Gave a lecture on myself as a post-humanistic/sustainability artist by request of Riku Saastamoinen for 40 art-pedagogy from Sibelius Academy, Aalto Uni. and Theater Academy (Dance department). The talk took 1,5h. Run out of time towards the end due to personal therapeutic blabbering about my Marxistic heritage. Also framed contemporary dance as movement steered by fossil fuels. My reasoning was that indoor heating, insulation and plastic soft materials used for flooring have made it possible to move “grounded” (on the floor). Horse videos (Jesse riding nude 2014 & Otto Karvonen collaboration from this spring) got a really good response.
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Visited New Performance Turku, assisted Tomasz Szrama to walk on the ceiling, received rough critique of a performance/publication made seven years ago, attended a very boring “How To Do Things With Performance -seminar”, witnessed a shouting performance by Hiroko Tsuchimoto and finally a salad ingredients voting performance by Denis Romanovski.
And that’s were it happened.
Romanovski placed various ingredients on the table. He talked about soviet traumas after which each audience member was given a vote. We were granted the right to vote on the ingredients of the salad. Majority of the ingredients were vegan friendly with the exception of eggs and mayonnaise. I gave my vote for the potatoes. As it was time to select whether or not to include eggs in the salad a shouting contests erupted.
Jesse and a person sitting next to him were the only ones to vote for eggs. Vegans were protesting and people started laughing. Someone rushed on stage and stole the bowl of eggs. While there was a lot of commotion and laughing I thought it might be fun to portray myself as an egg-rights advocate.
“Hi, I’m Eero. From the Egg-party. Have you considered voting our candidate Mr. Egg?” I asked a girl sitting next to me. She casted a weird smile. I thought she didn’t hear me so I continued louder: “Many consider voting mr. Egg to be in bad taste but I can guarantee that our representative mr. Egg is fresh!”. She smiled awkwardly. Everyone else was enjoying the commotion. Eventually the eggs were returned to the table and added to the salad despite the protest.
Then it hit me.
Egg translates as “muna” in Finnish which has a double meaning – It also means “balls”. Which meant that my joke on the election processing was most likely understood as a glorification of my genitalia. By the time I realized my error she had disappeared and I was stuck drinking beer with Jesse and eating democratically crafted Russian Salad.
I saw the girl later during the festival and felt like apologising. She bought a salad at a museum canteen and was walking to her table. I thought it would be best to clarify that I didn’t mean to bother her with my jokes the other night. “Hi!” I started joyfully. She was looking happy and I suddenly thought that maybe I was being paranoid with my interpretation. To steer away from a weird conversation or to save face I continued “Let me know if you want egg with you salad!”
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“‘Prism House Complete Percussion Vol. I‘ is a compilation of 320 found sound samples gathered from field recordings made exclusively in New York City”. It works well (The music the band makes is sentimental). Sounds of the Junk Yard (1964) Michael Siegel is a better reference for sound of work! My favorite is “Alligator Shear” (201). Siegel’s Sounds of the Office is a classic (Perhaps it inspired the PO-24?).
I’m not sure if SOW: Blacksmith ed1 is offering anything new to the continuum of groove oriented musique concrete. I guess the publications openness (direct availability through archive.org / freesound) is it’s best merit. But there are so many great free sample packs already out there that it’s impossible to stand out. I’ve been bragging that SOW is a True-Marxist sound publication: It is NOT a representation of labor or a glorification of the labor force – It is a tool (Which can be used to to make techno). The grooves of the machines can be yielded to move our semi-unemployed bodies struggling through post-industrial landscapes.
