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20231005

Returning from an intensive tour with waters. Between 22.-24. September we complied a project with Tea Andreoletti commissioned by the Instytut Kultury Miejskiej organisation for the opening of their new facilities at Kunszt Wodny in Gdańsk. For the opening event, we prepared and bottled 300 flasks of “Wypij Morze!” (Drink Sea!) carbonated mineral water which was served for guests from a “Bar (Słono)Wodny” meaning (Sea)Water bar. In all we produced 250 litres of the bespoken drink and supplied the audience with tap waters from around the city. There were a lot of performances, architectural light shows and sound/music at the opening event… Most of which referred to the sea and waters in different ways. The building is at the site of a historic watermill.

We prepared the project during the summer and we visited the city in August for research. The recipe of Wypij Morze! was drafted on the first trip in a meeting with Institute of Oceanology PAN scientists (Tymon Zielinski, Tomasz Kijewski & Aleksandra Koroza) and the Gdańska Infrastruktura Wodociągowo-Kanalizacyjna (GIWK) staff, who are responsible for the city drinking water affairs. The project was curated by Anna Mitus and produced by Anna Kwiatkowska (IKM) who handled both the production and the intensive field excursions, which took us all around the city between the strange shoreside of Rewa (where we collected seawater for consumption) and suburbs of Urunia. Natalia Cyrzan (IKM) worked on the back end of the project establishing and facilitating exchange with GIWK, the Institute of Oceanology and a tip:tap, a Berlin based NGO also working on a (tap)waterbar initiative. In addition to the performance we also took part in a breakfast seminar discussing sea & drinking water affairs and hosted a workshop for children where they could design bottle labels.

Ingredients for Wypij Morze!

1l/g Instytut Kultury Miejskiej Tap Water
NaCl (Table salt) 2,4
MgSO₄ (Epsom salt) 2
NaHCO₃ (Baking soda) 1,1
CaSO4 (Gypsum) 0,4
Mg(OH)2 (Magnesium hydroxide) 0,4
Ca (Calcium) 0,2
KC₄H₅O₆ (Cream of Tartar) 0,1

Our project explored the diversity of tap waters, water as commons, infrastructures’ relationship with domestic spaces and how changes brought about by rising sea levels will affect the latter. Gdańsk has a complex history with water (featuring sewage innovations), wells, mills and canals which were introduced to by GIWK.

For me and Tea this project was a continuation of the previous Waterbar/Spring -excursions but the scale of what we prepared for Gdańsk was grandiose and depended on a close exchange with local artists. This facet of the project was elegantly planned and organised by Mitus. The Bar (Słono)Wodny, which served as a main stage of our performance was built to the main hall of the Kunszt Wodny building. It was a geology inspired bastion-bar-counter built for the project by artists Krzysztof Surmacz and Daniel Sobański. Wypij Morze! was served to people in three different fancy glass bottles which prints were designed by artists Alina Mielnik, Kamil Kak and Karol Polak. Each produced their own design but they all contained the same drink.

Mielnik’s illustration offers hope for a submerged city, Kak’s bottle design performs the sinking of Gdanśk on every gulp and Polak produced a semiotic atomisation which broke the heavy content of the drink into a digestible mess.

At the Bar (Słono)Wodny, Tea shared their skills in tasting and we presented the raw minerals of Wypij Morze! explaining it to be “the taste of the future”. In exchanges with guests we explained that the drink had “magnesium for stamina so that we can hold your breath under water” and that it had extra calcium to “make your bones into beautiful fossils”. These macabre sales speeches worked as a segue to imagine the current state of the Baltic, contamination and future of coastline cities. The Institute of Oceanology predicts that Gdańsk may be swallowed by the sea as continental ice sheets melt. Inviting people to drink sea, as a responce to climate change gave me gothic-horror-thrills and the narrative was backed by an installation with various mineral and high pressure gas equipment placed on the bar counters. During our August trip we carried the carbonisation tools with us when exploring the city, appearing as scuba divers.

At the bar we also handed out tap-water drinks, the most popular of which was “Domowa od Ani z lodem” (Anna Kwiatkowska’s home tap) and “Jaskinia Batmana (Orunia)”, which was inspired by our visit to the Stara Orunia Reservoir, which currently serves as a bat dormitory. Our August visit to the reservoir was facilitated by GIWK who provided us with a detailed history of the city’s drinking water infrastructure. “Domowa od Ani z lodem” drink was the centrepiece of our bar-installation, illuminated by a led lamp and luring people like a lighthouse. A simple and effective flopping of public and private spheres, the added tension of all the waters being prepared by the same public infrastructure company.

The bar also included a soundscape which consisted of processed sounds of carbonisation (benjolin&twinpeaks&delaynomore!) and wave-drinking sounds. Tomek the light/sound designer is also to thank for the look of the bar. Anna M. also published a text on the project later on which is available in Polish.

