different contexts.

Their interactive music and dance performance Blood Music was nominated for the Estonian Dance Awards 2015; Stalking Paradise, a commission work for Lublin Dance Theater, was selected for the biannual Polish Dance Days. Prime Mover (2018) and Two Body Orchestra (2020) were nominated for the Estonian Dance Awards.

Külli Roosna (EE)

Born 1981, is an Estonian dancer, choreographer and teacher. She graduated Tallinn University in 2005 as a choreographer/dancer and continued her studies in Rotterdam Dance Academy in the Netherlands, obtaining her second bachelor degree in 2007.

In 2013 she obtained an MA of choreography at Tallinn University.

She has worked with international choreographers Stian Danielsen, Karen Foss, Kari Hoaas, Cid Perlman, Richard Siegal, Dylan Newcomb, Fine5 Dance Theater, and many others.

In 2010 her solo performance Circle Through was awarded the First Prize at the International Festival of Modern Choreography in Vitebsk, Belarus. She is the recipient of the 2017 Pärnu City Creative Stipendium.

Her teaching and performing has brought her to festivals, universities and theaters in Estonia, Norway, The Netherlands, Poland, Jordan, India, Japan, Ukraine, Hungary, Czech Republic, Sweden, Germany, France, Russia, Finland, Lithuania, Belarus, and South Korea. In 2014-15 she was board member of Estonian Dance Artist Union and head of its Stipendium commission.

Kenneth Flak (NO)

Born 1975, is a Norwegian dancer, choreographer, composer and teacher. He has performed in the works of André Gingras, Dansdesign, Richard Siegal, Kari Hoaas, Preeti Vasudevan and many others.

He is educated at the National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Norway and the Amsterdam Arts School in the Netherlands.

In 2007 he received a Bessie Performer’s Award in New York for his interpretation of Gingras’ solo CYP17. In 2010 he was nominated for the BNG Award in Amsterdam for his choreography Of Gods and Driftwood.

Flak has taught contemporary dance and sound design at universities and festivals around the world.

A self-taught composer and creative coder, he makes music and interactive tools for live choreographies and dance films.

He was chair of Norwegian Arts Council Commission for Dance 2018-2020.

Press
Kahe keha orkester, Anu Jurisson, Pärnu Postimees, 26 March 2021.
Post-dramaatiline tantsu-uurimus ja numbriballett, Heili Einasto, Postimees, 12 November 2020
Kehad tehnoloogia ja tantsu puutepunktis, Iiris Viirpalu, Sirp, 23 October 2020
Video: Sõltumatu Tantsu Laval kohtuvad kehad ja tehnoloogia, ERR kultuur, 6 Oktober 2020
Olemise protsess, Eline Selgis, STL, 29 September 2020

Media
11 January 2019: Elu pingeväljade liikumapanev jõud (Marie Pullerits, Sirp)
13 November 2018: [Külli Roosna rääkis tantsulavastusest “Prime Mover”](https://treraadio.bandcamp.com/track/1 November 018-k-lli-roosna-r-kis-tantsulavastusest-prime-mover) (Tre raadio)
12 November 2018: Külli Roosna lavastusest “Prime Mover”: see sündis meie endi elust (Ester Vilgats, ERR)
12 November 2018: Endlas esietendub pärnakate rahvusvaheline tantsulavastus (Anu Jürisson, Pärnu Postimees)
12 November 2018: Endla Teatris toimub tantsulavastuse “Prime Mover” Eesti esietendus (ERR)
5 November 2018: Video: katkend Külli Roosna ja Kenneth Flaki uuslavastusest “Prime Mover” (ERR)
2 November 2018: Tütrekese sünd ärgitas looma Endla Küünis tantsulavastust (Anu Jürisson, Pärnu Postimees)

Piksel KidZ – Conductive Drawing Workshop (Interacting with drawings)

6^th-13^th November – 10-13h | 16-19h
Gratis verksted for barn/unge i alderen 8-18 år for påmelding: piksel20(at)piksel(dot)no

Conductive Drawing Workshop (Interacting with drawings)

Conductive Drawing is an experimental workshop combining electronics and drawing. We will investigate the conductive properties of graphite, build our own electronic circuits, and use drawing to activate and manipulate sound, light and motors.

Duration: 5 day – 4 hours

Age: 9-14 years old.

Exhibition: Piksel Studio

Oda Bremnes

Oda Bremnes (b. 1994, Oslo) is an artist investigating how we respond emotionally towards technology. Her work consists of interactive video installations, sound and electronics. She experiments with ghosts as a felt presence and investigates how inanimate objects and machines could be recognised as living creatures. Bremnes recently graduated from the Master of Fine Art programme at Bergen Academy of Contemporary Art (KMD), University of Bergen.

Skade Henriksen

Skade Henriksen (Born 1988, Hammerfest, Finnmark) makes drawings, photographs, sculpture and installations. With a subtle minimalistic approach, Henriksen wants to amplify the astonishment of the spectator by creating compositions or settings that generate tranquil poetic images that leave traces and balances on the edge of recognition and alienation. Skade Henriksen has recently graduated with a MFA and currently lives and works in Bergen.

Piksel KidZ Lab is supported by the Norwegian Cultural Fund and Vestland Fylkeskommune.

Workshop: Internet Archaeology for Beginners, Duncan Poulton

Piksel Fest Spill 2020
7th of June – 16:00 – 18:00

Workshop
Duncan Poulton working process. Duncan Poulton (UK)
To attend send us an email to piksel20(at)piksel(dot)no

The workshop will happen remotely from UK and at the Studio 207 in Bergen with Piksel assistance and guiding. You can join us at the Studio in Bergen or online. There is a reduced number of subscriptions. 5 people at the Studio 207 and 15 people online. Inscriptions are needed. For those attending online we will send you the instructions on equipment and materials you need to follow it online and how to join us.

Internet Archaeology for Beginners
Join artist Duncan Poulton for a virtual workshop which offers an introduction to techniques for mining and misusing the web for creative reuse. Attendees will visit the depths of the internet that search engines don’t want you to find, and learn to make their own digital collages from the materials they gather.

The workshop will be using the open-source image editing software GIMP. If you want to follow along with the workshop, please download GIMP in advance here: https://www.gimp.org/

Duncan Poulton is a London-based artist working in an expanded form of collage, spanning digital video and image assemblage. Itinerant in nature, his work is currently preoccupied with notions of circulation, digital waste and the copy, as he acts out an ongoing remediation of our increasingly connected world. Working exclusively with found content, his digital works evoke a new visual culture of constant juxtaposition, ambivalence towards images and the collapsing down of history and meaning engendered by the internet. He has shown extensively in the UK and internationally in South Korea, USA, Greece, India, Germany, Finland, Hungary, Russia and New Zealand.

Artist’s website: duncanpoulton.com
Instagram: @duncpoulton

The venues
– Piksel Cyber Salon. Piksel invites you to have a cyber experience and to join us at our hybrid activities. Piksel Cyber Salon will host part of the Copy Paste exhibition, workshops, performances and lectures. Join us!

– Piksel youtube@Piksel Produksjoner

– Studio 207, Strandgaten 207, BERGEN The new Piksel/Borealis space in town for electronic art, experimental music and adventurous listening.

Piksel Fest Spill is supported by the Municipality of Bergen, Arts Council Norway and ProHelvetia.

Hackteria / BadLAB
with the collaboration of Kiyoshi Yamamoto.

Engineering is also affecting to molecular biology, posing new ethical challenges that artists investigate through DIY bioart methods. International DIY bio networks and communities encourage the collaboration of scientists, hackers and artists to combine their expertise. Piksel is inviting the main artistic DIY bionetworks worldwide, to establish a collaborative interaction with local artists. Piksel Fest Spill invites the audience for interesting interactions through a DIY or die – Plant Printing Workshop and the Worship – Dinner Performance.