The idea that techno is the music of the working class was announced by Jori Hulkkonen in 2011. I got to interview him during Kotimaan teknokatsaus vol 3 (16:41). Similar views are present in Jeremy Deller’s Acid Brass project. In 2011 Hulkkonen described techno as a “Human soul with the frame of the machine”. He talked about Detroit and how the cities empty industrial spaces were appropriate for social gatherings. Abandoned factories filled with bodies moving to the rhythm of machine made music. He believed that Kemi’s development as a city forged him into the artist he is today. After factories were closed and parents were unemployed, their children occupied the factory facilities, filled them with mechanical sounds and developed new cultural expressions (and industries). Techno served as a gateway for learning how to work with computers, to organize gatherings and to work creatively. It was born from necessity.
The response for SOW has been ok. People have celebrated the release on Reddit. Apparently “Industrial sounds are so hot right now” and the Novation Circuit tailored .syx has is well received (52 likes). Also got in touch with Petri Kuljuntausta who invited me to host an exhibition at Akusmata sound art gallery in the summer. I’m moving steadily into towards sound arts. The transition of migrating from performance art to post-marxist sound art has taken two years and a little under 800€ in gear investment. I regret that we didn’t explore the sonic possibilities of Jesses forge in more detail. The sounds are pretty straightforward. I guess I should apply funding for ed.2? I could ask Hulkkonen etc. to produce songs from the sounds too.
Interesting audio slicer, loopers and scratch emulators as VST: kammerl.de/audio/. Beat-Repeat Effect is also available for
Mutable Instrument’s Clouds.
Visited Ars17 at Kiasma. Not as scary as I thought. Simple stuff. It felt homemade and I was only scared by Ilja Karilampi.
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Edits on the SOW: Blacksmith sample pack are progressing steadily and I’ll have all of the samples chopped by the end of the week. After this I’ll continue with mastering. EQ fixes are almost done but the dynamics of some loud machines and hammers pose a challenge. After the fixes I’ll export the samples and continue organizing them into folders and adding metadata. If everything goes as planned we can publish the pack by the end of the month. I plan to make a intro video for the collection at Jesses smithy.
Did some benchmarking and found a few companies and private artists offering blacksmith sounds and other industrial noises for sound designers and musicians. Some of these links have been collected by Paul Virostek who runs the Creative Field Recordings blog.
- Freesound offers 134 sound tagged “blacksmith” for Free!
- Bluezone Corporation offers the “Metal Impact Sound Effects” pack for 14,95€
- Eiravein works offers the “Ilmarinen” Blacksmith sample pack for 16€
- Echocollectivefx’s offers the “Lockdown” sample pack for 40€
- Hart FX offers a massive “Hart of Steel” collection for 99€
Minttu also recommend a Finnish musician who is working with junkyard sounds called Pentti Dassum. He works under the title Umpio and he’s currently engaged in a sounds of craft and labor project related to textiles.
I regret we didn’t use more professional mics for our recordings. The tonality of our samples is suitable for projects that are flirting with lo-fi field recording aesthetics. If we’d invested in more advanced mics we could could have reached out to the professional foley artist community too. Our efforts will provide a great addition to the Freesound community.
Assisted Ilkka Wahala (a graduate from the Kankaanpää Art School) with his real/simulation shooting documentation. He had organized a shooting range, an instructor and guns from Osuva a range located in the center of Helsinki. He shot with a Scorpion Assault Rifle and a pistol. I got to shoot too but only with a training gun. It was fun and the staff was very welcoming. Relatively cheap too.
Meeting Kristian at the gym in preparation of the Kontula Electronic gig.
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We received sponsorship headwear from Atlas Copco! The Sound of Work: Blacksmith sample pack is turning into a weird side quest to corporate sound archeology. I contacted the companies marketing departments in Finland and Sweden and we received caps from both branches (Caps that were shipped for Jesse have a modern look and I got a more subtle grey version). Atlas Copco is a key company in the nordic mining and manufacturing culture. It’s a living fossil of an organization, which is rooted in pre-copyright manufacturing culture and it’s wealth is based accessibility to local raw ores. I always remove or hide branding from my clothing but this is a rare treat and I’ll keep the logo on. Unfortunately the shape of the cap is silly. The story is impressive though.