Aether9, http://1904.cc/aether/
Initiated in May 2007 during a workshop at the Mapping Festival in Geneva, Switzerland, Aether9 is a collaborative art project exploring the field of realtime video transmission. Developed by an online networked group of international visual artists/collectives working through Oceania, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and into the Americas, Aether9 has evolved during the past years into a framework for video/audio performance, the foundations being distributed authorship, cross-platform and «remote» performance of streaming audio and visual material to a nomadic web interface.
Adam Zaretsky, http://emutagen.com/vivoartgl.html
Adam Zaretsky is a bioartist, performer, researcher and art theorist. A former researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he recently founded VASTAL: The Vivoarts School for Transgenic Aesthetics Ltd. which focuses on legal, ethical and social implications of some of the newer biotechnological materials and methods: Molecular Biology, ART [Assisted Reproductive Technology], genomics, developmental biology and Transgenic Protocols. Vastal Public labs aid people in their own exploration of the intersections between art and life: Ecology, Biotechnology, Non-human Relations, Live Art and Gastronomy.
Alex Regan, (FI), http://www.mansedanse.com
Albert Laine, (FI), http://albertlaine.com
Andrew Gryf Paterson (Scotland/Finland), http://agryfp.info
Andrew Gryf Paterson is a Scottish artist-organiser, cultural producer and independent researcher, based in Helsinki, Finland. His work involves variable roles of initiator, participant, author and curator, according to different collaborative and cross-disciplinary processes. Andrew works across the fields of media/ network/ environmental activism, pursuing a participatory arts practice through workshops, performative events, and storytelling.
Selected curatorial/organisational projects include recently 'Alternative Economy Cultures' programme of Pixelache Helsinki Festival (2009), 'Clip Kino' in Kirjasto10 Helsinki library and other locations (2008-2009), 'Add+PF+?' in the Pedagogical Factory programme at Hyde Park Art Centre, Chicago (2007), 'Locative Media Workshop: Rautatieasema' for Pixelache Helsinki Festival (2004). This activity has been characterised by the bringing together of unexpected elements and components around a 'boundary object' which each participant interprets differently, producing new imaginations and potential. He is currently a doctoral candidate at Aalto University School of Art and Design, consolidating under the thesis title of 'Artivistic Fieldwork'.
André Knörig (Germany), http://andreknoerig.de
André is an interaction designer with a distinct interest in physical, embodied interactions. André holds degrees in computer science and design. His creative research has been published at conferences such as TEI and CHI, and been exhibited at Ars Electronica and NIME.
Currently, André is working as a research assistant at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, where he is project lead of Fritzing (
http://fritzing.org), an ambitious open source hardware initiative. He is also managing the Berlin-based IxDS Interaction Design Studios (
http://ixds.de), a design research firm that creates innovative interactive products and services.
Andy Best (FI/UK), http://www.andyandmerja.com
Andy Best was born in the South of England in 1963. He studied Fine Art (Sculpture) in Cardiff, Wales, before coming to Finland with a study scholarship in 1988. He studied sculpture at Kuvataideakatemia, Helsinki, for two years. His first one person exhibition was also the first exhibition to be held at the now defunct Vapauden Aukio gallery in the centre of Helsinki, which was on the site of the new Music House.
Andy has participated in numerous group and one person exhibitions in Finland and internationally. Andy is currently senior lecturer in Digital Arts at Turku University of Applied Sciences, and he has recently commenced his own PhD research at Goldsmiths, University of London, in Arts & Computational Technologies.
Christina Stadlbauer (AT), http://apiary.be
Christina Stadlbauer is an artist and chemist from Austria. She is especially interested in the complexity of nature-processes and health. Obtained a phD in Natural Sciences, and has been practicing and teaching Shiatsu (Japanese Acu-Massage). Currently occupied with urban environments, their transformation and potential. Works with honeybees, primarily in the city and with water in a context of health and healing. She is currently active in Brussels, occasionally in Austria.
Within the context of the Herbologies and Foraging Networks seminar, we would like to invite her to present her project 'The Bee Observatory', and bring in the perspective of honey foraging in urban environments.
Dan Stowell (UK), http://www.mcld.co.uk/
Dan Stowell (MCLD) is a musician, programmer, and scientist. He is currently studying for a PhD at Queen Mary University of London, where he is developing techniques to use voice sounds such as beatboxing to control electronic instruments. Musically he combines live-coding with beatboxing - solo and as part of the duo Spoonfight - and also produces installation work as part of C4DM Presents.
