Looking this over, it occurred to me that this might be a suitable venue for a project I've been wanting to do for a while but which life has been getting in the way of lately; the demonstration of 'compound living' with the use of CNC based microyurts. Compound living is where a home is based on a cluster of small shelters in the open. Instead of creating a large building divided into many rooms, you use closely spaced small buildings, each independently heated and powered, designed to host the functions of one or two rooms, and optionally linked by decking and outdoor lounge areas. In this way one facilitates the use of much smaller structures with much lower impact on the land and which are easier for the individual owner-builder to construct and deploy. It's a concept I once briefly discussed with Pierre Koenig shortly before his death; he working on a very high-end Modernist expression of the concept at the time and I exploring the possibility of repurposing prefab structures like small car shelters as a low-cost owner-built solution for the low-toxic housing crisis. (I got his attention because, apparently, I was among the first and last people to ever contact him by email) Currently, I feature a compound home concept as one of the possible housing designs for the Open House documentary project--a project to showcase Post-Industrial culture through the demonstration of the owner-built construction of a home and lifestyle based entirely on Open Source designs and personal digital fabrication. What is interesting with compound living in this festival's context is the way it merges the home with the immediate natural surroundings. Little to no landscape modification would be used, the microshelters set in the found space nature provides using small pier foundations. The open natural environment--let's say, a forest--becomes one's home and the small structures rooms within that home with the flora and fauna of the local environment free to intersperse the living environment. And so this presents a very different relationship between nature and the built habitat with unique lifestyle aspects. (for better and worse in some aspects--you might have a bit of a problem in locations with rougher climate or a lot of dangerous fauna...) There is a potential here for the cultivation of a greater empathy for the natural habitat and more direct awareness of human impact on it. You are making a home in nature the way a family of racoons might inhabit a hollow tree, yet it's not 'camping' or 'roughing it' in any way as one is employing the best technology has to offer for a safe and comfortable living within, rather than apart from, nature. This notion might suit this festival theme well. But building a permanent compound home would be beyond the scope of a festival exhibition and so I consider a more nomadic approach based on the use of several 'microyurts' that is still clearly above the level of camping. A microyurt is a simple shelter that employs the structural concept of the traditional yurt--the rigidized insulated tent--but at smaller size with more contemporary materials, assembly, and design, such as the use of a CNC cut skeleton frame made of EcoBoard with puzzle-fit assembly. I've been planning to develop a set of these based on the calabash gourd shape which has been featured in a lot of furniture design lately. Simply imagine this at a human scale; http://kitticraft.com/shop/cat-beds-and-swings/calabash/#product_images[grouped]/0/ This shape is interesting for its organic character, it's relation to native pottery shapes which could inspire its surface decoration, the way that it provides a fully contained form supporting a sheltered raised floor, and the fact that it would perfectly accommodate the mounting of a small vertical axis wind turbine or radial solar panel array on its top to power LED lighting, small electric heating, mobile device charging, and cluster WiFi. And with a gridded structure as demonstrated by the above cat bed, there is much potential for integral appliances and shelving. Depending mostly on the difficulty in crafting the exterior fabric shell, developing a set of these with specialized interior design variations for a portable compound could be possible within the time before the festival date. Is it possible that support for such a project could be found? On 4/13/16 5:24 PM, [email protected] wrote:

Subject: [P2P-F] Fwd: [commoning] Open Call for Pixelache Helsinki 2016 Festival – Interfaces for Empathy – 22-25.9.2016 From: Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> Date: 4/13/16, 5:24 PM

To: p2p-foundation <[email protected]>

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: *andrew gryf paterson* <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 6:23 AM Subject: [commoning] Open Call for Pixelache Helsinki 2016 Festival – Interfaces for Empathy – 22-25.9.2016 To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>

// apologies for cross-posting //

Festival dates: 22.-25.9.2016 Deadline to apply: 1.5.2016

For whom: artists, activists, scientists, thinkers and doers + everything in between also groups and collectives.

For what: performances, interventions, installations, talks, workshops, actions, processes, in any field.

The perspective that Pixelache’s 2016 festival Interfaces for Empathy explores is one of empathy. The festival sets out to engage with the question and proposal that maybe empathy could be learned, found or especially re-found through bodily experience and presence or experimental communication that is not limited only in between humans. The festival embraces embodied and alternate visions of perception that distance us from the perceptual machines that we might be in danger of becoming due to sense-altering medias and augmented realities. Is it possible, through this very basic ability to sense or identify, to change the narrative of the human-kind towards being a more balanced part of the ecosystems we live within? The dimension of empathy we are especially exploring in this years festival is on microlevel; individual experience, identity and on personal relations.

The festival’s main venue is Lapinlahti former psychiatric hospital in central Helsinki, Finland. Despite of the hospital area’s central location in the city, it is situated close to the sea and surrounded by big park & cemetery. There are several indoor and outdoor spaces in the environment that used to be part of the first psychiatric institution of Finland. The festival also reaches out to other places in the city through collaboration with Kiasma - the Museum of Contemporary Art and MUU galleries.

Some projects from the festival will be chosen to tour in two other towns in Finland, Jyväskylä and Rovaniemi, in November 2016.

Read also http://pixelache.ac/posts/pixelache-festival-2016-interfaces-for-empathy-22-...

Please send your proposal through the online form at www.pixelache.ac <http://www.pixelache.ac> website. The information about the call results will be sent in May 2016. The festival program is planned through collaborative process by festival co-directors Mari Keski-Korsu and Petri Ruikka, Pixelache member & artist Egle Oddo, researchers Katri Saarikivi and Valtteri Wikström from NEMO research group and Helsinki University, artist and professor from IT University of Copenhagen Laura Beloff and other Pixelache members.

If you have any questions, please contact [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>

-- andrew gryf paterson m.fi <http://m.fi> +358 50402 3828 [permanent] m.lv <http://m.lv> +371 28 689 482 <tel:%2B371%2028%20689%20482> [prepaid when lv] http://agryfp.info |http://j.mp/agryfp-archive socialmedia id: agryfp

-- Eric Hunting [email protected]