Archive for January, 2019


LIVE: MULTI-HAT EVENT

MULTI-HAT EVENT

Tuesday, January 29, 2019, 20:30-24:00

Place: Lavaklubi, Kansallisteatteri (National Theatre)

Address: Läntinen Teatterikuja 1, Helsinki

Free admission


Multi-Hat Event

An evening of video art, music, sound, performance art, design and conversation.

Special guest: video and performance artist Barbara Rosenthal (USA).

 

ARTISTS

Video + Sound, performance – Barbara Rosenthal
Co-hosts – Charlie Morrow, Maija-Leena Remes
* * *
Video graphics + Music – Otto Romanowski
Sounds – Juhani Liimatainen
Sound poet – Juha Valkeapää
Video + Sound – Petri Kuljuntausta
Video, new city project – Martti Aiha
Video + Multitrack sound – Olga Palomäki
Turntable – Harri Koskinen
Video + Sound – Remes & Morrow
3D sound-masking, soundscapes – MorrowSound


SOUND POETRY
Juha Valkeapää & Juhani Liimatainen: Winter Birds
Charlie Morrow: Arctic Sounds (video+audio)

VIDEO WORKS
Barbara Rosenthal: Two Mediated Performances:
1. I’m Growing Up (using projected masks)
2. Existential Photo-Run (blind scrambles through her own projected, distorted photographs)

Martti Aiha: Sculpture Dance & UrBaana
Petri Kuljuntausta: Handshake (with live soundtrack)
Remes & Morrow: Two Cellos 1-2 (performers Juho Laitinen, Seeti Laitinen) & Time Spiral (Hannu Kähönen, designer)
Olga Palomäki: Parallel Landscape I-II
Otto Romanowski: Border

DESIGN
Harri Koskinen: Turntable (the performers will play the instrument during the evening).

DISCUSSION
All artists.


Barbara Rosenthal (born in the Bronx, lives in New York City) is an American avant-garde artist, writer and performer. Her existential themes have contributed to contemporary art and philosophy. Her pseudonyms include “Homo Futurus,” taken from the title of one of her books, and “Cassandra-on-the-Hudson”, which alludes to her studio and residence since 1998 on the Hudson River in Greenwich Village, NYC, and “the dangerous world she envisions”.
Rosenthal is idiosyncratic and prolific. She is known for often revisiting past works, recombining old elements with new, and often appears in her work in some way. These may include x-rays, brain scans and clothing. Sometimes she utilizes physical or textual elements from her journals. As a creative artist within the fields of surrealism and existentialism, Rosenthal brings existential content, via the subconscious, to conceptual art and is known for her intense introspection. and by using herself “as a guinea pig”, explores what it means to be human. Her personal vision evolves with advancing technology.
As an artist, Rosenthal is known as an Old Master of New Media because of her long history in media including photography, video, performance, projection installation, interactive, electronic and digital media, text, collage, prints, artists’ books and objects. Almost all are produced in editions. Most combine camera, text and performative aspects. Elements of Rosenthal’s body of work, “Surreal Photography” are often present.
http://www.barbararosenthal.org/

Note: On Monday 28.1.2019, 18:00-21:00, Barbara Rosenthal event is at Vuotalo, Vuosaari Helsinki. Discussion at 17:00 at Vuotalo Cafe. See more about the event.


Charlie Morrow (born in Newark NJ, based in Barton, Vermont and Helsinki ) is an American sound artist, composer, conceptualist and performer. His creative projects have included chanting and healing works, museum and gallery installations, large-scale festival events, radio and TV broadcasts, film soundtracks, commercial sound design and advertising jingles. He holds patents in immersive sound method and believes: “the future lies in composing environments as well as music as we know it: bringing the skills of composition to where we live, work and circulate, as in a city.” Born to a family of doctors and inventors, Morrow uses his creativity to make tools to share with others—not only musicians and sound artists, but teachers, architects, and engineers – “so that they might create positive spaces for work, education, and healing.” He is creative director of Charles Morrow Productions LLC CMP PBP. www.charliemorrow.com, www.morrowsound.com


Olga Palomäki is a visual and sound artist. S/he is fascinated by the lost, forgotten and the unseen. Palomäki makes experimental sounds based on field recordings. Olga’s sound works are influenced by dark ambient- and drone music. S/he captures man-made sounds and background noise, using them as instrumenta by modifying the recordings and shaping them into a new form. Palomäki makes videos that illustrate the world created by the sounds. Palomäki’s works have been on display in several solo- and joint exhibitions, radio shows and sound art/experimental music events, film- and video festivals and screenings in Finland and several other European countries. Palomäki has perfomed live at different venues in Finland and abroad. S/he graduated from Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Fine Arts Programme in 2007. http://olgapalomaki.net/