Dave Griffits (UK), http://www.pawfal.org/dave
Dave was raised on an early education in weaving, bell ringing and 8bit computers, and is now dedicated to changing the world with free software, live animation and noise. He works as a self employed artist/programmer, mainly working with the FoAM art laboratory and performs as part of slub - a livecoding band. He creates installations, open source software and teaches workshops around the themes of games, music and the lisp programming language. Past work includes computer graphics for games, feature film special effects and machine vision research for Sony's EyeToy group.
David Muth (UK), http://www.davidmuth.net
David Muth is a London based artist, musician and programmer. Having grown up in Salzburg, Austria, he relocated to the UK to study at Middlesex University, where he received an MA in Digital Arts. His artistic practice combines conceptual and experimental approaches and is informed by his background in architecture. His projects range from installations and responsive environments, through video and experimental documentary, to composition and performance of music.
Elina Alatalo (FI)
Erik Sandelin (SE) / Unsworn Industries (Sweden), www.unsworn.org
Garth Zeglin (USA), http://garthzeglin.com, http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~garthz
Garth Zeglin is an artist and roboticist living in Pittsburgh, PA in the USA. His robotics research centers on minimalist robot mechanisms which utilize natural dynamics for walking, hopping, or compliant manipulation. His personal art practice is focussed on kinetic fabric sculpture incorporating sensors and digital control to create portable contemplative installations. For the collaboration to be presented at Pixelache he has brought together both sides of his career to turn his research work into kinetic sculpture.
Golan Levin (US), http://www.flong.com
Golan Levin is an artist and engineer interested in exploring new modes of reactive expression. Through performances, digital artifacts, and virtual environments, Golan applies creative twists to digital technologies that highlight our relationship with machines, make visible our ways of interacting with each other, and explore the intersection of non-verbal communication and interactivity.
Jaanis Garancs, http://www.garancs.net
Artist, working internationally in areas of interactive multimedia installations and immersive audiovisual performance. Current artistic interest is in moving stereoscopic imagery and 3D/surround audio, designed for various contexts, including museum galleries as well as stage and live concerts.
Jarkko Räsänen (FI), https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/93115 , www.jarkkorasanen.com
Jarkko Räsänen is a MFA student in Finnish Academy of Fine Art. He works with video, sound and photography based installations, that usually include interactivity. Together with multimedia designer Jouko Saastamoinen he has created Dfacer add-on for Firefox which is going to be exhibited in Pixel Ache Camp.
Jodi Rose (Germany/Australian), http://www.singingbridges.net
Jodi Rose is a Berlin-based artist, writer and creator of Singing Bridges, an urban sonic sculpture using the cables of bridges as musical instruments on a global scale. Originally from Australia, Rose has traversed the globe from Helsinki to the Mekong Delta, New York to Lisbon in an endless quest for bridge music. Made with field-recordings, on-site interventions and improvisations, her fascination with sonic bridges has led to diverse collaborations with artists and works exhibited, broadcast and published in Australia, Scandinavia, UK, Asia, Europe and America. Rose explores the philosophical and musical aspects of cable vibrations through global transmissions and installations; is developing a musical interface for model bridge instruments; hosting on-site sonic interventions, and linking bridges all over the world through new meta-nation Bridgeland (every bridge everywhere) and the Global Bridge Symphony.
Pixelache is still her favourite festival and she is very excited to be returning - looking forward to sparks ideas connecting flow.
Juhász Márton András (Hungary), http://nilseuropa.com
Juhász Márton András is a molecular biologist working as research supervisor of art&technology @ kitchen budapest. He is teacher of physical computing at MOME:university of applied arts. Founder of NeoRobot innovative corporation (stem cell neural interfaces). He is interested in ubiquitous computing platforms, man machine interfaces: gesture interaction, bioart.
Judit Boros (Hungary), http://www.kitchenbudapest.hu/person/75
Juergen Neumann (DE), http://freifunk.net http://openspectrum.eu
Juergen Neumann started working with information technology in 1984, and since then has been looking for ways to deploy ICT in useful ways for organizations and society. As a consultant for ICT strategy and implementation, he has worked for major German and international companies, as well as on many non-profit projects.
Besides his professional engagement, in 2002 he co-founded
http://www.freifunk.net, a non-profit campaign to spread knowledge and social networking about “free and open wireless networks” - a campaign globally regarded as one of the most successful grassroots community projects in this field.
