[spectre] Environmental Art Award for Nuage Vert + Helsingin Energia releases more real-time data

[juha huuskonen]

Ympäristötaiteen säätiö (Environmental Art Foundation) has chosen  
Nuage Vert and Maailman onnellisin puu (The World's Happiest Tree) by  
Kaija Papu and Aino Louhi as the environmental artworks of the year  
2008. The annual award has been given out since year 1994 with the  
purpose to highlight new methods and concepts in environmental art, to  
increase general knowledge about environmental art and to support and  
thank the people and organisations who are developing the field.

In connection with the award ceremony, Helsingin Energia announced  
that they will release more real-time data about energy consumption in  
Helsinki area. Since Friday 6 February 2009, the hourly updated  
information about electricity consumption, heating and cooling has  
been available online. Inspired by the success of Nuage Vert project,  
Helsingin Energia is the first energy company in Finland to release  
this amount of detailed real-time information. This level of  
information transparency about energy consumption is also rare amongst  
energy companies in the world today. Helsingin Energia sees this as  
one method to spread awareness about the need to decrease energy use  
in near future. This is necessary for reaching the goal of providing a  
larger share of the total energy use by using renevable energy  
sources. The energy policies of the City of Helsinki aim to increase  
the share of renewable energy to 20% by 2020.

The next edition of Pixelache festival (2-5 April 2009) will bring  
this topic into discussion. The goal is to find artists and designers  
that could propose ideas of how energy consumption data could be  
utilized in artworks in the public space of Helsinki or in online  
applications. Beyond mere information illustrations, the purpose is to  
try to find non-conventional ways to use this information and to  
explore how we could go futher from the current 'energy talk' to  
concrete action. Pixelache festival will also gather ideas and  
proposals from general audience.

Ympäristötaiteen säätiö (Environmental Art Foundation, website in  
Finnish): www.yts.fi
Draft version of real-time information about Helsinki area energy  
consumption: www.helen.fi/slj/energiahankinta
Energianeuvoja (advice about energy consumption, in Finnish) : www.energianeuvoja.fi
Pixelache 2009 festival: http://2009.pixelache.ac (2-5 April 2009)