Presenting and reflecting on GOSH at Piksel & Pixelache Symposium

Gatherings 2022 Regional Events
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I just had the pleasure to be part of the Piksel festival again, which has been very influential in the foundation of hackteria’s vision of global networks, open source and art / science / tech collaborations.

PIKSEL :: FREE AS IN ART!

“To celebrate the 20 Piksel Anniversary, join us at the seminar “PIKSEL XX. 20 years of Libre Electronic Art”. Focusing on the Free/Libre and Open Source movement as a strategy for regaining artistic control of technology, it brings attention to the close connections between art, politics, technology, and economy. The seminar revolves around artistic practices related to open-source biokitchen art, politics, and surveillance in information technologies, and visual/sound instruments made by electronics, using Free/Libre software and hardware (FLOSS).”

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The only online resource that i found, that’s still available was from @kimitobo

I researched abit the old histories of hackteria, people that joined and influenced since the beginning, and other networks that served as a role model for our goals. So I prepared a talk to be presented at the Seminar PIKSEL XX. 20 years of Libre Electronic Art and of course digged out that “other” GOSH! of which i heard first time, back in 2009, at my earlier visit to Piksel Festival.

You can see my slides here: Mega Hackteria

Great discussions followed in the round table, on how such networks can survive, sustain, etc… in this example in fact, many global networks and festival were connected through piksel, and also another similar festival called pixelache, which had connections across the globe, from brazil, senegal, france or it’s base in Helsiniki (where i will present in 2 weeks also). The hard truth is, that those networks faded out, and only small nodes and encounters have been happening the last 8 or 10 years. We are still dicsussing why, and what to learn from this. A discussion that should be very interesting also in our GOSH network!

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And i offered another PCB creative drawing workshop late night in the bar…

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Continuing to reflect and prepare for the upcoming pixelache symposium, i want to share some interesting initiatives i found.

Piksel always been a meeting point of very stong open source and free / libre technologies values. And partially still is!

And interesting project on resilience and networks across the tropical belt:

A festival in Peru with strong community involvment:

Or vast research archives in art & media:

Newer inititatives with a strong feminist hacker approach to technology and society:

Or a newly formed festival in Stockholm that continues some of the traditions:
https://www.futurelessfestival.com/

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Researching now even further back into how some Open Hardware discussion were held in this network back in the days, i found some intersting round table discussion held at Pixelache 2010. Discussing various challenges of Open source communities and sustainability of their actors:

And some projects by that post-GOSH! 2009 project called OHANDA:

And a research paper from 2005 was interesting to reflect on to:

Open Source and New Media Artists

https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/20205

I then researched also back into the history of how myself, and the hackteria network and values have very much been shaped by those encounters, and found a great video by Interactivos?

“Interactivos? is a research and production platform for the creative and educational uses of technology focused on the collective creation using open hardware and open software. It’s goal is to experiment with the use of electronics and software for artistic design and educational projects, thus contributing to the development of communities of cultural producers in this field.”

This has very much shaped my view on "Why Do We Gather?"

"Coming together is a beginning,
Keeping together is progress,
Working together is success."

Similar to our GOSH gatherings, i have always been with the oppinion, that it’s kinda waste of time and people, to just listening to each other’s talks about projects and achievemebts, but have people work together, while we are gathering. Partially our GOSHs have very much been like this! (only the time was very limited to really work together on stuffs.)

Looking forward to join that Symposium next week in Helsinki, I hope to find some answers, why many of those highly ideologically driven networks and activities around Open Source / Hardware / Software and the Media Arts seem to have slowly faded out since mbe around 2012…14…?

How can we learn from them for our GOSH community?

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I am having a great opportunity to join for a tour reflecting on different models and versions of earlier Pixelache editions, that took place as “camp” on different islands in Finland and Estonia, bringing together diverse people, artists, hackers, open hardware enthusiasts, anthropolohists from a quite global network. See more info on ealier pixelache above in this thread.

I hope together with my friends we will go deep into conversations on “Why Do We Gather” an onging discourse many of us have been diving into. And i will add here and there some new documented insights into our conversations.