From the 19th to the 22nd of November, Piksel15 was a big happening in Bergen. It is an annually organised event for artists and developers who work with free and open source software, hardware and art. This year’s theme is Get A-life!, where the A stands for Artificial.
It’s partly a workshop, partly a festival, and involves participants from more than a dozen countries who are sharing their ideas and coding, presenting their art and software projects, doing workshops and performances, and discuss on the aesthetics and politics of free and open source software.
Today, the development and therefore the use of digital technology is mainly controlled by multinational corporations. Despite the prospects of technology expanding the means of artistic expression, the commercial demands of the software industries severely limit them instead. Piksel is focusing on the open source movement as a strategy for regaining artistic control of the technology, but also a means to bring attention to the allegedly close connections between art, politics, technology and economy.
Artificial Stupidity
As we speak, artificial intelligence and life are rising and settling into different technological fields such as robotised telephonic assistance and self-driving cars, and people believe it’s good take a step back to analyze what’s actually happening.
Fascinated by the concept of «Artificial Intelligence» but still being unable to find the line between what’s intelligent and what’s stupid, Servando Barreiro decided to make this mysterious and pseudo-autonomous audiovisual performance in which predictability is hard to find. The performance is entirely composed out of real life data. Mostly audio recordings, real live video and his own movements on stage, which are being transmitted via accelerometers, video tracking and wireless game controllers.
