It was remarkable how frank people we never met and will never ever see again shared their personal failures in life.

These encounters set the tone for the actual event last friday.

In our humble office with a granny’s chair, loads of pillows and the dim light of a billion candles we familialy calmed down and curiously listened to the three invited speakers’ stories about failure. First Ole Seidenberg shared his story he had with Uwe – who’s been a homeless heroin addict for over thirty years. Adam Rice took us on his rollercoaster ride he had in his job life and the lessons he learned from losing it all. After a short break, Kwela Hermanns enchanted us with more personal insights and that life can never be choreographed, just like a dance of tango. As a cute little detail bracketing the evening, a short message from Uwe summarized the main lessons of the evening – that everything will eventually turn out well.

And it was this very personal short message which underlined the whole atmosphere at the gathering. Intimate, honest, at moments silent, but never awkward, inspiring and optimistic to its core. It felt just like Christmas without the pretentious kitsch.

We think it was a very special occasion and this is why we’d like to thank every single one of our guests – and especially the speakers openly sharing their misfortunes and our friends of Your Neighbours and KS12 for realizing this conference – for having our very own Christmas in May. This was truely magical.

KS12 did a documentation of the event, it’s in the making, we’re so thrilled to see this, we’ll keep you updated. Sparkles.

Since 2003, Schmiede provides space, time, tools, a heterogeneous group of participants and projects. For ten days in September, the Saline in Hallein, Austria, becomes an open and free playground (2000sqm) for 140 creatives and artists from all around the world. Depending on the needs and possibilities of its members the SmithNetwork moves along the borders of art, culture, handcraft and creative industry. Schmiede ends with FocusOnInside, a grand public exhibition, where the Smith productions of the past ten days are presented to the public and media.

In Palomar5′s pre-camp-days Schmiede was a very important advisor, sharing with us many years of experience in social and multidisciplinary frameworks. Recently we have re-discovered our similarities and we decided to start looking for ways to learn from each other and build things together. We will start by having members of the Palomar5 community visit, support and participate in Schmiede10 this September.

If you want to apply you can do so on www.schmiede.ca until May 31.

As well as singing this glorious melody to Betahaus on Saturday 10th April, we will also be running a workshop. Building the vision of the Open Design City in cardboard, soon to be replaced with the awesome reality once the dust settles and the beer bottles are cleared away.

The main party starts at 22.00, but we will be playing in advance between 17.00 – 20.00

Talk to me bubbles will be out in force, and will shall naturally be bringing our own special brand of participation to the event.

We hope to see you there.

“Through a meeting fostering open-mindedness, exchange of ideas and learning, we hope to show solutions to technical, social and political problems, and celebrate free, reclaimed and creative art and technology”

and

“break artificial boundaries between disciplines and find unexpected ways of doing things that promote liberalization, sharing and reclaiming of technologies that traditionally belonged to the realm of corporations and well-funded academic labs”

We certainly share some common values and areas of exploration. Should be a fun event, with much to be learned and shared.

We’re proud to now officially announce that Palomar5 extends its network of participants, experts and partners to proceed the exploration of creative spaces. While continuing operations at the newly renovated Berlin home base, we’re spreading our wings internationally to continue working on existing projects, spark new ideas and boost discussions about emerging topics and the projects from the camp.

For this effort we’ve found ourselves an excellent partner in the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) to make the world a better place. The GAFFTA team are likeminds and do also believe in the synergical benefits of open exchange, multidisciplinary surroundings and the will for change. Palomar5 is also teaming up with the GAFFTA to host interactive workshops and other events in the GAFFTA studio to share experiences with the public and kick-off new ideas and discussions together.

About GAFFTA: Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) is a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to building social consciousness through digital culture. Guided by the principles of openness, collaboration, and resource sharing, our programs promote creativity at the intersection of art, design, sound, and technology. By making digital culture accessible, substantive and inspiring, we aim to help realize the greatest power of technology: to bring us closer, faster.

This is why we invited people not to spectate but interact. After showing how to make plastic in the microwave with supermarket ingredients, and create blow moulded and hand moulded plastic prototypes you finally could get hands on cooking with degradable and environmentally awesome bioplastics. You could even see the incredibly stunning 3D-printing makerbot (by bausteln) in action and join our random sillyness and fun time.

We had a super amount of fun, we hope you did, too.

P5 @ Social Media Week
Thursday, Feb 4th // 1pm-3pm // piabo, Berlin Mitte

Our partner piabo that helped us coordinating all the press requests last year is going to host a workshop about “how to attract talents through social media usage”, targeted a HR people from corporates. Since the theme of the social media week is “Streit”, we thought that it’s interesting to also talk about how corporates should NOT use social media to attract potential employees. So together wih our former Palomar5 microcamp participant Edial and member of the web agency supertroup “YOUR NEIGHBOURS”, we will present the “10 No Go’s for social media usage” @ piabo from 1-3pm. The workshop’s capacity has already been reached, however. The whole schedule about the events taking place under the rooftop of the SMW can be found here.

P5 @ transmediale.10
Sunday, Feb 7th // 1pm-3pm  // Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Foyer, Berlin
January 28 – February 7, 2010 // Club Transmediale, next to .hbc, Berlin

The well reknown festival for arts and digital culture Transmediale and its sister festival Club Transmediale are taking place again in Berlin – and we are amongst them in several ways.

One of the projects that derived from the Palomar5 Camp in 2009, “I am Display“, has its premiere and first exhibition at the Club transmediale. It is a light installation that plays with the perceptions of its audience. It explores the equilibrium between our senses, our bodies and our surroundings. If you want to experience  the 182 fluorescent tube lights that the camp residents Valentin Heun (Germany), Sagarika Sundaram (India) and Gijs Burgmeijer (the Netherlands) built to a structure measuring, 2,5 m x 13 m – you will have the chance until February 7th – the exhibition is located right next to the .hbc.

On Friday evening, Feb 5h, we’ll deliver the famous “Talk to me about”-bubbles”, lead invented by our camp resident Jay Cousins, to the Club Transmediale party crowd.

And on Sunday afternoon, between 1.00-3.00pm, several residents and core-team members of Palomar5 will host a play- & workshop under the theme “being human” at the Transmediale, right in the foyer when you enter the House of World Cultures. The workshop is about digital lifestyle, analog behavior and human interaction. But enough with the lenghty descriptions, we are just happy to meet you there!

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And if this wasn’t enough, we are also gonna be on German TV this thursday:
A film team visited our camp and we’ll appear in the show Neues this thursday, at 8.15pm @ 3SAT.

And last but not least, we’ll also be at the Systemdesign Symposium at the Kassel Art School this friday. It’s about 4 different voices about design, our’s will tackle the question “how can you design structures that foster creativity and collaboration in groups?”. You are happy to join us there:

February 5th 2010, 2.00pm – 6.00pm // Hörsaal im Nordbau / Kunsthochschule Kassel / Menzelstr 13 / 34121 Kassel

But… what is silicon sentier?
Silicon Sentier is a cluster of 150 small and middle-sized companies, located in Paris.
Its members participate in R&D as well as experimentation programs on mobile segments, FTTH (fiber to the home), social networks, etc…
Silicon Sentier has launched events and workshops with Google, Yahoo, Mozilla, Facebook, Sun Microsystems, and many other companies and smaller or bigger communities.
Silicon Sentier has created La Cantine in February 2008. Located at the heart of Paris, la Cantine offers a meeting place for the community to work, develop, learn, contribute and promote.

À bientôt à Paris, nous nous réjouissons à l’avance.

When: Sunday, 29th November 2009, 15.00 – 18:00
Where: Malzfabrik, Bessemerstr- 2-14, Berlin