11th of June Worship – Dinner Performance
HackteriaLab & QWAS | Migrating Dialogue
The Performance is based on an exchange of food, gesture, rhythm and sensuality threw online meeting tool like zoom, jitsi, skype, etc. It is a tangible stretch towards how sensuality is perceived in the digital realm threw media.

Worship is a dinner performance created by Maya Minder in collaboration with Almaty based artists Dana Iskakova and Takhir Yakyharov. The Performance is based on an exchange of food, gesture, rhythm and sensuality threw online meeting tool like zoom, jitsi, skype, etc. It is a tangible stretch towards how sensuality is perceived in the digital realm threw media. Elements of #asrm (autonomous sensory meridian response) the tickling sounds of whisper or crumbling paper, walking on snow or stroking hair combined with the elements of new media trend of #mukbang (Korean word for food space) the eating in front of audience recorded with detailed sounds, is probed and performed during an mutual dinner happening. The audience is invited to partake or just to relaxe and concentrate on chatter and talk during the food. People are served with umami rich food, so to give a physical layer of sensual perception emphasized threw food and audio-visual experience.

13th of June Workshop DIY or die – Plant Printing
HackteriaLab & BadLab & Kiyoshi Yamamoto.
You can attend physically at Studio 207 in Bergen or online. Inscription is necessary. We will send you the instructions on equipment and materials you need to follow it online and how to join us.
To attend please send us an email to: info(at)piksel(dot)no
At the Studio only 5 persons.

DIY or DIE Is an transdisciplinary workshop on the topic of coloring fabrics with wild herbs. The toxic impact of the textile industry is the starting point of this workshop. Together we will learn the old technique of dyeing with natural dyes that we find in our neighborhood. The Workshop will be held mutually in Bergen, NW and Zurich, CH under the guidance of a local assistant and threw a virtual meeting with the BadLab project based in Zurich and working at the Theater house Gessneralle during the Naked Transition Project. We will dye fabrics of silk and cotton ourselves, go foraging for wild herbs and work with poisonous substances in small quantities – poisonousness is always a question of dose (Paracelsus) – investigating the toxic side effects of the textile industry.

This workshop is a lot about the playful approach of learning and unlearning, we will follow the art of dyeing by means of DIYbio methods and old knowledge about plant dye and natural coloring. We use plants to dye fabrics and create unpredictable design and patterns. In the framework of the theme of the exhibition „naked transition the aspect of empowerment by DIY and community based work is celebrated threw the moment of liberation – Just do it and Do it with Others. Embroidery hoops stand as a symbol of the time we save, which we take as free time by growing beyond the collective stick tradition of manual work, no longer embroidering the fabric with rules and slogans, but use nature itself, its signs leaves to create traces of stories.

Participants: Paloma Ayala, Lisa Biedlingmaier, Lucile Haute, Anne-Laure Franchette, Corinna Mattner, Maya Minder, Les Plants Sorcière.

Hackteria is a global network active since 2009 of people practicing DIY (do-it-yourself) and DIWO (do-it-with-others) biology, with a focus on art, design and interdisciplinary cooperation. Its goal is to allow artists, scientists, cooks, farmers, philosophers and hackers to collaborate and test various biohacking and bioart techniques, outside conventional settings such as academic laboratories and art institutions. http://hackteria.org

BAD LAB project is a collective laboratory of interdisciplinary ideas and practices around plants. BAD LAB deals with the politics of the invisible, plant migration, the resurgence of oppressed and marginalized feminine knowledge, the creation of solidarious ways in which to narrate space that include rural, indigenous beings, and biota, digging up lost and old recipes around healing and culinary, healthcare and colloquial practices.

QWAS – Migrating Dialogue
The project QWAS – Migrating Dialogue is a transcultural collaboration between the Zurich University of Arts (ZHdK) and the Eurasian Cultural Alliance (ECA) in Almaty, Kazakhstan.The project was launched in 2017 and has so far encompassed two student exchange programmes (for which participants travelled from Zurich to Almaty by train) and two e-learning seminars; with exhibitions taking place simultaneously in both cities.