Maija-Leena Remes is editor, writer and translator in multiple languages. She creates and develops MorrowSound presentations, exhibitions, installations and business in Europe and in the USA. She has produced 3D sound recordings, videos and interactive media. She created the Modern English libretto and subtitles for MorrowSound’s DVD Beowulf, featuring Ben Bagby singing solo in Old English. She edited the MorrowSound Empire State Building audio tour script and supervised its translation into seven foreign languages. She is editor of medical, technological and literary texts for various international clients. She is literary translator of essays and 30 books for numerous publishing houses. As a permanent free-lance journalist of the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation, she translated, edited and directed production of subtitles and voice-overs, ranging from plays, movies, songs and documentaries to children’s programs. Her hobby is music and she is an amateur violist. As a child she was singer and performer on YLE Radio. With Charlie Morrow, she is co-producer of video works including Two Cellos and Time Spiral.


Martti Aiha is a widely acknowledged artist, not least for public sculptures in Helsinki such as the starkly monumental Rumba (1992) at Salmisaari and the more ambient Länsilinkki (2011), an artistic articulation of a bridge for the ‘Western Link’ highway. Aiha’s idiosyncratic mix of frivolous automatism, reliable craftsmanship and heavy-duty construction became a hallmark of Finnish art in the 1980s and also earned him a following in the other Nordic countries. He was, for instance, awarded the Prince Eugene Medal in Sweden in 2013. His new book- Martti Aiha: Drawings published by Parus Verus.


Otto Romanowski has studied the theory of music, computer music and composing at the Sibelius Academy, in addition to musicology at the Helsinki University. Romanowski is one of the most notable Finnish authorities in computer music. His works are essentially interdisciplinary and inter artistic, and since 1990 he has concentrated also on creating computer graphics and multimedia. Romanowski is a renowned lecturer in music technology and is currently employed as a lecturer at the Sibelius Academy Department of Music Technology in the University of the Arts Helsinki. http://romanowski.art

Border, (video+audio)
In the concert, we will hear version with real-time improvisation. Total dur. about 5-7′. Border is simple by definition, but many borders are actually very complex (mentally, culturally or politically). Hopefully world and people would need less and less borders.


Juha Valkeapää & Juhani Liimatainen

Juhani Liimatainen is a Finnish sound designer and sound artist who worked as a sound designer at Yleisradio (Finnish Broadcasting Company) between 1974-2002, and as a professor of sound design at the Theatre Academy of the University of Arts, Finland. At Yleisradio he maintained and developed the Experimental Studio, taught composers and musicians, and oversaw the design and execution of live electronics for studio and concert productions. He has done studio work with composers such as Paavo Heininen, Magnus Lindberg, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Kaija Saariaho, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Since 2002 Liimatainen has been professor of sound design at the Theatre Academy of Finland. He is a longtime member of the Toimii Ensemble, where he has been responsible for sound reproduction, live electronics, tapes, and videos, and with which he has appeared frequently as part of the solo group in Magnus Lindberg’s Kraft. He has also worked with the Avanti! orchestra and the Finnish Theater Orchestra, among other ensembles, and has performed with the groups Free Okapi, Son Panic and HumppAvanti! Liimatainen’s sound design and compositional work includes numerous theatrical productions, operas, festivals, and recordings.

*   *   *

Juha Valkeapää is a vocal artist and performance maker with a 25-year long career of performances, installations, radio pieces and soundscapes – solos and various group works – vocal & sound & performance art, theatre, music, dance. The key elements of his art are voice / sound, presence, space and improvisation. Juha is more than a vocal artist and performance maker. The subject sets the form: most of his art is based on sound and performance, but if the subject demands a three-meter high wooden guy, he will sculpt one, and if it needs a book, he will write one. Wooden Guy is a sound sculpture. He performs with it in A Guy and a Wooden Guy. And he has written a booklet, with the same title, of the process of making it & other stuff.

*   *   *

Winter Birds

The duo creates a scenery of everyday and mythological birds, like sparrow, great tit, starling, pigeon, seagull, swan, eagle owl, raven, loon, cuckoo, phoenix, and Tux penguin. Juhani plays synthesizers, Juha his voice. And they dress in feathers. The Bird Concert’s first version was performed at Saaren kartano in May 2018.