Returned from Gdańsk on a bus (26h) and prepared an installation for Drifts -festival which was led by artist directors Giovanna Esposito Yussif & Soko Hwang. On the opening day on Saturday I presented the “Our Grand Water Treatment Plant” installation composed of ceramics, minerals and pumps. A centre piece was a makeshift water filter system which circulated tap water through natural stones collected from the Kurängen spring, altering its composition. I also prepared pebbles for people to taste. The modular installation was exhibited on old water pumps found at the “Filterhall” room of the Museum of Technology in Vanhakaupunki. The filterhall is the site where the drinking water of Helsinki was supplied from before the Päijännetunneli was opened. I guess the theme of the festival called for our own water infrastructure initiative.

Our Grand Water Treatment Plant was built from the same building blocks as the installation at the The Surface Holds Depths -exhibition at Lappeenranta Art Museum (curated by Miina Hujala) and wooden frames first used as props for the “The Forest Spring Affair” performance in Sipoonkorpi late 2022 . One frame showed ceramics made from wild clay collected with the Nomadic Kiln Group (Monika Czyżyk & Elina Vainio) and I also included a ceramic whisk which housed a bacterial cellulose membrane (which removes oil traces from the water) that was prepared under the supervision of artist Alexey Buldakov.

On Sunday I gave a lecture performance discussing drinking waters using the same notes as during the Kiilan äänipäivä performance in 2022 (I think I’ve now performed everything I can imagine with this piece) and I also supplied the audience with 22 liters of Wypij Morze! during the festival.

Drifts succeeded in inviting a lot of great artists and managing large crowds. My absolute favourite was bela from Berlin who hardcore screamed through a theatrical act. The sound system of the space (or perhaps the curatorial plan) favoured descant tones and most concerts utilized some kind of whipping clash-crashes. This served bela well and Kaino Wennerstrand’s phaser effected acoustic guitar riffs too! Most of the sets were didactic and deployed aestheticized glitches for the spoken word bits. Most performers used automated computer processes. There was no rage in analog form. The bass was good too but most complex and interesting events took place in high registers.

An Tul was a touching new act for me. They performed outdoors with intensive charisma establishing a stage by their mere stances. They showed humour with out joke and offered intuitive nature interactions (a flock took their set as a cue for starting their winter migration). I had very high expectations for Nkisi on Sunday because I just learned about their work from a Techno at the End of the Future, Episode 1: London podcast. The set had a positive-gabber vibe but I didn’t get on a rhythm high.

There was a screening too. The Otolith Group’s “Hydra Decapita” (2010) was great to see and served as a perfect finale for my water-tour-vibes because they utilized short wave radio tones in their artistic documentary detailing Drexciya (Our Bar (Słono)Wodny soundscape also had a SW segment!).

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20230302

Finally got my Leploop v3 midi out figured. In retrospect the solution would have been possible to reach just by following the manual. But with all the other beautiful kinks of the device it was difficult to trust my judgement and intellect. I reached out to the designer Tonylight and got a simplified guide.

Build a midi 5 pin DIN to 3.5mm mini-jack adapter with the specifications: Midi 4 to jack tip, 5 to jack sleeve. Attach the adapter and set Leploop CLOCK to EXT. Tap the tempo using Sh1 button and external devices will follow Leploop. In this configuration external midi can also be used to control Leploop and the clock sends out sync acting as a midi trough. RATE CV IN controls the LFO rate with external CV (but not the tempo).

My gray literature curiosity with synth manuals and tutorials is being challenged by esoteric documentations such as the Leploop zine and Whimsical Raps techno poetics. I think Leploops underground aesthetics, which desperately reach for clarity but suffer from bad spelling and stuff lost in translations are more credible then Whimsical Raps aestheticizations. The latter present learning as personal growing and sensitization. But I prefer learning which hurts, which conveys a desperate desire to connect yet fails to. The Leploops manual is cringey but I like it because it make me appear smart.
tworoundrobins addresses the same mystery element of sound-devices in a recent should we demystify gear? monologue.

Developed a most rhythmic city soundscape assignment for a group of curators/artists visiting Helsinki as a part of Kunsthal Nord field excursion organised by Tina Madsen. Assigned them to send me field recordings with the promise I’d use their clips for making DnB. I’m chopping up the sounds they send and used them as samples in schollz amenbreak script for Norns. And replied  back with 40sek-1min DnB riffs bundled with suggestions for dodgy bars around the Kallio district. Took them to Sompasauna to work&bathe and introduced them to Miina Hujala (by chance to Otto too) & Alkovi.

