Akusmata

“?->?->?” v.1
sound installation by Martins Rokis

19.1. – 25.1.2015
Opening hours: Mon – Fri 14 – 18, Sat – Sun 14 – 17

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Finding information on the web depends on several factors, for example search engines inbuilt algorithms that “decides” how and which bits of information we are searching for are connected together. A folksonomy is one of the systems of classification and method of collaboratively creating and translating tags to annotate and categorize content. Thus relations between bits of information are decided via social consensus.

If we imagine this field of data as ocean, then in that ocean there are islands of information who’s existence is legitimized by users habits of classification. Navigation process from one point to another in this ocean of data can be full of surprises as peoples believes which things are related to others. This notion of collectively created map of information is starting point for installation “?->?->?“.

Custom software built for installation uses Freesound, a repository of Creative Commons licensed audio samples, whose content can be tagged and browsed by folksonomic means. By manually choosing first search word the automatic navigation process begins and  sonic environment is created from user uploaded audio samples that inhabits similar information space according to collectively added meta data. So in this context collective mind, layers of meaning and culture serves as notation for automatic composition.

Martins Rokis is working with sound and visuals in different contexts/forms, exploring multimodality of human perception via installations, performances or works for multichannel systems.

http://www.martinsrokis.com/

Note: Martins Rokis’ live performance on January 16th, 7pm
at Vapaan Taiteen Tila, Helsinki

BIOMIMESIS VII
multichannel sound installation

2.5. – 10.5.2014

Opening hours: Mon – Fri 14-18, Sat 14-17

Biomimesis is a serie of works that can be realized as site-specific installations, performances, multichannel compositions or something in-between. Custom-made software generates sound structures, which are based on ‘nature-inspired sound design’, models and processes. These sounds evolve in a spontaneous manner, they have not been composed, or follow any strict musical laws. Rather, they simulate a soundscape of some acoustic everyday space — the one on the street, in a forest or elsewhere, where sounds, according to John Cage, ‘live their lives’.

These ‘field recordings from nonexistent places’ without clear origin or context seem recognizable and familiar, evoking personal associations and cultural projections, yet in the same time alien, otherworldly and unidentifiable, blurring boundaries between what we consider natural and artificial. Listeners can ‘zoom’ in or out on various elements that make the whole soundscape, segregating or integrating them, discovering new details or subtle changes.

Martins Rokis is working with sound and visuals in different contexts, forms, crossing boundaries between so-called computer music, psychedelic noise and abstract sound art, blending generative strategies with improvisation and also occasionally making sound installations or works for multichannel systems.

http://www.martinsrokis.com/

SKIN ARCHIVE
sound installation

6.3. – 31.3.2014

Opening hours: Mon – Fri 14-18

Skin is the largest organ in human body. It senses temperatures, pressure, pain and pleasure, and preserves vast of memories, feelings, and stories. Today, the pervasive presence of skin is evident; skin is both an object of constant control and aesthetic modification as well as a crucial signifier of difference in the diverse cultural negotiations.

Skin Archive sound installation listens to skin through the touch it senses. The archive, which usually is understood as an official and formal categorizing and storing system, is in this case treated as unofficial, highly selective and as constantly flickering on pleasure/pain axis.

The sound material is created of recordings that are made i.e. at the boxing club, in sauna, at the tattoo studio and under the water. In these recordings the skin becomes porous as sweating, palpated, stroked, rubbed, sucked, pierced with needle, and scratched.

Skin Archive is a collection of selected ephemeral touches, and it invites the listener/spectator to recall also her or his own skin/touch stories and histories. The spoken narratives are written and told by students of Aalto University, Pori Unit of the Department of Art.

Special thanks to Marianne Decoster-Taivalkoski, Heikki Kossi, Tero Nauha, Merja Pesola, Elina Saloranta, Hannu Vuorinen and the students at the Aalto University, Pori Unit of the Department of Art: Pauliina Koivunen, Ismo-Pekka Heikinheimo, Suvi Härkönen, Gerardo Montes de Oca and Kristiina Saloluoma.
Image: Pirjo Mönttinen

Taina Riikonen is a Helsinki-based sound explorer who works with sounds and texts. Her current interests are diverse bodily sounds, machine sounds and urban vibrations. Riikonen’s work history includes radio works, sound installations, live performances and soundscapes for business purposes.

http://nomadicbreathhelsinki.wordpress.com

INSECT SYNC
a multichannel installation

8.11. – 15.11.2013

Opening hours: Mon – Fri 14-18

David Rothenberg, author of the recently released BUG MUSIC (book and CD), turns this work into a new sound installation Insect Sync for Akusmata, based on the two basic ways insects synchronize their sounds: overlapping irregular rhythms, and overlapping songs that blur into a drone. The drone sounds are based on the song of the seventeen year cicada, and the rhythmic patterns are based on the song of the snowy tree cricket.