QWAS was created by Rada Leu and Peter Tränkle. The project is kindly supported by the framework of the International Hub Arts for Change – Arts and Design in Social Processes of ZHdK. https://www.qwas.ch/

Participating artists from HackteriaLab 2020 in Bergen:

Maya Minder (CH/KR) *1983
Artist, Fermentista and Organizer. Lives and works in Zurich. Several exhibitions in local and global spheres. Pro Helvetia, Werkbeitrag 2018, nominated for the KADIST AWARD 2017, Part of the Klöntal Triennale 2017. Several grants and support from Migros Kulturprozent, Pro Helvetia and Gerbert Rüf Stiftung for projects she co-curated. She studied art history at the University of Zurich and helds a MA Fine Arts Degree from the Zurich University of Arts.
Founder of Gasthaus: Fermentation & Bacteria
Active member of the Hackteria – Open Source Biological Art Network https://www.hackteria.org/
Member of Gesellschaft für Mikrobiomik.org https://mikrobiomik.org

Piksel Fest Spill is supported by the Municipality of Bergen, Arts Council Norway and PROHELVETIA.

22nd May – 21th June | @Studio207 | @Piksel Cyber Salon
Opening hours (Monday closed): 14:00 – 18:00 | Weekends: 13:00 – 18:00
PROGRAM | Copy/Paste Exhibition | Hackteria / Bad Lab / Kiyoshi Yamamoto

The exhibition COPY/PASTE features the work of nine artists and art collectives who all incorporate copying as a core aspect of their work. Taking the form of a physical exhibition at Piksel Studio 207, an online exhibition at Piksel Cyber Salon, two hybrid workshops and a lecture, the exhibition aims to show that copying is natural, an exhibition to re-think the way we create/share/copy and paste.

Along with the exhibition, Piksel is also presenting a DIY bio art program, the “DIY or die – Plant Printing Workshop” on the topic of coloring fabrics with wild herbs and the toxic impact of the textile industry. The “Worship – Dinner Performance” joins performers from Zurich, Kazakhstan and Bergen. It is based on an exchange of food, gesture, rhythm and sensuality threw to an online meeting tool like zoom, jitsi, skype, etc. It is a tangible stretch towards how sensuality is perceived in the digital realm threw media. Due to the travel restrictions brought by COVID-19, these two events will take part at Piksel Spill Fest remotely, from the virtual space, , with base in Gessnerallee Zurich.

Piksel Fest Spill is also premiering the Piksel Cyber Salon, a 3D virtual space where the audience can enjoy a Cyber experience through the virtual activities. Piksel Cyber Salon intends to bring a new realms to the boring but necessary digital tele-presence. Designed by the Mexican artist Malitzin Cortés, Piksel Cyber Salon will be the Piksel Fest Spill neuralgic hub.

Live coding is a performance practice that revolves around the creation and modification of code and algorithms in real-time. This kind of events are also named ALGORAVE, joining the words algorithm and rave. The 29th of May we welcome the artists Antonio Roberts and Alex McLean and their live audiovisual performance, taking place in parallel at the Studio 207 and the Cyber Salon.

COPY/PASTE featured artists: Carol Breen (IR), Constant (BE), LoVid (US), Lorna Mills (CA), Matthew Plummer-Fernandez + Julien Deswaef, Duncan Poulton (UK), Eric Schrijver (NL), Peter Sunde (FI)

Hackteria / BadLAB members: Maya Minder, Anne-Laure Franchette and Corinnna Mattner, Zurich. QWAS artists: Dana Iskakova and Takhir Yakyharov, Kazakhstan and with the collaboration of Kiyoshi Yamamoto, Bergen.

