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20210725

Build a Alex Rice Piezo Preamplifier following Zach Poffs documentation. Seems to work well with my i4 instrument input. I’ll have to build a few shielded piezos to get a better understanding of its quality. The build was relatively easy and I sourced a matched 2N3819 jfet pair locally (should have found a more sensitive couple but went for 11,6 & 11,7 Idss). Also… Should have fitted the 1,5k (R3) resistor I used with a 1-2k trimmer for balancing the transistor bias (the balancing process is detailed in the Cortado preamp documentations). But I’m happy with this as is… Perhaps for the next build.

Fitting a Neutrik NCJ6FIS combojack in a Hammond 1550A case took filing but worked well in the end. Added a belt clip from an old Würth tape measure so that I can keep the unit on me during performances. A neat and small package! I’ll etch some descriptions (using ferric chloric acid!) on its workings to the case before its done. I’m dreaming of building a stereo-pair which could be fitted to the two inputs of my tascam dr40. Found a good resource for all sorts of audio/electronics stuff Elliott Sound Products (the piezo preamp looks promising) maintained by Rod Elliott.

Getting more comfortable with Norns. Digging Cheat Codes and other grids optimized devices using my secondhand launchpad. Also coping with script tweaks by accessing the device over maiden. The forum introduced me to a bizarre programme Argeïphontes Lyre which can (for example) chop up files into desired lengths (working with the Trans-Siberian Railway -Sound Archive recordings using goldeneye).

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20210719

Talked and played waters at Kiilan äänipäivät. I had a wonderful time, stayed up way too late and made new friends. I enjoyed all the performances. Particularly liked Ahti & Ahti (perfectly lowercase guitar tremors) and .oO ensembles interpenetration of the four scores they had commissioned. Out of these a poem by Pauliina Haasjoki was my favourite and I also liked Leena Kelas piece titled “Ode to Soil and Elegy for Extinction”. In their interpretation the ensemble focused on distance, perhaps to draw emphasis to our experiences of the phenomenon of extinction. The performers were really far (across the wheat field) from the audience. Three small black dots in a vast plane. They begun executing the score but what they actually performed was impossible to see or hear. Suddenly they produced a lot of noise banging metal barrels and right after a sound clip of generic audience applause was played. The clip was treated with a phaser effect and slowly morphed into a squarewave bleep. This amplified our the distance to the performers. The field felt like a stadium concert. From a far the loud noises they had performed were effected by the wind and atmospheric gasses, which made the noise they produced wavery. Phaser effect morphing to squarewave was a nice discovery. The score for the piece (revealed later at an after party at Kiilojentalo where we hear two compositions by Pauline Oliveros, interpreted by the Truckfuckers) was very detailed and revealed that the drumming segment was produced from the prompt “AIM FOR JOYFUL CACOPHONY”.

I performed with the Kiila village spring (60.2372, 22.8633) which is a plentiful water source that produces drinking water for the village. It is situated between two fields (wheat and rye) and produces a small creek heading towards the sea. The spring opening is protected with five big concrete rims (covered by a plastic lid) and the enormous overflow (from under the rims) was covered by willows. Roope said the spring has a chalky taste… I think there was clay in it too. I think there were over 50 audience members and I had to use the full range of my voice to be heard. Felt messianic to shout next to a flowing creek. Water Lab (version 2) operated very well using batteries. I chained two lantern 6v’s (for 12v) to power the VC122 Gieskes which produced a small water jet by interpreting the amplitude of the voices the system produced (I’m pushing my usb power supply to ~410mA! and the only error is occational drops in the output when there is no signal). I polished my diy allflesh pads before the gig, felt like a proper way to prepare (also made a special t&r unit). I passed the map which the director of the Kurkijoki village museum drew us to the audience but I didn’t receive it back. The revolutionary dance poses and stretches were well received and the entire audience partook in my efforts. Being inspired by the The French Revolution, Pt. 1 & 2 podcasts by SRSLY WRONG I added French revolutionary poses to the mix. They worked great as bodies are off balanced and facial expressions amplified. See the statue for the French Revolution in Maubeuge as an example. The legs are arched back and if the riffle would be changed to a guitar the pose could be from a stadium gig. The revolutionary stretches feels like a worthy physical activity to explore further (also reminds me of Shadow Boxing Revolution, 2010).

