[spectre] Aching pixels around the world...

[juha huuskonen]

* Paris + San Martino Valle Caudina + Bergen + Bogotá *

Pixelache festival events and various collaboration projects
are coming up around the world during the next few months!

The international Pixelache menu includes interactive/software art,
audiovisual performances, open hardware, unstable artforms and
more...

Mal au Pixel (the French version of Pixelache) is going on
at the moment, with still one more week of program ahead!
Check the website for details + some recent photos...

* * *

Pixelache tour calendar:

:: Mal au Pixel 2006
:: 19-29 April, Paris
:: www.malaupixel.org

Three Parisian organisations - Ars Longa, Confluences and Mains
d'Oeuvres - have chosen to join forces with the Pixelache festival. On
a day-to-day basis, they support digital artistic research, media and
citizenship issues by means of residencies and regular public events.
Some of the artists that they promote participated in the previous and
the present editions of the Pixelache festival in Helsinki. Ars Longa,
Confluences and Mains d'Oeuvres, with the support of the Finnish
Institute in Paris and Project 101, naturally unite with the Pixelache
team in an effort to give visibility to experimental art forms, on-going
research and social issues originating from various European countries.
This is in order to encourage exchanges between the local and
international artists and citizens communities.

The "Mal au pixel" festival consists of several equally important
components: introductory workshops in creative tools aimed at knowledge
and technology transfers; public debates dedicated to sharing questions
and ideas emerging from new social and media practices; exploration of
installations, prototypes, live evening events and performances for the
pleasure to be found in artistic practices based on the reappropriation of
communication technologies.

We hope the Festival "Mal au Pixel" develops into a platform for future
international exchanges and dialogue, contributing to artistic, civic and
participatory reappropriation of contemporary communication media
and tools that increasingly govern our daily life.

On behalf of the Mal au Pixel team,

Vincent Guimas,
Mathieu Marguerin

* * *

:: Interferenze 2006
:: 3-5 August
:: San Martino Valle Caudina, Italy
:: www.interferenze.org

Theme for 2006: Naturalis Electronica.

With its 2006 edition, INTERFERENZE, international festival of sounds,
new visual arts and media, is seated in the mountains of the Partenio/Valle
Caudina (Southern Italy), which it will fill with live performances,
installations, projections, seminars, free camping, artists and the public.
Thus the international artistic vanguard will be fused with the splendid
mountain scenes of Campania.

Although INTERFERENZE is tied to the land, electronic and multimedia
arts are its driving force: performances, installations, events, workshops
and conferences complete the event.

With edition IV INTERFERENZE confirms its dual spirit existing in the
balance between digital provocation and tradition: digital arts and the arts
of the past, sonorous vanguards and local values.

Pixelache festival director Juha Huuskonen has been invited to curate
the interactive/software art section of Interferenze 2006.

* * *

:: Piksel06
:: 12-15 October
:: Bergen, Norway
:: www.piksel.no

Piksel is an annual event for artists and developers working with free/libre
and open source audiovisual software. Part workshop, part festival, it is
organised in Bergen, Norway, by the Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts (BEK)
and involves participants from more than a dozen countries exchanging ideas,
coding, presenting art and software projects, doing workshops, performances
and discussions on the aesthetics and politics of open source.

This years event - Piksel06 - continues the exploration of audiovisual code
and it's myriad of expressions, but also brings in open hardware as a new
focus area.

For the last two years we have collaborated with PixelACHE in parts of
the program and last years collaboration with curator Isabelle Arvers for
the Piksel05 exhibition proved very fruitful. At Piksel06 we will expand the
exhibition part and build upon the open hardware theme, which represents
a potential for a new paradigm shift of vital importance for independent
artistic expression in the digital domain. Hopefully there will also be room
for some interchange with the PixelACHE and Mal au Pixel program.

Piksel06 is done in collaboration with HKS art centre which will be the main
location for this years events. Piksel is organised by BEK and a community
of core participants including members of collectives dyne.org, goto10.org,
sustainablesource.net, hackitectura.net, riereta.net, drone.ws, gephex.org
and others.

The development, and therefore use, of digital technology today is
mainly controlled by multinational corporations. Despite the prospects
of technology expanding the means of artistic expression, the commercial
demands of the software industries severely limit them instead. Piksel is
focusing on the open source movement as a strategy for regaining artistic
control of the technology, but also a means to bring attention to the close
connections between art, politics, technology and economy.

* * *

:: Colombopixel // Pixeltrax (working title)
:: Spring 2007
:: Bogotá, Colombia
:: bogotrax.free.fr
:: intermundos.org

The first Colombian edition of Pixelache, organised together with
Intermundos and Bogotrax festival. Colombopixel // Pixeltrax presents
VJ shows and workshops (with local and international VJ crews),
exhibitions and conferences focusing on experimental electronics,
audiovisual software and current political issues relating to development
of media/technology.

Bogotrax is an independent festival that has been presenting electronic
music and arts to the marginalized communities in Bogotá, Colombia. It is
an alternative to the commercial and institutional events which have been
too expensive for many locals to participate in. The festival consists of
open air presentations, free concerts and club events, workshops, radio
programs and presentations in universities and libraries. Bogotrax events
take place in diverse locations around the city, including the suburbs.
All events are open to the public and free. Each year there is an open
call for proposals from which emerging Colombian artists are selected
to participate in the event. Bogotrax 2007 will be the fourth edition
of the festival.

In addition to organising the Pixelache festival edition in Colombia,
the plan is to present work of Colombian artists in Pixelache 2007
in Helsinki as well as in other international Pixelache events.

* * *