PRESS info: maite@piksel.no gif@piksel.no
PRESS Note + images:

PIKSEL e/co,li:b-re.bel PROGRAM Download the PDF

PROGRAM

Thursday 21st Nov

16:00 – 18:00 – AV performance – Piksel Music Pavilion

18:00 – 20:00 – Installation and Piksel DJ’s – Piksel Hut // Utestuen i Skostredet

20:00 – 24:00 – Exhibition Opening – S59 + Piksel Studio 207

Friday 22nd Nov

11:00 – 17:00 – Exhibition – S59 and Piksel Studio 207

11:00 – 13:00 – Workshop EXCERPT video manipulation software Gregoire Rousseau, Piksel Studio 207

11:00 – 13:00- Workshop Environmental / Biological sensing using Arduino and other open source approaches, Cy Keener, Piksel Studio 207

15:00 – 17:00 – Workshop Sounding Feet by Instituto Stocos: Pablo Palacio, Daniel Bisig, Muriel Romero, Piksel Studio 207

15:00 – 17:00 – Installation and Piksel DJ’s + Special guest – Piksel Hut // Utestuen i Skostredet

16:00 – 17:00 – Lecture Post-news journalism: Art meets journalism talk, Hossein Derakhshan, Bergen Public Library

19:00 – 21:00 – Installation and Piksel DJ’s – Piksel Hut // Utestuen i Skostredet

21:00 – 03:00 – AV Performances – Østre
Invisible Ecologies, Gabriela Munguía (MX)
Jana Jan vs. čirnŭ (NO/ES)
ALOES: The Road, Alex van Giersbergen, Marloes van Son (NL/FI)
Juan Antonio Nieto (ES)
Limit of the Off-limit, Nnja Riot, Lisa McKendrick (UK/NZ)

Saturday 23rd Nov

11:00 – 17:00 – Exhibition – S59 and Piksel Studio 207

11:00 – 13:00 – Workshop Invisible Ecologies Lab: wind instruments, Gabriela Munguía (MX), Piksel Studio 207

11:00 – 13:00 – Workshop Mapping Smart Futures, Andreas Zingerle, Davide Bevilacqua, Linda Kronman, Piksel Studio 207

15:00 – 17:00 – Installation and Piksel DJ’s + Special guest – Piksel Hut // Utestuen i Skostredet

19:00 – 21:00 – Installation and Piksel DJ’s – Piksel Hut // Utestuen i Skostredet

21:00 to 03:00 – AV Performances – Østre
OECUMENE, Pablo Palacios, Muriel Romero, Daniel Bisig (ES) Crystal Moss Core Force, Noish (ES)
Jukka Hautamäki (FI)
Transduction, Matt Spendlove (UK)
Agnes Pe (ES) + Aleksandar Bradic (US)

—-
Piksel is supported by the Municipality of Bergen, Arts Council Norway, Hordaland Kommune, Community of Madrid, Austrian Embassy, Acción Cultural Española, Inaem, Pro Helvetia and BEK.

Urinotron is a large-scale installation that takes our organic waste (urine!) and transforms it into power. Contribute your urine and then put your feet up as the salts in your liquid gold turn into sustainable pee power. Urinotron combines scientific equipment, engineering skills, reels of electronic wires in an artistic equivalent of an alchemist’s workshop will be producing a different kind of gold.

Friday 15th – Sunday 17th November

• Urinotron, Sandra and Gaspard Bébié-Valérian(FR)
  Friday 15:00 – 19:00
  Saturday 12:00 – 19:00 – with a break
  Sunday 12:00 – 14:00

The project is declined according to the contexts it is hosted. For Piksel festival, a unic workshop will be organized to build a new version of the Urinotron, collectively made and opened to improvements or inventive skills. As energy is one of the most important stakes of our society, working together around the Urinotron will offer the opportunity to think about other energetic models and why we are flushing such a valuable resource.

The general shape of the Urinotron crosses the aesthetics of alchemy, the assembly of heterogeneous elements such as glass, steel, copper, carbon, aluminium, coal and constitutes a clandestine laboratory within which are assembled tanks, electrodes, batteries, cables. This great whole can be likened to a giant microbial battery, functional and whose objective is not so much to reproduce or improve existing research in laboratories on this subject but rather, through a symbolic and artistic bias, to develop a setting criticism of the technique to test the limits and create, then, a material judgment on the industrial and capitalist context about bioenergies.

