Pixelache is a festival for electronic art and subcultures. Pixelache presents projects experimenting with media and technology from a broad range of disciplines: artists, engineers, designers, researchers and architects. Pixelache focuses especially in presenting activities of various international grassroot networks and communities such as VJ community, media activists, open source community and demoscene. The goal of Pixelache festival is to act as a bridge between the traditional creative disciplines and rapidly developing electronic subcultures.

The main Pixelache event is held annually in Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki. Pixelache festival also travels to other destinations - so far the festival has been presented in Stockholm, Bratislava, New York and Montreal. The main organiser of Pixelache is non-profit organisation Piknik Frequency and the international Pixelache events are organised in close collaboration with local partner organisations. The festival program is built around an annually changing theme, which is explored in seminars and workshops which take place throughout the festival time.

The name of the festival was derived from an article which was trying to predict emerging new words. The word ‘pixelache’ (similar to ‘headache’) was supposed to be used to describe the feeling that results from an overdose of digital media content. This overdose can happen easily if the content is too monotonic – which is the case if standards, formats, tools and design principles converge to a very limited set of options. Pixelache presents projects which try to break out of the box and expand the spectrum of how media and technology is used. Instead of showcasing existing projects, Pixelache focuses on presenting new work as well as early prototypes of experimental projects challenging the dominant design.

PIXELACHE 2002-2004

2002 : The first edition of Pixelache

Helsinki: Pixelache presented 15 Finnish projects + artist guest Jarryd Lowder from New York. The festival consisted of presentations, workshops, concerts and performances which took place at a venue hosted by Aula co-operative.

2003 : VIDEOJUKKA – the art of Vjing

Helsinki: The first event to bring together the Finnish VJ scene. Approx. 50 international artist guests, featuring The Light Surgeons (UK), Johnny Dekam (US), VJ Anyone (UK), Michael Heap (UK), SAT [mix_sessions] (Canada), John deKron (GER), AVCENTRALEN (SE), Klipp av (UK/SE) + many more…

Bratislava: Pixelache was presented at New Media Nation – Festival of Festivals event, together with Transmediale, Ars Electronica, Impact, WRO and many other electronic art festivals.

New York + Montreal: Pixelache presented work from 20 artists from Finland & Sweden and around 30 local artists were involved in both cities. Pixelache in Montreal was the opening event of the new SAT building in center of the city. The collaborators in New York were SHARE, Galapagos art space and The Gershwin Hotel. The event featured interactive installation and cinema, VJ performances, laptop jams and presentations.

2004: Audiovisual Architecture

Helsinki: The festival explored how digital media can become a part of architecture and public space. The festival premiered projects from CNCD (Finland), Animaatiokone industries (Finland), Aether architecture (Hungary), AmbientTV.net (UK), Jodi Rose (Australia) and many more. The Locative Media workshop which was held in connection with Pixelache was the first workshop in a series of 6 workshops on the theme ‘Trans-Cultural Mapping’. The event brought together 30 artists, researchers, designers and architects from around the world. The partner organisations for the event series were RIXC/Riga, TEKS/Trondheim, K@2/Liepaja, LORNA/Reykjavik, ELLIPSE/Paris and Projekt Atol/Ljubljana. Signal|Process workshop was organized in collaboration with Center for Music & Technology, Sibelius Academy. The Pixelache artist residency was organised for the first time, Mukul Patel and the AmbientTV crew stayed in Helsinki for one month to develop their projects.

Stockholm: A mini-festival which was organised in collaboration with The Nursery, Fylkingen, CRAC and Sauna space for contemporary art. Audiovisual club events, presentation and exhibition presented work from 15 Finnish artists + Jodi Rose (Australia) + Mukul Patel (UK) and several local artists.

2005: The Dot Org Boom!

Pixelache festival in Helsinki + satellite events in several cities… More information »