Petri Kuljuntausta is a composer, improviser, musician, and sonic artist. He has performed underwater music for an underwater audience, improvised with the birds, and made music out of whale calls and the sounds of the northern lights. As an artist he often works with environmental sounds, live-electronics, and installation art. Kuljuntausta has performed or collaborated with Morton Subotnick, Atau Tanaka, Richard Lerman, David Rothenberg, and Sami van Ingen, among others. He has made over 100 recordings for various record labels in Australia, Colombia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Sweden, UK and the USA. Star’s End and Inner Space radio shows selected Kuljuntausta’s ”Momentum” as one of the most significant CD releases of the year. Kuljuntausta has published three books on Sound Art and Electronic Music. In 2005 he won an award, The Finnish State Prize for Art, from the Finnish government as a distinguished national artist. http://kuljuntausta.com/


Harri Koskinen has an uncompromising, bold design aesthetic that has gained him international renown since the early days of his career. Practicality, a spare style and a conceptual approach to product and spatial design are Koskinen’s trademarks. Founded in 2000, Koskinen’s creative industrial design agency Friends of Industry Ltd. is involved in concept and product design. In 2009, Koskinen launched his first namesake furniture collection, Harri Koskinen Works.
Koskinen’s works have been on display in exhibitions around the world. He has been awarded several major design prizes, such as the Kaj Franck Design Prize (2014), Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize (2009), the Pro Finlandia Medal (2007) and the Compasso d’Oro prize (2004). His clients include Alessi, Arabia, Artek, Cassina IXC, Design House Stockholm, Finlandia Vodka Worldwide, Gallerie Kreo, Genelec, Iittala, Issey Miyake, Montina, Muji, Panasonic, Seiko Instruments Inc., Swarovski, Venini and Woodnotes.

 

Polyphonic 2019

Polyphonic 2019

January 14-19, 2019
Vuotalo, Helsinki

 

Six days of adventurous music and sound art for adventurous minds!

POLYPHONIC is an intensive sound art and electronic music event at Vuotalo Cultural Centre in Helsinki. Invited musicians and performing artists are from Nordic countries and Finland, offering for the audience wide spectrum of new sonic expression from the fields of experimental electronic music, sound art and ambient. The program includes electronic music, do-it-yourself musical instruments, sound performances, and improvised music. A sound installation is open in the gallery. The producer of the event is Akusmata, the first sound art gallery in Finland. The program and updates will be published at akusmata.com and Akusmata’s facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Akusmata.
The international artists are visiting as a part of the Puls concert program / Nordic Culture Fund.

PROGRAM

Monday January 14, 2019 | 18:00-20:00

Jaakko Penttinen

Jesse Juup

 

Tuesday January 15, 2019 | 18:00-20:00

Esa Ruoho

Sarana (Janne Särkelä)

Wednesday January 16, 2019 | 18:00-20:00

Jonas Olesen & Sandra Boss (DK)
Vuosi (Ilpo Numminen ja J. Koho)

 

Thursday January 17, 2019 | 18:00-20:00

Bjørnar Habbestad (NO)

Mats Erlandsson (SE)

 

Monday – Saturday, January 14-19, 2019

Petri Kuljuntausta: POLYPHONIC. Sound installation for 100 ticking clockworks at Vuotalo gallery.

The installation is open during the opening hours of Vuotalo.


VUOTALO CULTURAL CENTRE
Address: Mosaiikkitori 2, Vuosaari, Helsinki
Website: http://www.vuotalo.fi/en/contact-information
Map: Google Map



JONAS OLESEN & SANDRA BOSS

‘Maskinel terapi’
(Mechanic therapy)

Electric muscle stimulators, sleep machines, tuning forks, bells and tone generators are some of the ingredients in this installation-performance, where obsolete sound apparatus come to live again in new musical narratives.  The piece examines the therapeutic, hypnotic and telepatic potential of these lost apparatuses.

“Answering machines, electric muscle stimulators and sleepers are obedient in design, but they have a very specific function that Jonas Olesen and Sandra Boss distort in their audio montage. The machines have served their purpose and are now ready for a media archaeological excavation, where the found sound objects arise from the dead with stories from the other side. It was never meant that the muscle stimulator should be listened to as music. It is not in its design. But have we ever asked the muscle stimulator what it wants? Is it at all interested in human anatomy, or has it always been possible to play in a band? Maybe we never know what a machine’s function really is before we ask the machine yourself?”
– (Jonas Olesen & Sandra Boss: An introduction to mechanical therapy and other audio sources that were not intended for music.)

The performance is supported by Puls / Nordisk Kulturfond.

