Akusmata

MANIPULATED
3.5. – 30.5.2013

Noise pollution is a global environmental problem. It causes severe mental and physical illnesses to people, and it can be fatal to the ecosystems all over the world. The long-term effects of being exposed to noise are unpredictable. It alters the special behaviour of animals, and  it may even lead to extinction of many species. The constant background noise in urban areas is inescapable, and it was impossible for me to cope with. Therefore, I adapted a new approach towards the urban soundscape. I started listening to it, as if it was an uncontrolled composition, with a music-like structure.

Manipulated (Sounds For Headphones) is a collection of soundscapes based on field recordings. I focus on the constant background noise in urban areas. I record man-made sounds – the electric buzz and hum, the industrial beats of the machines and vehicles – sounds, that are easily ignored because of their banal or irritating nature. I de-constructed the field recordings into fragments, and explored them, in order to re-shape them into a new form. They transformed into soundscapes of a parallel reality. Manipulated (Sounds For Headphones) is a suggestion on how to perceive the urban noise in a different way. Re-Manipulated is a sound installation created especially to be played in a gallery.

The exhibition has been supported by Paulo Foundation and
Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
The Soundscape collection will be available on CD in 2013. It will be published as a limited edition of 100 copies; each CD comes with an unique cover sheet.

Olga Palomäki (*1980) is a visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland. Combining several different mediums, her work often deals with social issues and taboos, such as the concepts of alienation, otherness, loneliness, and death. Palomäki has had many solo exhibitions around Finland. She has participated in various group exhibitions, and film- and video festivals and screenings in Finland and some other European countries.

www.olgapalomaki.net
www.soundcloud.com/olgapalomaki

7K

Group Exhibition
4.4.–26.4.2013

7K is a proposition on what sound could be in a gallery context, made by seven artists. The exhibition asks what kind of ways of representation sound art has and what sound could tell us about space and place. As a result to these processes the exhibition introduces seven works to the public.

The thematic basis for these seven works is the actual exhibition space, Sound Art Gallery Akusmata, as a space, place and time. The works take different approaches in dealing with the characteristics of Akusmata as a physical, historical and social space. The exhibition explores sound as art and as a medium for information and also deals with the relationship between the exhibition and the one experiencing it.

The artists of 7K:

Ina Aaltojärvi

Ilpo Heikkinen

Markus Heino

Viljami Lehtonen

Joonas Outakoski

Aki Päivärinne

Johannes Vartola

The artists of this exhibition are MA-students majoring in Sound Design in the Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki.