You are invited to take part in Living Chatter, which is a part of this year's Pixelache Festival. Living Chatter will take place at Arcada University of Applied Science on Friday, 25 September. It will begin in Oasis, Room C350, at 11:00. It is scheduled to end sometime after 16:00. In this particular case, despite what people say, there will be a free lunch!

What is Living Chatter?

Living Chatter is an experimental think-in using a format that we have devised. It will be a structured discussion that we hope will produce concrete results that may, in turn, help define Pixelache's future programme - as well as contributing to the creative practice of all of its participants. It will consist of a small invited group of activists, artists and thinkers, and it will be live-blogged throughout the day, with reactions and responses reaching the group through Twitter, using the hashtag #livingchatter.

To kickstart the process, and to provide some context, the day will begin with Owen Kelly making a short presentation about dividuality, the idea that we are social before we are individual, and that we are never as individual as some would have us believe. The other participants will then introduce themselves and map the concerns that they will bring to the day. Tomas Träskman will coordinate an agenda for the day from the participants initial contributions. Also participating will be Federico Bonelli (utopian urban researcher, Amsterdam/Siciliy), Leona Lynen (urban researcher and editor of the Weltstadt exhibition), Jana Pejoska (game designer, Helsinki) and others.

After this we will begin exchanging ideas and information until we surprise ourselves by defining a set of practical outcomes.

What will these outcomes be?

In the spirit of the decentralised festival, Living Chatter is a genuine attempt to explore possibilities for rapid prototyping in the realm of ideas. We know from practical experience that it is possible to develop concepts for mobile apps quickly. We know from experience with hackathons that it is possible to code these apps quickly. What we intend with Living Chatter is to explore the possibilities inherent in bringing together a group of people each of whom has personal knowledge and experience in the realms of city, culture, community, and communication and to challenge them (us) to combine their expertise to create a plan, a project or a programme of action to benefit Helsinki. And to do this very rapidly.

We have been thinking that this programme might form part of Pixelache's future programme, but if a more useful channel emerges from the process then we will happily use that.

We cannot be more specific than this -- about our intended outcomes -- because if we could, then Living Chatter would not be a genuine experiment.

What to do next

If you would like to participate in Living Chatter then please fill out the application form below. There is a limited amount of space in this event (20 people total). After registering, within the next 48 hours you should receive a (very) short questionnaire. This will ask for information that we can share among the participants (in order to avoid spending half the day introducing ourselves).