I’m attending Piksel 09 in Bergen these days. What follows is an update of what I have experienced so far…



Yesterday was the opening day, these were the things I attended:

- Talk by Eleonora Oreggia (IT) called “Virtual Entity”

- Gallery opening at Lydgalleriet with several interesting works displayed

- New media/dance performance called “Action Potential” by Jenny A Torino (US), Benjamin A Margolis (US) and Lee Azzarello (US)

- Audiovisual performance called “Kunst Und Musik mit dem Tageslichtprojektor” by Ralf Schreiber (DE), Tina Tonagel (DE) and Christian Faubel (DE)

- Noise jam called “Noise Invaders” by Diego de Leon (ES)



Today I’ve so far attended:

- Talk by Pall Thayer (IS) called “Microcodes”

- Talk by Marius Schebella (US) called “Re-ware”

- Talk by Sébastien Bourdeauducq (FR) called “Milkymist, an open hardware VJ platform”

- Talk by Mattin (ES) called “Noise and Capitalism/Free Software”

- Talk by Letizia Jaccheri (NO) called “Open Source Software Tools for creativity”

- Workshop/performance called “Chaoslab” by Julien Ottavi (FR), Jenny Pickett (FR), Dominique Leroy (FR), Julien Poidevin (FR) and Ryan Jordan (UK)

- Gallery opening at Galleri 3,14 with several interesting works displayed



I will attend a couple of performances tonight, more on those at a later point.



Now some thoughts and images from the different things I’ve experienced and observed so far:



Eleonora Oreggia (IT): “Virtual Entity”

Eleonora Oreggia has a background in archiving artistic and creative digital works. This always present difficulties when considering the multitudes of formats and versions often available of different works. She has now made a program for archiving these kinds of work, from a philosophical standpoint where she tries to isolate the different files and their states as “entities”. An example is giving files parent/child relations to each other, based on whether or not the have any “genetic” material in common. For instance, if I made a image collage of stills from a video work, the video would be the parent and the collage the child. In addition to different quantifiable data that she gives the different files, she also has the metadata slot where the qualitative description is written. This is of course subjective, and she refers to it as the “soul” of the digital entity. I find this view quite frascinating.



Exhibition Opening at Lydgalleriet:



“intrinsic” by Angie Atmadjaja was a beautiful installation. Four glowing tubes suspended from the ceiling in a dark room. They had small microphones attached them, and dimmed the light based on level of sound input. Ambient sound was running, and this together with the sounds from the visitors made the tubes come to life, almost dancing in their stillness.







“Health & Safety Violation #14 – Randomly Activated Tripwire Proposal” by Ben Woodeson was a cute interference in the hallway. The tripwire was hooked to an arduino, going up or down based on a random calculation between 1 and 30 seconds. But even if this was a random program, you could not help but feel that there was some sort of sensor involved. When I first walked over it it coincided with an upwards motion. I spent some time trying to find out exactly what it was I did so that I could controll it, but there you go. Standing there and observing other people interacting with it was a pure joy. Everything from people showing considerate care, to people getting a fright, to people not bothering a second look.







“Musica Vista 1.0″ by Carlos Tricas displayed some nice graphics based on the physical location of big foam buttons. A camera tracked the locations and visitors were encouraged to move the buttons around.







“Generative Audio Prototypes” by Dream Addictive, Carmen González and Leslie Garcia was a box that produced sound based on the nearness of things and people. IR sensors lined the sides and related to different parts of the soundscape, a knob adjusted the speed of the sounds created. Fun to play with.







“augen-auf-schlag” by Wolfgang Spahn and Thomas Gerwin was the most elaborate installation on display. An electronic drumkit was hooked up to liquid light projectors, the shapes, colours and orientations based on which drum pads you hit. Even more fun to play with.







“The serv seq” by Gijs Gieskes was a more transparent sound making machine, even though I didn’t find out exactly how to use before the artist came and explained. Optical sensors were attached to swinging arms, the sensors read the graphic pattern on a turntable, and the arms could be controlled to hit outside objects:  a cymbal, a wooden block and a plastic ball. You could control the speed of the turntable, the motion of the arms and a couple of other things I honestly can’t remember. Fun thing, but without instructions not really accessible.







New media/dance performance “Action Potential” by Jenny A Torino (US), Benjamin A Margolis (US) and Lee Azzarello (US)

This was, in my book, a classical example of falling in love with the technology without taking enough care to make sure the audience is happy/intrigued. Three “dancers” were rigged with a varying amount of sensors, boxes and cables. The sound was supposedly generated by the readings from the sensors, but if I hadn’t known I would rather think they moved to a prerecorded sound track with fancy props attached to themselves. After some time of moving around they started swapping sensors.



This was of course not really interesting to look at. The sensors were elaborately enough attached so that they used at least a couple of minutes doing it, standing there on stage, no music, no dancing, nothing of interest.



Audiovisual performance “Kunst Und Musik mit dem Tageslichtprojektor” by Ralf Schreiber (DE), Tina Tonagel (DE) and Christian Faubel (DE)







Now this was fantastic stuff. Three artist, three overhead projectors, loads of mechanical things making sounds. Basically, they made sounds with different things, dc motors that vibrated, strings and bow, blowing bubbles in water, etc. The sound was also amplified and modified, but it was in general quite easy to discern what made which sound. The neat trick was that they used the overhead projectors as tables, all the things that made sound were also carefully shaped and/or chosen based on how they would look projected onto the wall.







They went through several themes, both visually and musically.



And here’s the gear:



All in all a fantastic experience.



Noise jam “Noise Invaders” by Diego de Leon (ES)



Now this was just a plain old good noise performance. Enjoyed it immensely.