Erkki Kurenniemi: Towards 2048 (exhibition at Kiasma)

Erkki Kurenniemi. Photo: Kiasma.

I spent the day visiting galleries and museums in Helsinki, 16 Nov 2013.

I started at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art visiting the exhibition: Erkki Kurenniemi: Towards 2048. The first definitive Werkschau of Erkki Kurenniemi (b. 1941), "a Finnish futurist, electronic music pioneer, and experimental film-maker. Considered a visionary extraordinaire, Kurenniemi's life has been dominated by a total documentation project which aims to unite man and machine - to replicate the human soul in a computer of the future". See separate entry below about the remarkable Spindrift (1966) perhaps the first computer animation in Finland and Sweden. Works on display include: - Mika Taanila: Sommerreise - Photographs of Erkki Kurenniemi in five decades - Portraits by various artists on Erkki Kurenniemi in various media - The private Kurenniemi (the megalomaniac all-encompassing diary project in writing, on audio tapes, on film, on video, on the computer) - The public Kurenniemi - The video journals - The audio journals - Constant (Nicolas Malevé & Michael Murtaugh): Data Radio: Erkki Kurenniemi (in 2048) (kurenniemi.activearchives.org/dataradio) - 2048: the construction materials for a virtual Erkki Kurenniemi - Films (all unreleased at the time): Carnaby Street (ca 1971), Computer Music (ca 1966), Electronics in the World of Tomorrow (ca 1964), The Punched Tape of Life (1967), Ex nihilo (1968), Florence (ca 1970), Flora & Fauna (ca 1965), Huumaava elämänlanka / The Intoxicating Thread of Life (ca 1968), Joulumysteeri / Christmas Mystery (1969), Talo / House (1969), Tavoiteltu kaunotar / Coveted Beauty (1965), Winterreise (1965). - Erkki Kurenniemi's Pathé Reflex Webo "M" - Home movies on 8 mm and 16 mm - Photographs on the damage done to the Master Chaynjis robot - DIMI-O video organ - DIMI-H converting movements into sound - Integrated synthetizer (1964- ) - Electric quartet (1968), a collective instrument for four players - Dico (Digitally Controlled Oscillator (1969) - DIMI-A (Digital Musical Instrument with Associative Memory), 1970 - DIMIX, a digitally controlled mixing console and patchbay with video output - DIMI-S Sexophone, 1972, a collective instrument for max four players: the unit responds to changes in the electro-resistance of human skin when people touch each other by converting signals into music - DIMI-6000: a microprocessor controlled synthetizer for the Finnish Broadcasting Company - Computer art - Photographs - Photo index cards - DIMI is born poster - Kurenniemi's music - Andromatic diagrams - DIMI-T Electroencephalophone, translating thoughts into music, controlled by the EEG of the player - Erkki Kurenniemi interviewed by Erkki Pirtola - Mika Taanila: The Future Is Not What It Used to Be - Jan Bark & Erkki Kurenniemi: Spindrift (1966 / reconstructed in 2013 by Mika Taanila) - Flashing lights on the Kiasma facade.