*   *   *

JONAS OLESEN is a Danish composer and sound artist. Jonas works mainly with physical media manipulations and obsolete electronic equipment. He runs the BIN label that specializes in peripheral audio. He is also active in the group Institute for Danish Sound Archeology. totem.menneske.dk

SANDRA BOSS is a composer and sound artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work often evolves in the intersection between performance and installation, where machines and instruments becomes sculptures of sound. She explores the overheard sounds of diverse sound sources such as antique tone generators, hearing test machines, bird flutes, children choirs and elongated accordions. Sandra Boss has studied at The Royal Academy of Music in Denmark. She is currently working on a artistic-based PhD on sound art at Aarhus University, Denmark. www.sandraboss.dk


BJØRNAR HABBESTAD

Flutist, composer and sound artist educated in Bergen, London and Amsterdam. Works as a soloist, chamber and ensemble musician in Scandinavia, Europe, Asia and the US, covering musical grounds from classical contemporary to noise, electro-acoustic and free improvised music. Habbestad has collaborated with a a range of composers and improvisors in both the acoustic and electroacoustic domain and is responsible for the Norwegian premieres of works by Sciarrino, Ferneyhough, Nono and others.

Recent activity includes a commision for the opening of the Borealisfestival with Pascal Baltazar and Benjamin Maumus (FR), the solo part in Luigi Nono`s epic work “IO – frammento dal prometeo” at the Bergen Festival and a collaboration with Berlin based percussionist Burkhardt Beins. Habbestad is Artistic Director of +3DB records and a former curator at Lydgalleriet, a Bergen based gallery for sound art. He currently works as a PhD fellow in Performance Practice at the Norwegian Academy of Music where he researches the relationship between experimentation and sonic developments in contemporary music.
http://www.bjornarhabbestad.com/

The concert is supported by Puls / Nordisk Kulturfond.


MATS ERLANDSSON

As a composer, musician and sound artist, Mats Erlandsson is part of the vibrantly reemerging field of drone music in Stockholm, Sweden, and is known for the extensive use of sustained sound. In 2016 he released his first two releases at the prominent label for experimental music Posh Isolation. Selective Miracles is characterized by the spacious, almost sci-fi, over-driven synth notes that submerge you in sound with rattling basses and slowly emerging melodies. If the emotion on his first release is inspiration of awe, then his second release Valentina Tereshkova, named after the first woman cosmonaut, gives the impression of conflict. The sound is even more distorted and heavily textured drones are almost oppressive. Both releases are vast sonic journeys, where noise, melodies and drones are expertly compressed to struggle for presence. In 2017 he released a collaborative album Negative Chambers at Miasmah with Yair Elazar Glotman. They set out to record with several different acoustic instruments an album, “an imaginary, dislocated “folk” music for the current dark age“.

Erlandsson has undergone studies in composition in Stockholm, where he received a Master’s degree in Composition of Electronic Music. In addition to his own artistic practice, Erlandsson holds a position as studio assistant at the world-renowned Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm. Erlandsson presents his work both as a solo artist and in collaborations, most notably together with Yair Elazar Glotman. He has performed his work extensively, most recently in Berlin (The Long Now), Seoul (ACC), Norberg (Norbergfestival), Stockholm (Fylkingen, Sound of Stockholm, Audiorama), Malmö (Intonal festival), Copenhagen (Mayhem) and in Avellino (Flussi Festival).
https://matserlandsson-poshisolation.bandcamp.com/

The concert is supported by Puls / Nordisk Kulturfond.


ESA RUOHO

Esa Ruoho, better known as Lackluster, is a Finnish electronic music producer and performer from Kontula, Helsinki. He is also known as Esa Ruoho, XLLV, Can’O’Lard and Kökö and the Köks. Since 2000, Ruoho has played numerous musical performances as Lackluster, Esa Ruoho and HLER in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Ireland, England, Austria, Poland, Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania and Ukraine. Current totally: 154 live performances (as of 1 August 2018). Ruoho has also played as warm-up support for numerous famous electronic musicians, such as Biosphere, Petri Kuljuntausta, The Orb, Mixmaster Morris, Brothomstates, Aleksi Perälä/Astrobotnia/Ovuca, Cylob, Wevie Stonder, Machinedrum, Jimmy Edgar, Move D, Jimi Tenor and Bad Loop.