Then, frustrated from reflashing hundreds of wireless access points over the past years, in 2007 Neumann initiated the Open Hardware Initiative - an alliance of activists lobbying for open source hardware at the sidelines of both eastern and western hardware industries. In 2008, he co-organized the first Open Technology Summit in Taiwan.
Besides his job as CEO of a private consultancy company, his recent activities include digging deeper into the possibilities of manufacturing open source(d) chip designs and lobbying for new and more open licensing models for the radio spectrum.
Kristina Laine (LT/FI)
KULTIVATOR, http://www.kultivator.org
KULTIVATOR is an experimental cooperation of organic farming and visual art practice situated in rural village Dyestad, on the island Öland on the southeast coast of Sweden. By installing certain functions in abandoned farm facilities (including a white cube made of cow dung, for exhibition and gatherings) near to the active agriculture community, Kultivator provide a meeting and working space that points out the parallels between provision production and art practice, between concrete and abstract processes for survival.
Founded in 2005 by Mathieu Vrijman, Malin Lindmark Vrijman and Marlene Lindmark, artists, and Henric Stigeborn and Maria Lindmark, farmers. With support from Swedish governmental Foundation for future culture, Agricultural ministery of Sweden and Provincial funds. Kultivator has under 4 years of activity hosted around 30 visual artists from more than 10 different countries for longer or shorter periods, and as an artist farmer collective set up projects, exhibitions and screening on site on Öland or internationally. Kultivators organic farm has 30 milking cows, 30 mother sheep and production of vegetables, forestry and rape seed oil, running since 1995.
Lisa Erdman (Finland/USA), http://www.lisaerdman.com
Lisa Erdman is a multimedia artist and postgraduate student at Aalto University School of Art and Design in Helsinki. Her work explores the politics of gender, race, and cultural identity. She is particularly interested in the internal and external mechanisms that shape our personal identities and our sense of cultural reality. Lisa's artwork borrows from the concepts of surrealism, political satire, science fiction, and absurdist performative strategies reminiscent of the Fluxus and Dadaist traditions. In her current research, entitled, “Art, Humor and Advertising as a Tool for Political Dialogue”, Lisa is exploring the idea of curing social and political “ills” with the use of futuristic medications:
http://www.lisaerdman.com/annual_checkup/print.html Lisa holds a Bachelor of Science in Dance and Interarts & Technology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison ('94), and a Master of Fine Arts in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York ('97).
Marek Michalowski (USA/Poland), http://beatbots.net, http://marek.michalowski.me
Marek Michalowski is a roboticist who develops socially interactive robotic characters for entertainment, therapy, and research. His research with the robot Keepon focuses on rhythmic and nonverbal interaction. Michalowski holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University and B.A. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science and Psychology from Yale University. He has held visiting researcher positions at institutions in Japan (ATR, NICT), Korea (KAIST), and France (CNRS). For “How to Build a Dishwasher” at Pixelache, he contributed design, fabrication, and software to the creation of robots that explore our concepts of both interaction and art.
Mari Keski-Korsu (Finland), http://www.artsufartsu.net
Mari Keski-Korsu (mkk) is media and visual artist. She explores nations as imaginary communities, tourism, presented identities and especially causalities of eco-social and structural changes in people's everyday life. She works with multi- and locative media and is concentrated on net and video art, net streaming as well as live visual mixing. She is a member of Aether9 collective.
Maria Duncker (Finland)
Martinka Bobrikova (SK) & Oscar De Carmen (ES),http://www.madefromwaste.org
Their artwork is situated on halfway between art and social activism, by developing critical devices of current patterns of production and consumption. Have participated in Art & sustainability workshop Pixelache20010, and are taking part in installing the sound installation through a battery with recycled fruit from the supermarkets in Helsinki in the container outside Kiasma
Mikko Laajola (FI), http://kokomys.org
Mikko Laajola is an artist-gardener and maker based in Turku and Helsinki. In the last years he has been organising electronic workshops within the collective KoKoMYs, and is a member of Piknik Frequency ry (organisers of Pixelache Festival). He interested in open-source practices and exploring open-hardware technologies. In the previous year, Laajola has been actively working with current lo-tech gardening systems, including hydroponics, and hacking household appliances to create more sustainable solutions. He is working towards social change and the development of self-organised education.
Miska Knapek (Finland/Denmark), http://www.knapek.org
Miska Knapek is an artist designer, with a past in Graphic Information Design (BA) and graduate studies in artistic interaction design, currently based at Media Lab Helsinki. He explores chaotic patterns and challenging fundamental perceptions of society, optics, time, and space. Applying information visualisation techniques, to photographic/sensory/datamined material, Knapek’s work traces the hidden lives of nature, society and people’s immediate personal surrounds. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at Ars Electronica and Transmediale.
Ossi Kakko (FI)
Ossi Kakko (b. 1979) has been devoted to forager-gardener way of life since 1997. As an artist he has utilized video and networking courses f.e. to campaign against GMOs/biopiracy and for promotion of eco-forestry, minor forest produce, subsistence farming and ecological housing. He refused finnish military conscription and related civil service including the prison sentence of 195 days. Recently he's been cooperating with tribal adivasis in India.
Paul Scerri (USA), http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pscerri
Shawn Pinchbeck (Can), http://www.spinchbeck.com
Shawn Pinchbeck is a composer and multimedia artist based in Tallinn, Estonia. His artworks include electroacoustic music, live sound and video performances, multimedia, software art, sound and video installations, and computer interactivity. His most recent works focus on interactive dance and sound performances with the Fine 5 Dance Theatre (Estonia) and Mile Zero Dance (Canada). He is currently a PhD student in Music Composition at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Signe Pucena (LV), http://www.serde.lv
Signe Pucena is executive director and programme curator of The Centre for Interdisciplinary Arts SERDE in Aizpute, Latvia, founded in 2001. She has gained her higher education at the Latvian Academy of Culture in Folklore and Traditional Culture, aswell as a MA in Cultural Management. Between 2000-2008 Pucena was project manager at RIXC Centre for New Media Culture, Riga, producing various new media events, festivals and workshops.
Since 2005 she has been participating in the expeditions and fieldwork research in the Latvian countryside, learning about the traditional cultural forms still existing in the contemporary age. Her creative and innovative approach to cultural heritage work with SERDE was recognised with the Latvian Folklore Grand Prize in 2007.
Sue Ann Hong (USA), http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sahong
Sue Ann Hong is a PhD student in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. Her current research work involves solving planning problems under uncertainty using machine learning algorithms. Prior to graduate school, she received her B.S. in Computer Science from the California Institute of Technology in 2005.
Ulla Taipale (Finland/Spain), http://www.capsula.org.es
Ulla Taipale / CAPSULA (FI/ES) is an independent curator, cultural producer and photographer. Lives in Barcelona and in Finland. Taipale holds a B.Sc. in environmental engineering and communications and a postgraduate degree in Curating and Cultural Practices in Art and New Media. Since 2005 she works in Capsula, that is a curatorial research group whose interests focus on the meeting point between art, science and nature. Capsula collaborates with cultural institutions internationally and has curated and produced events for CCCB (Centre for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona), El Matadero/Cultural Centre of Madrid City, El Laboral/ Centre for Art and Industrial Creation in Spain, Pixelache Festival and Kiasma Mediateekki in Finland, among others.
Vahida Ramujkic (Serbia/Spain), http://rotorrr.org, http://irational.org/vahida
Researching transformation processes occurring in environment and society through physical and psychical recycling, building strategies for individuals to take control over their transformation methods she is applying are based on creating conditions for good things to happen, learning from her own experience, be guided by intuition.
Vytautas Michelkevicius aka Mene.cc (Lithuania), http://www.mene.cc, http://www.balsas.cc, http://www.3xpozicija.lt
is curator, educator and experimenter with collaborative practices for writing and acting. In 2005 he has started e-magazine on media culture
www.balsas.cc and has been editor-in-chief since then. In 2006 he started a collective weblog for public curatorship
www.3xpozicija.lt and moderated it till he succeeded in 'hijacking' a gallery and exporting the weblog into the exhibition (catalogue is available online). After finding out the conclusions of politics of new media in Lithuanian old-media-saturated art scene, he turned his interest into media ecology and published a newspaper 'Asteroid voice 2007' (with Valentinas Klimasauskas) which was followed by another newspaper 'Media Ecology' (2008) and a magazine on collaborative and artist run spaces/practices in Vilnius 'Gallery Log' (2008).
Mene.cc is a collective of young curators, artists and researchers who explores new media and new forms of cultural collaboration in Lithuania and neighbourhood countries. Mene.cc is usually exploring the politics of new media and its interaction with local culture. Most of the collective members are doing their PhD's, however they don't treat their activities as boring academic work and involve themselves into various experimental practices. Mene.cc has produced a number of seminars (including on grassroots new media in Belorussia), exhibitions and books on old and new media.