The multi-channel sound installation also includes sounds from other surprising insects: Uhlers Katydid, said to have the most complex of all insect sounds, the Common True Kaydid, and the Pine Sawyer Beetle.

Additional synthetic sounds, inspired by the insect world, are added from computer and iPad.

T.G. Forrest, image

www.bugmusicbook.com

KOIROHI
15.10. – 20.10.2013

Koirohi is created from sound recordings from the active nuclear power plant located in Olkiluoto, Finland. With sensitive contact microphones and accelerometers placed directly on turbines, boilers, and thousands of meters of pipes above and below the ground, vibrations from the production of nuclear power can be heard. Since all these elements vibrate at very different rates and through different materials the sounds are rich in overtones, and have an almost dreamy or unearthly quality. Akusmata gallery premieres a 4-channel realization of the work. Koirohi means wormwood in Estonian, like Chernobyl means wormwood in Ukrainian.

Jacob Kirkegaard’s (*1975, Denmark) works are focused on scientific and aesthetic aspects of sonic perception. He explores acoustic spaces and phenomena that usually remain imperceptible to the immediate ear. Kirkegaard’s installations, compositions & photographs are created from within a variety of environments such as subterranean geyser vibrations, empty rooms in Chernobyl, a rotating TV tower, and even sounds from the human inner ear itself.

Jacob Kirkegaard website

The exhibition has been arranged in cooperation with
Nordic Music Days 2013

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay

DISMANTLING A SOUND-WORK IN SIX EASY STEPS (2012)

6-channel sound installation

October 20th – November 16th

The installation explores the artistic process involved in a sound composition. Not
merely deconstructive in approach, the installation rather incorporates review and
recapitulation of the process of composing that uses field recording as a material.
The installation thus acts as a decomposition of the finished work in order to
question over-determination in the end product of sound-based artworks. Primarily
considering sound as an artistic material of essentially ephemeral in nature, the
installation examines the trajectory of phenomenological development the work
possibly has gone through. As methodology, it disengages the six primary layers of
field recording materials used in the work. In doing so, the installation involves the
audience to experience the work in a process-oriented way. The multi-level sound
projection unwraps the work into its source material of field recording disembodied
in their inability to translate actual location onto augmented space of the gallery,
thereby remaining as visceral audio layers disposed to the audience as a speculative
structure of the work. Rather than contributing to the tradition of process art, the
installation stems out of a necessity to analyze, articulate and describe a sound-based
artwork from a phenomenological angle. The artist’s current academic involvement
with sound here works as a catalyst keeping the installation in a discursive state.

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay biography

Born in Birbhum, India, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay studied Cinema specializing in Audiography at national film-school SRFTI in Calcutta (2003-2006), and later received Master of Arts in New Media with an emphasis in Sound Art from Aarhus University, Denmark (2007-2009). Since studying at film-school, he has been involved with sound composition primarily as response to the visual supremacy over predominantly artificial construction of sound in Cinema; consequently, his critical engagement with an autonomous auditory practice develops into a body of work that consists of sound-based new media artworks processed in dialectical opposition to cinematic sound. His works have been exhibited at a number of venues and performed widely. In 2007 he has collaborated with Rijksakademie network to produce an archive of urban audio imageries for a series of curated shows; being a SARAI fellow in 2006, he has worked on a sound art project presenting the outcome at CSDS, New Delhi. Between 2009-2010, he has received a generous grant from Prince Claus Fund to collect audiovisual materials for producing a large-scale sound and video installation. He is recipient of the prestigious Arts Scholarship in 2011 from Charles Wallace India Trust London. He has been short-listed in the PRIX Phonurgia Nova 2010, and awarded with an Honorary Mention in PRIX Ars Electronica 2011. Currently he is engaged with a practice-based PhD project researching on the inter-relationship and cross-influences between cinema, digital media and sound art.

budhaditya.org

In cooperation with:
Artists’ Association MUU http://www.muu.fi

Janne Särkelä
AMBIENT²
22.4.-28.4.2012, 12-14pm (each day)

In my work AMBIENT², I interpret the sound landscape of Harakka island into music, into another language through a computer-abled generative process. We are born into sound landscape to which we get used to through our lives and we take it as a familiar foundation, compared to which everything is strange and peculiar. It is about interpretation. When the same sound landscape is repeated as music something weird and unexpected is revealed.

Music created by the AMBIENT² does not strive to fit its tones into any existing note system. It re-creates the frequencies of the source material by synthetic instruments as a spectral musical application. The final result is a musical work which never quite exactly repeats itself. The composer is the observed space which creates its own tonal system. The music thus created is not aleatory but determined by its own rules.

The basic form of the music is defined by ambient aesthetics, and in this case ambient sound creates the ambient music and the borders of music and the world are seamlessly intertwined.
Janne Särkelä: www.sarana.biz

The sound exhibition is part of the La-bàs Biennale 2012 -festival: http://www.labas.fi/2012/index.html