Esa Ruoho started composing electronic music in the mid-1990s and, after 2000 has been releasing recorded music (remixes, compilation-tracks, original work) on dozens of labels, full-length CDs on such labels as deFocus records (Great Britain), Merck Records (Miami, Florida, US),[4] U-cover (Belgium), Psychonavigation Records (Dublin, Ireland), New-Speak Records (Stockholm, Sweden). He has since 2007 worked with SLSK Records from San Francisco and Nice And Nasty from Ireland, the San Francisco-based netlabel TwoCircles Records and the Argentinian netlabel Igloo-Rec, and the American label JellyFish Frequency Recordings.
https://www.lackluster.org/


SARANA

“The silence is not disturbed, but augmented as if the music would have always been there, waiting to be found and presented. In there, an emotional connection – an interference of waves – the shift between being a listener and a performer: a metamorphosis of sounds and the stillness of time.”

SARANA is the musical dimension of Janne Särkelä, an ambient and experimental artist and sound designer from Finland. Janne has performed intuitive and meditative ambient sets at Finnish and foreign underground techno and psychedelic trance parties, art galleries and urban culture events. Janne’s live ambient sets have been heard at Boom 2012 in Portugal – where he performed a three hour sunrise ambient set; at the Ambient Music Conference of 2014; in 2015 he played a two hour live late morning set at Yaga Gathering in Lithuania. In 2016 and 2017 Janne performed at festivals in Indonesia and in the USA, to celebrate total solar eclipses.

SARANA has released two albums, produced by Vir Unis under his Atmoworks (USA) label. Third album will be released by Erototox Decodings (USA), EP from Voyager 1 (FR) is coming up. Many tracks and remixes have been included on releases by various artists and labels. The ambient live sets are held together by self-built and off-the-self computer based tools, and realized by a mobile and portable collection of synthesizers, effects and controllers. The set length has generally been 1 to 4 hours. Janne’s sound installation work has been presented at many art events and festivals.
https://soundcloud.com/sarana


JAAKKO PENTTINEN

Jaakko Penttinen is an electronic musician from Turku. In addition to his solo performances, Penttinen has a background in various bands and he is well known for his ambient/space music project Galactic Travellers. Penttinen works in the Turku Synthesizer Society, curates the Experimental Music Club in Turku Bookstore and makes music in the E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr, Function Wellenform and Kühl Shot.

At Akusmata’s Polyphonic event Jaakko Penttinen presents his work entitled ‘Abstraction – Geometry – Music’. Penttinen’s performance draws on the techniques used by US minimalists such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass to create a restful and static sound where is also room for randomness.
https://www.discogs.com/artist/2078327-Jaakko-Penttinen


JESSE JUUP

Jesse Juup is a finnish electronic musician, producer and improvising performer. Usually he is seen performing with some of his bands – Ritarikunta, Konekonekone, Kühl Shot and Tervakello, but this time he is performing solo. His style is usually hypnotic and slowly evolving mutating soundscapes. The instrument palette consists of a modular synthesizer and guitar pedals, each time being unique and tuned to the performance environment. Jesse Juup is also a founding member of Turun syntetisaattoriseura.
https://soundcloud.com/top10


VUOSI
VUOSI is a collective focused on experimental music and sound art, founded in 2014. Vuosi has performed in different parts of Finland, has released recordings and built sound installations. At Polyphonic event in Vuotalo, the members of the collective Ilpo Numminen and J. Koho, perform as a duo.
http://vuosikasetit.blogspot.com/
http://www.vuosi.bandcamp.com/


 

PETRI KULJUNTAUSTA: POLYPHONIC

Materials: 180 clockwork.

POLYPHONIC sound installation explores the various dimensions, obscures and strange features of the time. A hundred clocks give the space a subtle sound field. Since every clockwork is a mechanical and incomplete device, one is slightly slower and one faster, their time is not exactly the same. As a result, the relationship between the ticking clocks is constantly changing. Sometimes the tickings comes together, making an accent that creates a rhythm. In the next moment, the rhythm disappears and the ear will figure out the new rhythm in the other area. Over time, ticking of clocks produces endless variations.

PETRI KULJUNTAUSTA is a composer, improviser, musician, and sonic artist. He has performed music for an underwater audience, improvised with the birds, and made music out of whale calls and the sounds of the northern lights. As an artist he often works with environmental sounds and live-electronics, and create sound installations for galleries/museums.

Kuljuntausta has performed or collaborated with Morton Subotnick, Atau Tanaka, Richard Lerman, David Rothenberg, and Sami van Ingen, among others. He has made over 100 recordings for various record labels in Australia, Colombia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Sweden, UK and the USA. Star’s End and Inner Space radio shows selected Kuljuntausta’s ”Momentum” as one of the most significant CD releases of the year. Kuljuntausta has published three books on Sound Art and Electronic Music. In 2005 he won an award, The Finnish State Prize for Art, from the Finnish government as a distinguished national artist.