Piksel is an annual event for artists and developers working with free and open source software, hardware and art. Part workshop, part festival, it is organised in Bergen, Norway, and involves participants from more than a dozen countries exchanging ideas, coding, presenting art and software projects, doing workshops, performances and discussions on the aesthetics and politics of free and open source software.
The development, and therefore use, of digital technology today 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 close connections between art, politics, technology and economy.
The first Piksel event was arranged in november 2003, and gathered around 30 artists/developers from all parts of the world. It consisted of artistic/technical presentations, coding workshops and live performances. All activities were documented in a daily blog: http://www.piksel.no/log.html
One of the results of the event was the initiation of the Piksel Technologies for ‘interoperability between various free software applications dealing with video manipulation techniques’ – piksel.org
Piksel is a member of the Pixelache network of electronic art festivals – network.pixelache.ac – and one of the nodes in the Production Network for Electronic Art in Norway – PNEK
(source: http://14.piksel.no/info/piksel)