Kristen Baumlier

When I read the description about Camp Pixelache this Winter, an event where technology, art, activism and subcultures meet each year in Helsinki, Finland, I said to myself, “These are my people.”  I submitted a presentation topic, and went to present at the event.   I just came back from Helsinki, and have came back with lots of thing to write about, and with lots of friends and new contacts  who are doing projects related to building community, cultural production, art technology, sustainability, and activism from various countries.

This year, Camp Pixelache had a core theme of “Do It With Others” (D.I.W.O) and explored the question of “How can artists, makers, cultural producers, researchers and activists work collaboratively with each other and audiences, to create new co-production models for artifacts/events with sustainability as the core goal?”

A series of presentations around 4 core themes were organized which include Do It With Others (D.I.W.O), Creative Neighborhood Skills, The Art of Gathering Environmental Data, and Social Identity and Augmented Reality.  There also were demonstrations of electronic art and design including various open source, re/upcycling, and other “trashlab” and “hacklab” projects.

Other events at the festival included a keynote presentation, a live performance club event, and a series of professional workshops. The events were held at Arbis, a Swedish-language adult education center that is located close to the Finnish National Museum, in central Helsinki.

I gave a presentation in the early afternoon titled Powerformance which was in the festival’s track, Do It With Others (D.I.W.O.)  In my talk, I talked about the potential that interactive performance has to generate awareness and promote social change.  I made a special stretchable Euro paycheck –which we stretched at the end of my presentation.

The weekend was amazing.  I met so many interesting people and talked to others about art, technology, hope for the future, and other topics. I met others from Sweden, France, Latvia, Estonia, Germany, Finland, Portugal and England at the event.

Some of the main speakers and facilitators of the conference tracks included Marc Garrett, (Furtherfield.org, London), Pedro Soler (root.ps, Barcelona) Jennifer Gabrys, (Goldsmiths University, London) and  Owen Kelly  (Arcadia University of Applied Sciences, Helsinki) and members of the Bio Art Society of Finland.

The dialogue and presentations were engaging and exciting.  I will be posting for probably several weeks about the people, projects, and presentations that I met, experienced, and saw.     I am currently unpacking, doing laundry, and preparing my receipts.  Tomorrow I will start typing up my notes, compiling the information I got, and also connecting with others that I met at the conference.  Get ready to hear more about Camp Pixelache in future posts!

Image Source:
Pixelache website

Links:

Camp Pixelache Website

Pixelache website

Camp Pixelache Video: