This unconference event during the summer, from 28-31st July, is a meeting of local, regional or international practitioners and organisers in the Estonian countryside (35km from Tallinn) to address the pressing topic of art & energy sustainability in cultural production.

It serves as a networking and sharing event about recent progress on the topic, and a follow up event to last year’s Pixelversity workshop on Art & Sustainability, a collaboration between MIM Project and Koelse in Helsinki. This time we gather at MIM project’s home and studio across the Gulf of Finland.

Check link below for further general info, as well as latest about attendees, schedule.

Please indicate your attendance by latest Tuesday 26.7. with email to Andrew Paterson (agryfp [-ät-] pixelache.ac) or if you have questions about event.

>> MORE INFORMATION

The LEDs for the ‘Windowfarms Finland’ installation are now glowing. Also, Helsinki days are sunnier, longer, and many of the plants are growing in the huge Kiasma takaikkuna window.

‘What plants are there?’ you ask.. The latest update can be found in the ‘plant chart’ recording the current content of the installation in an online spreadsheet. Hopefully the majority will make it until the end of the month, where there will be workshops on 27th and 28th March, using some of the plants.

Documentation of the participatory building workshop, LED module-making, and finishing of the installation, have now been gathered onto one page.

ART AND TECHNOSCIENCE
Practices in transformation

A conference by the Academy of Fine Arts in Finland, in collaboration with the Finnish Bioart Society and Pixelache festival.
Helsinki, 24-25.3.2010

Location: Auditorium, Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Kaikukatu 4. www.kuva.fi

Full programme here.

The beginning of the 21st century is characterized by an overwhelming awareness of environmental issues. Facing the threat of global warming, the findings of scientific research have become a subject of intensive political debate. The ethical questions traditionally discussed in the green-wing marginals have become mainstream, as science has become a coffee-table topic.

The field of art that interacts with the practices of science and its technologies is commonly referred to as art&science. During the past decades, this hybrid field has become more or less established, with landmark works, major institutions and written histories. However, with the new wave of environmentalism, a further wave of artists working with methods and questions related to scientific research has also emerged. The mediators of science and technology are unavoidable, whether dealing with global economy or animal rights, computer modelling or carbon emissions. Research has become a key concept in art, not only in the field of art&science, but also in university-associated art schools in general, with the development of practice-based PhD programmes around the western world. The front-lines between art and knowledge-production seem to be in transformation.

The conference seeks to contextualize the practices of art&science both in the contemporary political atmosphere and the history of contemporary art.

The first day of the two-day conference focuses on the practices in transformation as a result of research-orientation and cross-disciplinarity, characteristic to the field of art&science. What challenges and possibilities do artists, curators, residency programmes or art schools face, while trying to address questions coming from the field of sciences? What can scientific research gain from collaboration with artists, and what kind of research is done in the artist’s laboratory?

The second day of the conference looks at the technologies of encounter between human and non-human worlds. The aim is to address the ethical discourse taking place in art practices which look at the interaction between humans and non-humans. How is the traditional understanding of agency, community, interaction or collaboration challenged in these works of art? What are the political implications of these approaches? On the other hand, how are these practices dealing with the questions of manipulation, objectification and abuse of non-humans?

Speakers include Roy Ascott (artist, theorist, UK), Jill Scott (artist, researcher, AUS/CH), Andy Gracie (artist, UK/ESP), Ingeborg Reichle (art historian, DE), Adam Zaretsky (artist, US), Tuija Kokkonen (theatre director, FI), Terike Haapoja (artist, FI), Pau Alsina (researcher, ESP), Ulla Taipale (curator, FI/ESP), Anu Osva (artist, FI), Erich Berger (artist, coordinator ArsBioarctica, AUT/FI), Helena Sederholm (head of department of art Aalto University, FI), Laura Beloff (artist, researcher, FI), Manu Tamminen (microbiologist, FI), Eija Juurola (forest researcher, FI), Raitis Smits (artist, curator, LV), Jan Kaila (artist, professor, FI), Antti Sajantila (professor,  medical doctor, FI), Minna Långström (artist, FI) among others.

Contact

Erich Berger
Coordinator Ars Bioarctica
eb ((ät)) randomseed.org
+358-50-4338898
http://kilpiscope.net

Terike Haapoja
artist, PhD researcher
mail ((ät)) terikehaapoja.net
+358-50-4058341
http://kuva.fi

Art and sustainability

Society today is facing many big challenges. Environmental themes like
global warming and peak oil have found their ways from activist jargon
into the center of political and economical discussion. At the same
time art seems to be left behind.

Although many artists do address environmental themes in their work,
there is very little discussion about the environmental effects of the
process itself. Field of art is of course quite diverse: theater is
wasting electricity live for light and sound, when visual art consumes
most energy in the storage after it has been exhibited.

Self-sustainable party container is our attempt to search for new
less harmful alternatives. It is done by Association of experimental
electronics together with MiM-project and Pixelache Art and
sustainability workshop participants.

Our aim is to build a set that will produce it’s own electricity,
consist of mostly recycled materials and have a modular structure, so
all parts can and will be used for something else after the festival.
Our piece will work on wind, solar and muscle power of the
participants. We will have some nice experimental partysounds,
discolights and lot’s of interaction for the audience.

It may not save the world, but might give us some perspective on
ecological aspects of electronic arts and subcultures.

Container

Initiator/Organiser: Antti Ahonen (FI)

>>KOELSE.org

>> MIM goes Sustainable

Pixelache and Helsinki Energy 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, Helsinki Energy 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