most of ideodiseño´s furniture and functional
objects are made out of industrial waste coming
from colombian cities´suburbs.
recently ideodiseño created a hammock installation
for the ‘pixelazo’ festival.
(pixelazo is a five-month series of events which
culminates in june when a number of international
media artists gather in medellín for a festival of
workshops, lectures, exhibitions and parties.)

as urban furniture for this event we recycled
big plastic bags and transformed them into
hammocks, which we hung in the main venue of
the festival - in the unfortunate ‘plaza de la luz’
(light square). historically the ‘plaza de la luz’ has
been a representative space for the medellín city.
it used to be a flower garden and a meeting point
for local people. when the government decided to
re-invent it and invested 9000 million pesos for the
10.000 square meter ‘artistic intervention’,
people have abbandoned it.
the project has won numerous architectural
awards, but the 300 light columns have never
worked correctly and the concrete square is
actually one of the darkest spaces in the city.

un abrazo desde colombia!
y muchas gracias!’
jd





juan david uribe saavedra
http://www.ideodiseno.com






---
socially engaged pARTying: pixelazo
the first pixelazo festival was held in barrio santa
cruz la rosa in medellin, june 25th to july 5th, 2007.
it addresses a wide range of topics from electronic
art to subcultures; from grass-roots new media
activism to audiovisual spectacles.
the program featured a workshop on blogging by
alejandro tamayo & régine debatty (editor-
in-chief WMMNA), a music workshop by bicho
vargas (from bogota), a streaming workshop
by antena mutante (also from bogota),
three conferences with presentations by medellín
wireless, a recycling project eRECICLAJE, radio
and other media projects. the week finished with
two fiestas featuring music and VJ workshop
results.

somebody said on the pixelazo blog:
‘colombians are dead tired of documentaries
and fiction only portraying the violent sides
of colombia, providing artificial life-support for
a dying stereotype. (please don't make more
films or books on colombian gangs and drugs
and war for the moment).
http://www.pixelazo.org

see images from the event by juha huuskonen
http://www.juhuu.nu
http://www.unsworn.org/report/colombia2007

the goals of pixelazo are:
cultural exchanges between artists
from the southern and northern hemisphere.
to introduce electronic art and culture to
populations that have not had an opportunity to
come into contact with these forms of expression
(as marginalized communities; rural population;
indigenous communities).
to share and multiply knowledge through
conferences, round table discussions and
theoretical or practical workshops.
to generate encounters that foster creativity
and plural and multidimensional thought.

pixelazo is the new colombian node in the
‘pixelache’ festival network. it is a collaboration
between intermundos and pixelache helsinki.
http://pixelache.ac
http://www.intermundos.org

---
pixelache
started in 2002 in helsinki as a festival focusing
on VJ-culture and is now a network of events
from helsinki (where it is called ‘pikseliähky’)
to paris (’mal au pixel’).
pixelache presents projects experimenting with
media and technology from a broad range of
disciplines: artists, engineers, designers,
researchers and architects.
it 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 word ‘pixelache’ (similar to ‘headache’)
is supposed to be used to describe the feeling
that results from an overdose of digital media
content. such an 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.

the main pixelache event is held annually in the
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 a 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.