Handed out a few copies of our (by Tea Andreoletti, Thomas Berra & me) Tasting book which is now released as a part of Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto’s Shift Key: Protection Spells program curated by Native Art Department International (Jason Lujan and Maria Hupfield). Bundled the booklet with a plastic knife which the audience could use to tear the sheets open and to perform one of the recipes in the book (also had some Sriracha sauce available). Tasting is the process of comparing two or more ingredients to each other (2021) is available for view for two weeks (and after this on youtube).

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20210707

Hydrologian perusteet |Elementary Hydrology] (2014) Leppäranta, Huttula, Virta. A solid introduction to the topic. Too much maths but great for checking statistics.

Visited the most magnificent artisanal well in Finland… Possibly of North Europe! The well was made accidentally in 1987 as a part of a ground water survey. Engineer drilled a 20 m deep hole (ø ~5cm) to a river bank next to a farm. The drill bit broke into a reservoir which produced a three meter high water jet. The water sprays from a bit shaft which is locked firmly to the ground, possibly reaching bedrock. The farmer who owns the land has tried moving the shaft and confirms it does not budge. The jet has been spraying for over thirty years and is currently 2 m high. He estimated that the fluctuation of the stream height is seasonal. I would estimate that it produces three litres of fresh, very cold and neutral tasting water per second. The taste felt grounded (alkaline?). The current farmer has lived on the property for 13 years and detailed that nowadays only a few visitors visit the well. In the nineties “truckloads of tourists” visited the site and the previous owner was not exited about the attraction.  A few years back the farmer attempted to make the well accessible by building a visitor trail (it would follow the river stream) but they couldn’t figure out who owned the land across the river and plans were put on hold. Currently the well produces drinking water for forest boars which the farmer keeps. He’s hoping to place a tub for bathing on the site. Currently the jet lands an a concrete well ring which is sinking slowly into the muddy riverbank.

The landscape, the views and the nature surrounding the industrial-natural-spring-well felt compelling. I felt an urge to act and to develop something for the site. I’m fortunate to have grown up surrounded with landscape paintings. The paintings are old (by Finnish standards) and they continue to afford me a view to the past. As paintings, the views live and look different depending on light the season offers. I particularly remember a picture of a red house. When visiting Kokkola in the early 90ties I saw the same building, now abandoned and climbed in trough its window. It felt like I knew the people who had stood at the site (and the horse whose name I remember). Because the landscape paintings are old I can imagine views they depict having a past and a future. I think this compels me to act when I counter a natural phenomenons of interest, like the artisanal well. I’m compelled to interact because I can imagine someone seeing it in the future. I don’t think this is an effort to capitalize views, to use them as resources. It is a process of keeping them, keeping the view and even to make it more long lasting. I started dreaming of a granite observatory which would house the water jet. A bright copper bowl would be set so that it would ring as the water lands on it. A pipe in the bottom of the bowl would guide the water to the nearby stream and counteract erosion. People would be invited to listen to the water and to tap of the jet stream for a taste.

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20210630

I was helping a collegue with their performance. We lined a gallery floor with a carpet, it was a hot day and we worked long hours. Good honest work. They where a postdoc researcher, their partner had a PhD and I’m a junior researcher. The measurements of the carpet had to be exact and I felt stressed, ending up making the same measurements over and over.

“Every repetition is an iteration”. I said kneeling on the floor and we exchanged smiles.

We are reaching an academic saturation point. Most artist I know have a university degree and practically everyone has the theoretical competence to set the framework for their praxis. Theory is a source of inside jokes and good for aligning alliances.