The challenges associated with the energy transition engage us to rethink our uses, our consumption patterns and industrialization in our societies. From household appliances to transportation, from the management of public lighting to the optimization of web pages (a google search would be equivalent to a boiling water pot), each gesture is the object of the calculation of its carbon footprint and its cost energy. The hyper-industrialization and the abstract nature of pollution and global warming (micro-particles, gases, spatials and elusive temporalities on an individual scale) produce a shift, a decoupling between the production of energy and its use. The growing intermediation of these circuits plays a role in the loss of consciousness of each person’s place. Yet as basic, unlimited and easily adaptable resources, renewable energies open up a resilient economic model.

The intention of this project, symbolic and concrete, points the balance of power between a dominant, centralized electricity production and a microelectricity produced by each one of us, recyclable, reusable aand sustainable. This form of resistance to this economy in tension can be found outside, also, of the exhibition context, and makes it possible to think the project with a nesting in the public space within which the installation would maintain its specificity but would be connected to common uses, useful and to rethink the public space and its uses.

Piksel19 is supported by the Municipality of Bergen, Arts Council Norway, Hordaland Kommune, Community of Madrid, Austrian Embassy, Acción Cultural Española, Inaem, Pro Helvetia and BEK.

Piksel19 is proud to present the workshops from the 17th festival edition. Download Workshops PDF program Ranging from bioart workshops which target environmental and ecological issues, the smart city technotopias and video manipulation software created for and by artists, all mixed with DIY electronics and, artistic approaches.
Send us an email if you want to attend to piksel19(at)piksel(dot)no with the name of the workshop.

“Urinotron” is an installation that can produce electricity at a local or even micro-local level, from an organic waste, familiar but intimate, the urine. The workshop shows how to build up an Urinotron from scratch.

Cy Keener travelled to the Arctic to deploy RGB light and temperature sensors through sea ice, he is using these open source electronics and data at his installation Digital Ice Core. At his workshop he will train the participants on every DIY sensor that he uses to do this project.

Mapping Smart Futures the smart city technotopias focusing in South Korea and its smart cities as a case study. In the workshop attendants will unpack the omnipresence of technology in the ‘green’, sustainable, and clean cities and by applying Open Source Intelligence tools, citizen forensics and grassroot journalism we want to look at the current state of internet infrastructure in Scandinavia, with a special focus on Norway.

Invisible Ecologies Lab: wind instruments. The Wind Instruments Lab proposes to construct different environmental sensors and explore different sound processes for environmental and meteorological analog data to form a WindSynthLoop, a wind interactive electronic music instrument.

EXCERPT video manipulation software. Visual artists need to screen videos of high quality in many different contexts: from clean video work presentation, single channel video in gallery, a series of video for musical support, audiovisual performance with real time video handling, use of pre-recorded material and real time generated images. Excerpt can do all that.

The workshop Sounding Feet explores how small postural changes of a dancer can be used to control music. From an artistic point of view, this interactive relationship links the musical outcome of interaction to the proprioceptive awareness of a dancer and it exposes to an audience through the auditory modality a dancer’s minute movements that might be visually hidden. The project follows an approach that combines musical ideation, dance improvisation, interaction design, and engineering. Through this combination the development and design decisions (e.g. the characteristics, number and position of force resistive sensors) can be informed by artistic criteria.

—
Piksel19 is supported by the Municipality of Bergen, Arts Council Norway, Hordaland County, Community of Madrid, Austrian Embassy, Acción Cultural Española, Inaem, Pro Helvetia and BEK.

31^st of May Workshops @Piksel Studio 207 from 14:00 – 18:00

To sign up send and email to piksel19(at)piksel(dot)no with the subject Live Coding Music

This workshop is an introduction to real-time music creation with emphasis on Csound and Supercollider to a lesser extend. Csound has the ability to run everywhere and on every platform (eg. android, raspberry-pi, Bela, iOS or web-browser) and is relatively easy to learn compared to other computer music languages. I will introduce my own live-coding system Panaeolus as well as other live coding platforms which I have used. Participants will create their own web-based instrument or web-based installation (webstallation), which will be hosted online.

