Todays biggest morning news is that Rama finally made it!! He and his friend Xevy finally got through the english passport control and landed in rainy cold Bergen just in time to catch up the afternoon workshops, or didn't they?? (No they didn't - ed.comm). So Carlo (and Gisle) did their presentation of the latest developments of MøB; the software that is the "ur-mother" of the whole Piksel event. We haven't seen MøB in action this year as far as I know, and I guess the reason is partly that Piksel itself has taken so many resources. But the question is also whether MøB is now to be considered more as a special software for the developers themselves - fit to handle its specific tasks effectively by Gisle but maybe not userfriendly enough to live happily in the general world of Open Code Video Software. This is pure speculation on my side, and I will investigate this matter further when it e.g. comes to the attitude towards the Livido protocol.

Whatever will be the concrete outcome of Piksel in terms of a public release (or not), I think the whole discussion raises some important political/tactical questions. For now, when the PureData family software has such a dominant position among the users (and noticing that Tom Schouten currently has pulled out of the discussion), it could be asked whether Livido could be a strategy tying the "other" applications (e.g. FreeJ, EffecTV, LiVES, VeeJay, MøB?) together as a "family" to consitute a stronger alternative. I am not implying there is a conflict between PD and "the other" here, but it is interesting to speculate about the possible future of practical "merge" in terms of a common plugin API (like the differences between VST/MAS/TDM/RTAS plugin structures of common audio software).

"Money will ruin everything" is the slogan on my t-shirt today - a statement from a tiny, but excellent experimental music label based in Oslo (Rune Grammofon). Federico invited to a little improvised practical discussion about "sustainable future" before dinner. Many of us are barely surviving doing these things we love (making art/software/code/language) and Federico was wondering whether there are any good ideas for pooling our networked knowledge in a way that we could all capitalize on. This is of course a huge discussion, and there are as many opinions as there are personal experiences and contexts. One question that came up was how one can "convert" Open Code language to a currency which is valid within the art world. One has the "software art" category of course (e.g. featured for many years at the readme festival and website), but the question raised by Salsaman is in fact a very poetic and philosophical one. So the discussion soon became pretty philosophical as well, and we drifted onto today's japanese-style dinner, devised by Kentaro (who almost lost his left index finger!! Blood and gore!). Food was excellent though, chicken and/or tofu with some untraditional vegetables, rice, soy sauce and some strong sake. mmmmm....

Landmark café is on one hand a very suitable place for showing (live) video art for a wider audience, on the other hand the people running the place have very little interest in and knowledge about the social processes that surround a festival like Piksel. So when the owners suddenly decided to cut the 10kr Piksel discount on beer, it felt like a punch in the face, provoking lots of people. The owners haven't even peeped in thoughout the week, and never said hello. So most of the Piksel gang were likely to leave the place in protest, however we are polite enough to stay there in respect of our friends and collegues who were to present and/or perform. But a big "Boo"! to Landmark for this arrogant behaviour, and I know for sure that Piksel will look for alternative places for next years festival.

Throughout the whole week we have been able to look at a silent, slow, electronic paint installation called ProtoQuadro, installed on a big plasmascreen in the corner of Landmark. Tonight it was presented properly by Federico (aka Fredd) and Maurizio (aka TeZ) from the italian SUb_Multimedia Re_Search Lab. Protoquadro is definitely not a live VJ software, but instead works as a beautiful ambient, (self-) generative audio-visual painting device leaning more towards architecture than a live tool for artists. Fredd and TeZ are both into philosophy, and this installation is borrowing and combining ideas from a.o. Brian Eno, Carl Jung, cabbala, ancient symbols and sacred geometry. It is run on two machines, one for generating pattern alghoritms based on the nine-pointed Enneagram, and the other for rendering images on the big plasmascreen (two layers of digital photo slowly interpolated and revealed by use of a third top layer where different "brushes" keep drawing on an alpha channel. I personally like this installation a lot for its slow, soft, poetic and non-intrusive qualities.

Erich Berger and his TEMPEST performance was next; an extremely tight and impressive audio-visual composition in black and white. The video image is pure generative stuff (through GEM/PD), generated from the audio produced by (radio) tuning into the waves radiating from the computer monitor. So in a way it is a kind of a feedback installation, but built up very nicely, and not too long - around 15 mins. By keeping the aesthetics so minimal (black and white, horizontal and vertical shapes only, tight audiovisual integration), one notices every little detail in the evolution of the performance. I can't help connecting the expression to that of many MEGO artists (vienna "glitch" label), and even to the "godfather" of austrian minimalism Peter Kubelka. For some this would be an insult, but from me it comes as a great compliment.

Last, but not least - finally Rama, Yves and Tatiana aka d.R.e.G.S./r.1 with a live video show entitled "The Aesthetics Of Our Anger". Which is in fact pure political activism camouflaging as a popVJ show for the ignorant ones. Hardcore geneerative sound and rhytm mixed with videoclips of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine and slogan from demonstrations in Europe. This is the improvised, un-polished equivalent to what the american video collective Guerilla News Network (GNN) are doing - recontextualising the aesthetics of music video into something important, and a protest to consumerism and ignorance. Yves, like the true punk he is (see last years blog), ended the show with the famous death command "rm - rf /" (delete everything!!) which caused cheers and big applause, although his system refused to give up easily. Jaromil left the show crying for mercy, after what was according to him "a very violent screening of blood and gore, all too nasty for me". The evening ended (for some) in a nightly session at BEK, Tatiana covering up the webcam and Thomas showing off some hilarious screensavers. I left the building at 5am, straight to bed and a night filled with strange and surreal dreams.