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20170124

Autochthonic Fantasy (2016) Arttu Merimaa.

Kirjastoessee (2016) Pilvi Porkola.

Preparing for “Performance and Media” course which I’ll host next month in Kankaanpää Art School. Feeling stressed.. It’s taking a lot of time to sort out practicalities and the time would be better spend making fun art stuff (like preparing the SOW: Blacksmith ed.1).

I’ve planned that we’ll… Make six intensive workouts at the Kankaanpää gym (working with kettlebells), make 3d renderings of meditation stools (later construct them) and work with sketchup to design imaginary objects (later meditating on them). It’s a fun program to conjure but stressful to organize. At the same time I’m mentoring a group of five graduating students with their thesis related artworks. So far I’ve written 12 pages of emails and spend 63 hours on mentoring tasks and travels to Kpää (I’m using a nifty work scheduling application to measure the exact working time). I don’t think they are reading my emails and on my visit there last week I learned that half of the group hasn’t started working yet.

It takes six hours to travel to Kankaanpää by bus. It would be more practical to organize my course for an academy in Berlin etc. The travel time would be more reasonable. Still.. I enjoy the idea that somewhere there is a polytechnic university which offers free art education for people who live in the middle of nowhere. Globally it doesn’t make any sense to have an art university in Helsinki either. I should make a travel video about Kpää and show it friends visiting Helsinki. The site puts contemporary art into perspective. On a map the city is at the same level as Greenland.. It’s among the most northern universities of applied sciences offering education on performance art. I guess Tromsø is the most northern – But Norway doesn’t count because they have oil money, which makes space and time are manageable.

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20161228

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. 

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20161202

First test of “Sound of Work: Blacksmith vol 1” sample-pack and sound archive detailing the acoustic work environments of blacksmiths. Played live using simple Notation Circuit groovebox and tweaked using Kaoss Pad. Went for reggae, so that smokers get work. 

Visiting Samir Bhowmils dissertation: “Deep time of the Museum – The materiality of Media Infrastructures”. In short he claiming that the museum is a technological black-box, filled with smaller proprietary driven technological black-boxes (info screens, archival systems etc.): “Museum is a mediating device”. He argues that the specialisation required to maintain and advance these museum/medias is dependent on proprietary technologies, outsourced specialists and economically unethical waste management systems. I think he’s using ecology as a leaver to question the ethics of museums – Black-box specialisation is unethical, in lines of all poststructural trails of though. 

But I wonder… What is the difference between a painting (a black-box made from eco-harmful materials that becomes understandable only through a specific cultural reading) and a computer displaying texts (a black-box made from equally harmful materials which depended on temporary techno-sphere). Both artifacts require specialist. I’d argue that the computer is the lesser evil as it can be used (hacked) for some other use. A painting can be used to build a fire, but it is really poor source for energy. Samir also discusses Critical Making in the book and made a good critical argument about recent open source data-dumps executed by our national museums. He asks for openness in regards of community involvements instead of data. Openness will challenge the institutions, open source data-dumps only succeed in making the institutions appear foggy and formless. 

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20161130

A list of filenames of the recordings we made with Jesse last weekend (excluding b,c,… versions of the same tools/work-phases). I’ve been mastering the samples using Logic Pro X. After a frustrating day with tutorials I found a decent workflow. We recorded two files on each take. A master and secondary-file in -6db (Tascam Dr-40 can simultaneously write two files from the same input). If the monitored master has peaked, I can repair it using the secondary-file. In Logic Pro X I have each file is on separate track. After tweaks I can select both as a “region” and then “bounce the region in place” on a new track, which can be exported. It will take me two weeks of daily work to master the entire collection (But I hope to have some test samples ready for the weekend).

I contacted Atlas Copco company in Helsinki and told them about our audio-archeological project (Majority of the hammer and drill tools we recorded were old Atlas Copco). They were pleased to hear about the project and promised to send a Atlas Copco branded cap for Jesse! It remains to be seen if something will develop from the engagement with the company.

Continue reading “20161130”

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20161128

Visited Hybrid Matter symposium at TeaK last Thursday. Jennifer Gabrys gave a talk concerning animals as sensors. She referenced projects that had embedded animals with sensory technologies to collect data on weather conditions, migration routes etc. The approach is of interest for our Trans-Horse project. We’ve investigated the possibility to set the horse’s views and environmental requirements as a premise of urban planning in hopes of crafting more environmentally engaged and versatile environments. Gabrys approach was critical and she argued the majority of animal aided data is used to confirm human perceptions. She is currently working in a project called citizensense.net. Her talk gave me the idea to use the horse care-journals of the Mounted police of Helsinki as data to study city development!

Steen Rasmussen gave an interesting talk about BINC economics (bio-, info-, nano- and cogno.). His talk was a useful reminder of the historical importance of the middle class: The empowered, wealthy and democratic middle class of the last century was a unique historical glitch and automation of labor is it’s biggest threat. He was optimistic about 3d printing and other “new” manufacturing technologies and urged the audience to engage with new technologies open mindedly. Unfortunately many new technologies categorically renunciate agency of the makers. This renunciation is embedded in modern worldviews – Factories and 3d printers are equally bad! There are no new technologies.. New tools fuel the same old colonization. After the symposiums I came across the concept of Critical Making which I’ll have to study more. Critical Making seems to fit many Ore.e Refineries projects neatly.

On Friday I joined a dinner organized by the Union for Rural Culture and Education. The dinner completed my involvement with the Grey Cube Gallery project. I was seated next to Päivi and sound artist Petri Kuljuntausta. Kuljuntausta was kind enough to share field recording techniques and motivated me to continue with sonic experimentations. We talked about the Ihme audio-guide project I completed last spring and he had some ideas on whom to contact concerning the future of the project. I had to leave the dinner early as I rushed to Turku. On the buss I read some of Kuljuntaustas texts on sound art. He has used a KaossPad in his live setup.

In Turku I met with Jesse and we made 232 separate machine/tool sounds and two binaural recording at his smithy (The binaural equipment is on loan from Circus Maximus). The recording went as planned and we worked on site for eight hours. The majority of the sounds are high pitched and we’ll possibly make additional recordings next year. Jesse had the idea of fitting the smithys floor with piezo microphones, so that we could hear the bottom end sounds. We’ll likely call this sample-pack “Sound of Work: Blacksmith vol.1”. I’ll demo the sounds for Jesse next weekend.

I’m meeting students from the Kankaanpää Art School online this week to discuss their upcoming graduate exhibition and art projects. Also met with Antoine Pickels concerning possible Trans-Horse engagements next year.