Hlöðver Sigurðsson (IS) is a computer musician and composer from Reykjavik. His performances has been seen at the Spektrum (berlín), Piksel Festival (Bergen) and Sonic Code Sessions Showcase, part of vorspiel of Transmediale 2017.

26^th of May Performance @Piksel Studio 207 – At 20:00

Expirator (reversed vacuum cleaner) by Pierre Berthet (BE)

27^th of May Workshop @Piksel Studio 207 from 14:00 – 18:00

Touching Sound by Pierre Berthet (BE)

To sign for this workshop write an email to piksel19(at)piksel(dot)no

WORKSHOP

Touching Sound, a workshop by Pierre Berthet (BE)

Listen what we touch

touch what sounds

sounds knead ears

ears catch time

Ingredients:

tin cans, water, steel wires, bamboo, plastic bags, tubes, dead plants, D.C. motors, sea shells, snail shells, stones, buckets, filter queen, hooks and gloves, balloons, straws, bottles…

Things own time are objects

they own space, they own time.

We walk with sounds in our hands

on our head

in our mouth, moving tongues while singing

moving lips while blowing

blow blow blow

Official opening 24^th of May from 19:00 – 23:00

Exhibition dates: 25^th of May – 16^th of June (Mondays closed)

Opening hours: 15:00 – 18:00

Bergen 2019

“I remembers the radio broadcasts from London during World War II and Norway’s king stiffening the resolve of his subjects under German occupation. ”
Judith Haaland, 98

The Paraset (Paratrooper radio set) was one of the most notorious of all the transceivers used by the partisan clandestine radio operators during WWII. Often transported in food baskets, suitcases, and other obscure places, it was used for clandestine radio communication primarily in Norway and Europe. The equipment is known as the “Paraset” because it was dropped by parachute for field agents. A fascinating piece of history.

With this exhibition Piksel wants to make an homage to the radio as a device and also to the importance of the listeners. In a historical moment where the FM analogue radio has been shot down and there are voices that claims that “Norway is not prepared for this.” and “Of course there is a lot of nostalgia in radio. That’s one of the reasons this switch is so controversial.” Piksel wants to bring some fresh air doing both, recalling the analogue radio and bringing new low-cost digital technologies to the people, radio-makers and emitters.

SIGNAL TO NOISE
One of the well known examples of Victor Papanek’s “designs for the real world” is that of a radio receiver for the third world. Produced from very simple, “cottage” like materials, such as an used juice can, paraffin wax and a wick as power source, the radio was non-directional, receiving any and all stations simultaneously. “But, as Victor Papanek will comment, in emerging countries, this was then of an importance: there was only one broadcast (carried by relay towers placed about fifty miles apart”. And, as Papanek continues, “It was much more than a clever little gadget, constituting a fundamental communication device for preliterate areas of the world. After being tested successfully in the mountains of North Carolina (an area where only one broadcast is easily received), the device was demonstrated to the Army. They were shocked. “What if a Communist”, they asked, “gets to the microphone?” The question is meaningless. The most important intervention is to make information of all kinds freely accessible to people.”

This story of the non‐expensive, locally adapted produced radio receiver is the starting point for an exhibition and a workshop which deals with different aspects of radio broadcasting: From the way a radio receiver and a radio transmitter are produced to radio infrastructure, and from the delivered information to the means of questioning its accuracy and validity. The exhibition will consider a historical perspective, but will mostly bring into discussion researches related to the present forms of radio infrastructure and radio phenomena, as well as strategies and tactics of radio‐based interventions.

List of works and artists:
Repertories of (in)discreetness
Tincuta Heinzel & Lasse Scherffig

∏‐Node Platform

Embodied RF Ecologies
Afroditi Psarra

Workshop
Do your own radio!
∏-box : streaming and local FM radio broadcasting with a raspberry pi
∏‐Node

Piksel Fest Spill is supported by the Municipality of Bergen, Arts Council Norway, the Wallonie-Bruxelles International and Rumanska Kultur Institutet.

