The ninth edition of Pixelache Helsinki will take place 25-28 March 2010. A glimpse into the upcoming festival's programme...

* CAMP PIXELACHE IN KERAVA ART MUSEUM * On Friday 26 March, we will be organising a one-day Camp Pixelache, presenting work from various labs, study programmes and individual participants of Pixelache Helsinki 2010. All Pixelache programme that day will be held in Kerava Art Museum, located 30 min train ride away from Helsinki. Camp Pixelache will take place on 1st floor of the museum (650 sqm), the opening of How to build a dishwasher -exhibition and presentations of Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute researchers will take place on the same day on ground floor. You can propose programme for Camp Pixelache via our Open Call for Participation. We would like to encourage people to present work that has just been started and would need feedback or collaborators. These can be prototypes and other experiments, or work that is still in its conceptual planning phase. We also welcome presentations related to new organisations / initiatives or recent / upcoming events. - - - - - - -

* ART MEETS ENERGY CONSUMPTION * Pixelache and Helsingin Energia are collaborating to produce artworks related to collective energy consumption in Helsinki area. The artworks will be located in public space in Helsinki and/or presented as online projects. In the first round of the project, following artists were invited to submit proposals for artworks: Miska Knapek, Andy Best, Maria Duncker, Unsworn Industries (Erik Sandelin & Magnus Torstensson) and 4um (Karthik Acharya, Arto Tommiska, Elina Alatalo ja Jukka Hautamäki). The proposals were made public in October 2009 so that citizens of Helsinki, energy consumption experts and the electronic art community could give feedback on them. The project jury chose two artworks to be realised during 2010/2011: Power Flower by Andy Best and an untitled project by Miska Knapek. Prototypes of both of these works will be presented in Pixelache Helsinki 2010, as well as information about all the submitted proposals. The idea to commission artworks related energy consumption was inspired by the success of Vihreä Pilvi / Nuage Vert, an artwork by HeHe (Helen Evans & Heiko Hansen). In February 2008, HeHe, Pixelache, Helsingin Energia and several other organisations collaborated to realise Vihreä Pilvi / Nuage Vert, a project that received Golden Nica of Ars Electronica 2008 and was chosen as the Finnish Environmental artwork of the year 2008. >> Proposals from Miska Knapek, Andy Best, Maria Duncker, Unsworn Industries and 4um >> Vihreä Pilvi / Nuage Vert by HeHe - - - - - - -

* GOLAN LEVIN AT KIASMA MEDIATHEQUE * An exhibition of interactive artworks by Golan Levin (US) is presented for the first time in Finland in Kiasma Mediatheque. Golan Levin is an artist and engineer interested in exploring new modes of reactive expression. Through performances, digital artifacts, and virtual environments, Golan applies creative twists to digital technologies that highlight our relationship with machines, make visible our ways of interacting with each other, and explore the intersection of non-verbal communication and interactivity. At Carnegie Mellon University, Golan is currently an Associate Professor of Electronic Art, with courtesy appointments in Computer Science and Design. In January he was also appointed Director of the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, a “meta-laboratory” within CMU dedicated to supporting “atypical, interdisciplinary and inter-institutional” research projects at the intersection of arts, sciences and technology. Golan has spent half his life as an artist embedded within technological research environments, in places like the MIT Media Laboratory, the Ars Electronica Futurelab, and the former Interval Research Corporation in Palo Alto. As an educator, Golan's pedagogy is concerned with reclaiming computation as a medium of personal expression. He teaches “studio art courses in computer science,” on themes like interactive art, generative form, digital fabrication, information visualization, and audiovisual performance. >> Golan Levin - - - - - - - * HOW TO BUILD A DISHWASHER * How to build a dishwasher is the first exhibition of a collaborative research project by Garth Zeglin, Marek Michalowski, Geoff Gordon, Ben Brown, Iheanyi Umez-Eronini, Sue Ann Hong, Paul Scerri and Axel Straschnoy. It will take place at the Kerava Art Museum, Finland, from March 26 until May 30, 2010. The project has as objective to find out what kind of art robots make for other robots. It started with a discussion within the team and with partners such as artists, theater directors, philosophers and neurobiologists. Following these conversations, two robots were designed and built: One that can make performance art and another one that can watch it. These are not anthropomorphic but their shape, movements and software are designed for the task at hand. The conversations and the process of making the robots has been recorded and edited into a multichannel installation to accompany the robots when they are exhibited in Kerava. The conversations continue at the museum in the context of the Pixelache festival. The team of roboticists and other guests will discuss topics surrounding their work and the project. This project was initiated by Axel Straschnoy and Paul Scerri and is produced by Piritta Puhto. It is based at the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. It is supported by Alfred Kordelin Foundation, Kone Foundation, The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture (AVEK), The National Arts Council (Finland), Uusimaa Arts Council, The Collaborative Machining Center, CMU and The Studio of Creative Inquiry, CMU. >> axel.straschnoy.com/robots - - - - - - -

