Pixelache Helsinki 08

Friday 14 March

Kiasma seminar room

10:00-16:30

* * * * * * *
 

Session 1: Re-inventing the teaching situation

Kiasma seminar room, 10:00-11:45

Three examples of how to create an unusual environment for research and experimentation.

- Kitchen Budapest (HU)

What happens to the net once it meets the urban space? How does private space relate to the saturating wireless networks? Where does user created content gain authority? How does our use of cities alter as we get more and more real time feedback of its dynamics? What makes a homesmart? Street-smart? We would like to rethink and remix the possibilities of new media in our everyday lives and to augment connections between new technologies and our society.

Kitchen Budapest (HU) is a new media lab for young researchers who are interested in the convergence of mobile communication, online communities and urban space and are passionate about creating experimental projects in cross-disciplinary teams.

- ESP-007 / Eléonore Hellio (FR)

ESP is the acronyme for Extra-Sensorial Perception. It is a fluctuating art collective associating students, teachers and artists. Since 1999, we have developed a continual activity in the sphere of media art based in the Network Art Laboratory of the school of visual arts ofStrasbourg (ESAD).

ESP explores online cooperative systems and performative virtualshared spaces as a possibility of establishing dialogue betweendifferent social contexts, cultures and countries through local anddistant interplay. ESP also extend its activity outside academic worldfor special projects. Network art is not only using modern technologybut a way of rethinking art through a critical study of digitalglobalisation in regards to its rapid emergence, transformation andcomplexity. In 2007, ESP explores the impact of technologyin places where media and/or infrastructures are highly unstable bydeveloping new projects in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo) andKarosta (post-sovietic ghetto in Latvia).

- V*i*d*a lab / Alejandro Tamayo (CO)

v*i*d*a lab is a special study project for students ofindustrial design, at Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia. Thestudents explore the question ‘What is life?’ with the aid of 6visiting teachers from different disciplines (biology, sociology, etc).The students explore the border between nature and technology, betweendesigned and self-organised systems.

Moderator: Juha Huuskonen / Pixelache

* * * * * * *

Before lunch: 'Speed-dating' (duration: 10 minutes)

Lunch break: 12:00-13:00

* * * * * * *
 

Session 2: Education in the era of social media and dissolving institutional boundaries?

Kiasma seminar room, 13:00-14:30

The World Wide Web was originally developed by Tim Berners-Lee & co for making the communication and collaboration between academic researchers easier. It is paradoxical that still today, much of the academic research results are hidden inside expensive journals and are not made publicly available. While the habits of institutions are changing very slowly, a fundamental bottom-up transformation is taking place: individual researchers are taking advantage of social media tools and the institutional boundaries are becoming less of a hindrance for collaboration and knowledge sharing. How will this affect research and education in the coming years?

This session will present some examples of initiatives that try to open the doors of academia, and will also reflect more generally about open collaboration and knowledge sharing in research and education.

Presenters:
- Ville Venäläinen (FI): Sometu - social media in education network, Nettilukio - Internet Upper Secondary School
- Akseli Virtanen (FI) / Helsinki School of Economics, General Intellect - A Knowledge Work Cooperative (for background information see chapter "Ontology" of the book "Manifestos for the Business School of Tomorrow")
- Ferrix Hovi (FI) / Nomovok - company focused on open source technologies and open processes 

This session is put together by Petri Kola (researcher, Helsinki University of Art and Design) and Juhana Kokkonen (researcher, Stadia). Moderator: Juha Huuskonen / Pixelache.

Related links:
- Wikiversity
- Tutkimusparvi ('the research flock', site in Finnish)

* * * * * * *

15.00–16.30 Artistic research: collaboration and innovation

Presenters:
- Helen Evans (HeHe, FR): Vihreä Pilvi / Nuage Vert project

Every night from the 22 to the 29 of February 2008, the vapour emissions of he Salmisaari power plant in Helsinki will be illuminated to show the current levels of electricity consumption by local residents. A laser ray will trace the cloud during the night time and turn it into a city scale neon sign. Nuage Vert is a communal event for the area of Ruoholahti, which anticipates esoteric cults centred on energy and transforms an active power plant into a space for art, a living factory. In tandem, as a reversal of conventional roles whereby the post-industrial factory is turned into space for culture, Kaapeli (the cultural factory) becomes the site of operation and Salmisaari (the industrious factory) becomes the site of spectacle.

- Evelina Domnitch (RU/NL): Camera Lucida sonoluminiscence research

The Camera Lucida by Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand (RU/NL) is a reminder of the days when the latest innovations of science were presented to people by nomadic gypsies, in a form of mysterious theatre. Evelina and Dmitry are the ceremony masters of this artwork, guiding the audience in a completely dark room to show them a spectacular new discovery in physics. Created in collaboration with scientific laboratories in Japan, Germany, Belgium, Russia and United States, the Camera Lucida (lucid or light chamber) installation converts sound waves directly into light by employing a phenomenon called sonoluminiscence: ultrasound within liquid causes micro-bubbles of gas to implode, as which point they become as hot as the Sun and emit light in the shape of sound waves. 

Moderator: Tapio Mäkelä. Several other Pixelache 2008 artists will also participate in the discussion.