Theory is a joke and our work remains the same.

It’s no wonder grants feel like a lottery system. Literally all of my peers are as competent as I am. As public art institutions don’t have programs which we could use to map trajectories by, art in Finland is in a state of entropy.

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20210611

What’s the point in getting organised behind a cause?

Certain medias have appeal. The medium of the film has an aura and calls for a particular type of participation. There is a special moment when stuff happens, when shit gets real. Some people are in it for that, just that. There are professionals whose sole trade is to get real on cue. The medium gives a sublime direction for the event. Same with visual art. It dependents on an opening, on the exhibition. Books need reviews (which serve as proof that a thing has been read, processed as intended). Arts echo causality – Their future is authored by their form. They call for the the audience to perform a ritual of participation to become.

Covid-time has pulled a focus to the bare-bones of this agreement. Art which depends on an audience has been revealed to be a cohabitated worksite: Observing art is a demanding and dangerous labour effort (rewarding too!). Participating in an artwork is honest work. If you are not getting paid – You are the product.

People have been busy surviving.

Art institutions don’t understand what it means to survive. They are stuck on preserving and content in preserving the dead. Art is revealed to be a luxury. This time around, this old revelation showed how much this luxury burdens the living. Imagine: Some museums kept their doors open to show art made by the dead. This is great, don’t you think? Museums are macabre and remain blind to their morbid performance. There is nothing more gruesome than a peppy museum or theatre Instagram post from the Autumn of 2020. They sincerely asked a dying population to appreciate art. There is beauty in this, like there is beauty watching the world burn. In Finland theatres were subsidized by the government for loosing their audiences… And because they didn’t have any production costs, they made profits from the pandemic!

The weight of this luxury has been felt. But there is hope still: There are cultures for culture, which refuse to be defined by a performance. There exists art which does not call for an audience.

We have all become performance artists, because we are bombarded by performances: The pose of the zoom-meeting, mask-or-no masks in public-space show, handwashing on entry and the plethora of other choreographies, which have been authored by the middle-class managerial clergy.

Read more on covid-managerialism: The Middle-Class Leviathan: Corona, the “Fascism” Blackmail, and the Defeat of the Working Class (2020) Elena Lange & Joshua Pickett-Depaolis. And have a listen at Top 5 Fetishes ft. Elena Louisa Lange (2021) Aufhebunga Bunga -podcast.

I think this bombardment of daily performances has shifted the art in performance. It is now focused on something else than an exact moment of execution (or even unfocused).

Performance art was well equipped for this change: Previously durational performance was a method for evading pinned moments. Durational performances represented a way to steer away from the object-like quality of a show – It was about a presence, not the act. Availability of documentation media and affordable media copying tools changed this. A week-long performance became a photo, a year-long show became a video and a career became a book.

But I believe that the non-object hood of the performance is making a comeback. Everyone has had to perform, institutions have been desperate to reach their audiences and now everybody is exhausted. Trying to survive and exhausted! The last thing people need is to get pinned into a moment, to be tasked to make sense of an artwork. The best thing art has to offer is not giving a fuck about the audience. At least, this is the best care I have to offer for you right now.

This is also why radio is so appealing! It exists, there is a broadcast and you can tune in but you are not locked or commissioned to work for it – I won’t even notice that you are here. Performance art is great: I sincerely don’t give a fuck about the audience, yet I’m here.. Doing my shit and you are free to do what the fuck you want. Have a great day!

burn.pixelache.ac/

I will wear fancy headphones to listen to recent ambient releases, which have been shared on a popular music forum. I will serve as a conduit and transmit ambient soundscapes by humming them out loud. Maybe I’ll dance a little, wiggle my hands in the sun. If everything goes well you won’t even notice there is a performance going on. Just noises of someone singing along to what they are listening to.

10.-11.6.2021, 10:00-18:00. Töölönlahti/Oodi, Helsinki