Repertories of (in)discreetness
Tincuta Heinzel & Lasse Scherffig

Largely used during the Soviet Revolution, the “new” communication mediums of the beginning of 20th century’s played an important role in the Soviets’s propaganda strategy during the 1917‐1918 revolution [3]. The same strategy was equally adopted during the installation of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. The policies at the time have encouraged the production and the acquisition of radio devices by a large number in order to ensure the impact of the propaganda, while in the same time, the content of the broadcasting was subjected to a strict control.

Using this infrastructure, the USA and their Western alliances were trying to counter the communist propaganda. The creation of Radio Free Europe aimed to deliver “truth” and “objective” information. In the same way, radio phenomena (like interference) were used as technical interventions.

Repertories of (in)discreetness project has its starting point in the archives of Radio Free Europe from the Open Society Archives in Budapest. It questions the act and mechanisms of archiving “the Other”, with a focus on the European “East”. The project discusses the ways in which information is collected and transferred, the ways in which the East has gained an epistemic body through refraction. Thus we would like to point out the relation between nature of the information, the production of knowledge and its reception.

Radio Free Europe is considered unique in the annals of international broadcasting: acting as surrogate domestic broadcaster for the nations under Communism. It also relied on local official media and informal news in order to broadcast what was considered objective information. Due to their wish to outline an exhaustive portrait of the world behind the Iron Curtain, Radio Free Europe Archives give way to a series of questions:

What did the archives not capture and what rests uncatalogued and unverified? And, if something was indeed captured, how was it transformed through archiving? What parts of this composite portrait sketched by Radio Free Europe still survive today? And is this portrait only a mirror image resulting from the media war between East and West? By raising these questions, our project looks to divert and to put into a sensible perspective the act of collecting, organizing and using information, in order to question the nature of the information itself.

Documentation link: http://ro.tranzit.org/en/exhibition/0/2015-03-18/repertories-of-indiscreetness References: 3. Nicholas Reeves, The Power of Film Propaganda: Myth or Reality (London: A&C Black, 2004).

∏‐Node Platform

Fig 5. ∏-Node Installation, Orleans (2015).

∏-Node is an experimental platform for hybrid Web/FM radio-phonic composition. As a multi‐dimensional radio infrastructure platform, ∏-Node explores the narrative, involves participation, and imaginary possibilities of radio through the use of both historic and new, digital technologies.

∏-Node aims to explore the many dimensions of radio’s format and diffusion: its physicality (ether, radio waves, and the electromagnetic spectrum), its spatiality (bandwith, frequencies), its infrastructure (network of radio receivers/emitters), its methods of creation and editorial content management (programming boards/teams, recording studios), its methods of metadata reception (RDS/SDR), its history (radios libres and pirate radio movements), its legislation. Most importantly, ∏-Node also wishes to examine radio’s future at a time when everything is moved towards “the digital”.
The interconnectedness of these various dimensions, tools, and networks allow for the establishment of a decentralized and hitherto unseen diffusion structure, where each of the network’s nodes serve to both receive and diffuse information. Such a structure creates a break with the classic one-way radio format, substituting it with a horizontal peer‐to-peer model that creates room to play with new potentials for multi‐ diffusion and superposition, as well as room to rethink the radio network’s topology.

Embodied RF Ecologies
Afroditi Psarra
E-textile installation and sound performance

Following my quest to embody the invisible transmissions that surround us, in this wearable I explore the use of an IC mixer circuit to down convert the emissions from the NOAA weather satellite and make them audible. By continuing my research into textile antennas and fractal geometry as a means to detect radio-frequency (RF) transmissions, I aim to speculate about the body as an agent of power in a post-capitalist world, and to re-interpret transmission technologies through handmade crafting techniques.

Teaser video here: https://vimeo.com/326116349