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20220727

Met with almost all of the habitants of the Degermossa road, the route leading to the Kurängen spring. There was a sense of community and all the occupants had good things to say of their neighbours. Their biggest collective effort seems to be the road maintenance cooperative. An occupant whose grandparents had built the road with the aid of horses, still lives on the site. I spend a few night camping in the forest, habiting a hammock and exploring the area. There is a beautiful cold pond a kilometre north-east from the spring, traces of old paths and endless dark woods. I could hear the east passage cars all the time, so navigation was easy. The spring looks good, I spotted frogs again but the peat I planted last year as a part of my restoration efforts is dying. Only a fraction of it shows signs of life and I think I should remove the unsuccessful re-swampification plants to make room for new growth.

I travelled from door to door and interviewed almost 10 families who live on the road. One of the oldest occupants had lived in their house for 55 years, the youngest had moved in 2016 and new occupants were arriving next month. Some were third generation natives. Most told me that they enjoy the proximity of the woods and perhaps because the forest is literary their backyards, they put in effort to emphasize that there isn’t anything miraculous about it. They collect berries and mushrooms. Some had spotted deer, pug dogs, rare birds and their nests, snakes and rabbits. A few knew members of a local hunting group but none I interviewed took part in it. A few years ago a moose had been tracked north from the road. There are also rare cape frogs [viitasammakko] living in an artificial pond by the road. A habitat active in their protection had housed the frogs in their basement over winters. The pond is marked with a V-sign. It was made in the fifties by the fire department.

Some told about a bear sighting in 2017 after which they had been cautions of the woods. One confessed that they don’t dare visit the forest alone and that they never had gone past the swamp by themselves. There were rumours of wolves too.

To my surprise: None knew about the spring! One occupant had possibly heard a rumour of it but they had never visited the site or had any idea which direction it would be in. I invited them all to visit the spring with me in the framework of Nomadhouse late in September. As it will be a new site for them, it makes sense to invite the occupants there. I will now have to plan how non-Degermossa road audiences (or if) will join the performance.

I’m dreaming of organizing a camping excursion, perhaps inviting five audience members to spend the night with me in the forest. Cycling to the site from Mellunmäki takes one hour and the route is easy. One occupant, who didn’t know about the spring expressed a desire to keep it a secret so that tourists would not block the road. I think this would make sense and on an earlier visit Miina also expressed interest in keeping the site unknown! I should take visitors to the site blindfolded or intoxicated. I asked the habitats for permission to place the clay vessel I made into the spring, so that visitors could use it and everyone though it was a nice idea. Weird fun!

As none of the habitants, some of whom had family contacts with the forest spanning over a hundred years, had any prior knowledge of the spring… I wonder if the spring exists. Assessing the terrain, I’ve suspected that the spring has been the eye of the swamp before a nearby ditch, piercing the small glen, was dug. The spring might be a by-product of a forest industrialization attempt. If I read the terrain right it was dug to dry the forest and to better enable tree growth. The Sipoonkorpi wikipedia article explains that some parts of the forest have been cut to supply wood for the Suomenlinna fortification (by order of Nicholas II) but I suspect that the ditch has been made after 50ties.

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2020020

A selection of the Trans-Siberian Railway -Sound Archive is now available on Freesound. There are 35 clips (1.7gb) and I think the gps data mapping of the recordings alone tells a nice story. I’ve included Helsinki as a part of the Trans-Siberian railway network… As it was intended when the Tsar had our rails build. The archive would work great as background noise for a train-story/documentary or for train themed games. I think some clips might work as chopped samples too. The indexing of the files is a bit messy but there are real gems in the mix. My favorite clips are:

I’m listening to them while writing and I can feel the sounds vibrating my phone, which makes the clips feel material, like thin peals of the trip. Miinas note that the archive is linked with geology (or the process of harvesting geological samples for profit) feels acute. I like that the samples have interference sounds and occasionally my hands can be heard touching the mic. The interference makes the surrounding medias physical, it shows the limits of the recording technology and adds to the appeal. There is a clip were the microphone passes an x-ray machine for example. The material disturbances make me think of Viktor Toikkanen when he pushed his laptop to memory overload glitch territory when live-coding.

Our In Various Stages of Ruins exhibition series continues at Alkovi. The current exhibition titled Toxicity will be build gradually through the end of the summer towards the fall. Currently there are photos from the Town of Asbest on display, my humble C-Cassette recording we made with Jesse titled Two Men Coughing in the Woods (2020) and a set of DIY orthopedic supports I made for my feet (mentioned earlier).

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20200514

Alkovi published an interview were we discuss the work I’ve been doing related to the In Various Stages of Ruins -project. The questions were send beforehand and the interview is conducted by Miina Hujala and video edited by Arttu Merimaa. Mineral waters are mentioned and views to the wild springs we found shared. The format is interesting, Miina is scrolling the screen vertically, the timeline is progressing horizontally and to read the longer parts one needs to pause the movement.

Konsthall C made an announcement for next weeks Mineral Water Sommelier Hotline performance. Build three piezo-amplifiers and seriously sourcing a sound card for the live stream.