For the past couple of days, I have managed to install myself nicely in Ellens (aka Nelle Ink) former BEK office. Maurizio (TeZ) had already taken it, but at some point I pushed myself in there with my powerbook, a coffeecup and an ashtray to circumvent norwegian smoking laws (well, actually to break them). We were later joined by other oppressed smokers, namely Eleonora, Tatiana and Thomas (who mostly slept there though :)). TeZ and I have had some nice talks inbetween the sessions, and found out we have much of a similar taste in music (among them Coil's classic last CD "Love Secret Domain"). TeZ (and Fredd) has been working on both mac os x, windoze and linux during this workshop, even using applications like Director - not at all what you would expect from a FLOSS workshop. And to make it clear (if it isn't already); I personally think artists should be free to use whatever software we find appropriate for this or that. We don't need to create this divide between "us" (good guys on GNU/Linux whatever) and "them" (bad guys using proprietary software). Those of us who work as artists (in the narrow sense of the word) are usually pretty oblivious of which software we use, as long as it gets the job done. (It is now the bad guy in me talking :)) I am not talking about software art now, but e.g. software for making music; To my knowledge there simply isn't any FLOSS software out there to replace my trusty (well..kind of) Cubase sequencer, which I've grown to know for almost 10 years..

There have been several discussions on the future of Piksel; which focus to go for in 2005. I am personally all for a "cross-platform" direction, with FLOSS running on whichever platform the user chooses. I guess this is a too pragmatical approach for some of you, but I really think the discussion is worthwhile. If we decide to go "GNU/Linux only" next year, I fell we're missing out something important - the users. There have even been suggestions that we should make our softwares crossplatform, then make little bugs on the Win or Os X versions. Maybe a funny joke, but not funny as a practical joke I think. To put it very short: I think we should all concentrate more on what we are FOR, than what we are against. I have the strong conviction that we can still be Free, Libre and Open, and that it is much more than our OS(s) of choice that ties us together..
(Little sidenote: Last years collaborative Piksel song was actually fantastic, called "No User No Cry" - u can listen to it here: http://www.piksel.no/piksel03/no_user.ogg)

Oh, Livido. It has been like a dream, or should I say a nightmare. I started out this week with this great feeling that the first Livido release would mean a lot for the world, which I am not so sure about anymore. Those of you reading the [piksel-dev] mailinglist know why I am saying this. And there was never a champagne release to impress the absent Bergen press... On the other side; Seen from the outside I still think the idea of a common plugin architecture (or protocol) is a very good one from the user p.o.v. I guess the question by now is whether the Livido standard should be optimized for both live video and in linear editing suites (which Andraz represents atm - ?). By the time of writing this (wednesday, the week after), it seems like things are going the right way, although there have been some rather harsh exchanges on the dev-list. Hopefully Andraz will have the time to join us next year so he can join in and appreciate the social side of Piksel networking. Jaromil, Kentaro, Gabriel, Niels (and Andraz); I know how much labour of love (read: blood, sweat and tears) has been put into this - respect, and good luck!!

OK, have to round off this thing. Saturday evening at Landmark wasn't so nice, mostly because of the conflict between the bar personell and us. This has grown into an ugly situation, which I guess isn't going to be resolved for a long while. Anyway; I must admit I wasn't really "there" for the evening programme which started with Sara and Derek presenting in detail the previous nights performance. Nice (but the performance made a bigger impression! - hey, thats a compliment!!). Next was Federico and Maurizio presenting a couple of projects of theirs, mostly videos from earlier times which was nice too :) I share Fredds fascination for the futurists, so it was especially satisfying to watch the documentation video from a performance based on Russolos very famous piece "Awakening of a city" from 1914, this time interpreted from Amsterdam. I have mentioned how TeZ and I share some musical taste, therefore also good to see his early videowork - a cover version of Hafler Trio's "Fuck". All good stuff, and I even got my 3 seconds of Landmark fame when they had to borrow my powerbook for the screening of TRIVID (director based, partly automatic video/image machine). The Gephex Crew ended the evening with a much too short, but highly effective screening of their own modular VJsoftware. The reason why I say it was too short is that I was out to negotiate with the Landmark personell, and when I got back in, it was over!

Well, thats about it. As you probably understand I have had a great week with lots of new impressions and I have met lots of great people. I am already looking forward to next years event, and will join in Gisle, Roar, Thorolf, Silje, Thomas, Thor and the rest of the BEK crew for some immediate evaluation of P04 and planning P05 pretty soon. Thanx guys!!! And last but not least a big thanx to Marieke for doing the web pages (incl. this blog) and great design for this years Piksel. Skål!

PS: Sorry for all inaccuracies and/or sloppiness in the blog. I have had some reactions and responses to little things here and there which I suggest you post to the wiki.

PPS: What is new on my os x harddisk after this week:
- Installation of Trivid (TeZ)
- Futurist links, music and pictures (Fredd)
- Iraqi poetry loops (Eleonora)
- Fink installation (Jaromil)
- FreeJ installation (Eleonora)
- Dyne:bolic Piksel edition disk image (Jaromil)
- VLC (by recommendation of Rama)
- About 40 new Firefox bookmarks :)

PPPS: Its very late wednesday nite, and watching the BEK webcam from Oslo I see one guy with long rasta hair scratching his head. Go to bed, Jaromil!!!