* HERBOLOGIES/FORAGING NETWORKS * The Herbologies/Foraging Networks programme of events, focused in Helsinki (Finland) and Kurzeme region of Latvia, exploring the cultural traditions and knowledge of herbs, edible and medicinal plants, within the contemporary context of online networks, open information-sharing, biological and hydroponic technologies. The traditions of finding and knowing about wild food in the local Nordic environment are slipping away from the current generation. How can one attract their attention: With books, online maps, workshops, mobile-guided tours, open-source information or DNA code? Or learn how to grow them yourself, over the dark winter months? The Pixelache Festival events introduce the different meeting points between the three collaborating partners, including seminar presentations by international artists and Finnish botanical experts; workshops sharing that knowledge with the public; a round-table discussion about foraging in the urban context; and a localised manifestation of the Windowfarms Project (US). Following, in a midsummer expedition to rural Kurzeme, Western Latvia, SERDE Interdisciplinary Art Group will lead fieldwork to learn about the cultural heritage of Balts using wild plants, and create documents for the younger ‘digital native’ generation. Initiators/Organisers: Andrew Paterson (SCO/FI), Ulla Taipale / Capsula (FI/ES) and Signe Pucena / SERDE (LV) >> Programme information.. - - - - - - -

* GOTO10 * GOTO10 is a collective of international artists and programmers, dedicated to Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) and digital arts. GOTO10 aims to support and grow digital art projects and tools for artistic creation, located on the blurry line between software programming and art. GOTO10 organizes events throughout Europe, independently and in collaboration with like-minded organizations. Their aim is to live within this network of machines, people and places, to develop and teach new and existing tools, to produce, experiment and play. GOTO10 collective has been invited design some parts of Pixelache 2010 programme. The preliminary plan is to organise a seminar about FLOSS+Art and to present an exhibition featuring software art. More details will be confirmed early 2010. >> www.goto10.org - - - - - - - * OPEN SOURCE HARDWARE * Open Source Hardware presents projects and communities that have over the past few years been making knowledge about electronic hardware more accessible. It is functions as the continuation of the process intiated at GOSH! - Grounding Open Source Hardware workshop & summit in Banff, Canada in the summer 09, where among other things, a OSH repository was drafted. The OSH programme will include presentations of case examples by 5-10 local and international participants, such as the initiative Fritzing from Germany for documenting and manufacturing pcb's for Arduino board and the meshing wireless access point project for low-infra areas Mesh-Potato. Initiator/Organiser: Tuomo Tammenpää (FI) >> www.gosh2009.ca >> www.fritzing.org >> www.villagetelco.org - - - - - - -

* MEGAPHONEBOOTH HELSINKI * Unsworn Industries (Erik Sandelin & Magnus Torstensson / SE) is an interaction design and innovation studio based in Malmö, Sweden. Unsworn will premiere their project Megaphonebooth in Helsinki during March 2010. Megaphonebooth Helsinki is a coin-operated megaphone to be located in a public space somewhere in Helsinki. To use the megaphone you just have to insert one euro per minute, speak into the attached handset and have your voice instantly amplified and projected into the local soundscape. A Megaphonebooth presents unexpected opportunities but also raises questions about responsibility, control, and democracy. It offers a platform from which people can speak their mind, loud and uncensored. Yet, when compared to the loudness, plentitude and persistence of other messages (commercial, cultural and political) that we are exposed to in our everyday lives, the mighty megaphone seems peculiarly powerless. The Megaphonebooth is a deliberately tragic solution meant to bring focus to an unbalance while feebly attempting to correct it. >> www.unsworn.org - - - - - - -

* THE INVISIBLE CITY * The Invisible City project explores the city not just as formed by physical space, but also as a collective construction, made up of the memories, desires and experiences of its inhabitants. The city should not be conceived as a unit but rather as the sum of its inhabitants' multiple points of views which, all combined, create a multi-faceted perspective. Thus, the city is an aggregation of public and private spaces, from which emerges a shared identity allowing us to live in it. This project consists of a series of events, including a film screening accompanied by a live soundtrack, a workshop in public space, and an exhibition featuring work by visual artists from Barcelona (some of them artist residents or former residents from HANGAR Production Center of Visual Arts). These events will explore different forms of exchange and interaction between the city and its inhabitants. We will look into the perception and identity of contemporary cities, and at how art can influence their transformation, asking: Do we live in a real city or in the mirage of what it should be? Initiator/Organiser: Jon Irigoyen (ES/FI) - - - - - - -

* ART AND SUSTAINABILITY * This programme section is organised in connection with MIM goes sustainable (working title) project by Maike Lond & Taavet Jansen. It aims to provide alternatives to traditional thinking of how theaters operate and prove that low-tech eco-thinking in theatre does not automatically mean simply substandard production quality. The main goal of the project is to create a staged theatrical performance that brings the usage of fossil fuels and other resources to absolute minimum. Initiator/Organiser: Antti Ahonen (FI) >> MIM goes Sustainable - - - - - - - In addition to these, Pixelache Helsinki 2010 will feature several other programme sections... The updates will be posted on this website. Pixelache Helsinki 2010 programme also includes: - Third edition of Signals from the South programme - Performances by TERMINALBEACH (AT) and Ona Kamu (FI) - Pixelache Software of the Year - Club events - Networking meeting - Etc... Other collaborations and related events taking place during Pixelache Festival weekend: - Pixelache and IHME Days contemporary art event are planning to collaborate. The invited artist for IHME Project 2010 is Susan Philipsz from Scotland. - HELOW 2010 (Helsinki Low Frequency Weekend) electronic music festival will feature extensive visual programme organised by VJ Finland. - MUU Artists' Association will present the results of the interactive sound installation course - - - - - - -