Recommended events
WÄRK:fest 20.-21.10.2012
WÄRK:fest is an event celebrating do-it-yourself-culture at Cable Factory in Helsinki, during 20. -21. October 2012. The first WÄRK:fest will turn Cable Factory into a playground for learning, researching, innovating, experiencing, sharing, recycling and tuning. There will be up to one hundred workstations presenting DIY-projects that range from cooking, soldering and crochet to guerrilla gardening and a bike workshop. The program will also include presentations, speeches and shows.

WÄRK:fest will feature four Pixelversity-related projects: Light is History, Hobilabor, Hackerspace St. Petersburg and Koelse.

Light is History is an initiative to engage citizens with issues of community well-being and energy consumption in daily living through art and research. The project is planned to take place during November 2012 in the Kallio neighborhood of Helsinki, Finland.

The project aims in neighborhood community building through a light installation that reflects the energy usage of participating members of the community. In the project, a community of twenty families living in an apartment block/s will contribute energy from their homes to a light installation that will be located in a public space in their neighbourhood. The participation from the community also entails publishing their domestic energy usage once a day on a web portal that will feed the light installation. The aim is to collaboratively create an outdoor light installation in a public space around the apartment building/s and to gather the participating people for a short time period in the evenings to allow communal well-being in the shared space.

The families also will be providing the domestic artifacts used in the installation. These will be objects with cultural value to them and or to their community. This way, the installation will simultaneously combine and juxtapose the communities' history and energy needs. In addition to light therapy, the intention is to bring the cultural artifacts and energy needs of the communities out into the open, to be understood and appreciated by the local neighborhood and general public.

The one week transient project and its related workshops aim to create a dialogue about the future of collective energy use and managing resources and well-being among the participants. The project has received support from Aalto Media Factory and is being carried out under the Pixelversity initiative by researchers and students from Aalto University, School of Art, Design and Architecture.

The organizers will give out a presentation during WÄRK:fest and demonstrate lamp making. Also the Hobilabor, Hackerspace St. Petersburg organizers will take part in the weekend. See you at WÄRK:fest!