“Understanding love in 9 languages” 2024, 30 x 35 cm, sound wave photogram on Illford portfolio black and white photographic paper, hand colored with photographic pigments. The languages from left to right, to to bottom are German, (Lie-be), Croatian (Lju-bav), Italian (A-mo-re),Polish (Mi-łość), Finnish (Rak-ka-us), English (Love), Swedish (Kär-lek), French (A-mour) and Georgian (სიყვარული siq’-va-ru-li).
In-Visible exhibition at Luisa Catucci Gallery in Berlin consisted of new sound-wave photograms. In the series above, “Understanding love in 9 languages” I asked 9 people to say the word Love in their native language, made a recording of the words, and then split the recorded words into syllables. Using my experimental sound wave photogrammetry system, I exposed the sound waves directly onto photographic paper syllable by syllable. I then joined the syllables together by coloring a continuity-line using archival pigments used for coloring black and white photos.
The work is about communication, understanding and the idea that spoken words are just motion or energy in the air, and the meaning for this energy transfer is created in the heads of the listeners.
The second series in the exhibition deals with the process of “othering” in language. I used Finnish words with meanings like we-them-those-us. The Finnish words sound very similiar: me, te, he, ne which leads into similiar shapes of soundwaves, with very different meanings.
In addition to the speech and word based artworks the exhibition also included works in purely concrete photography context.
The keystone is the uppermost stone of an arch that locks the structure to ensure durability. Keystone is also an effect related to the projection of light; it causes the shape of an area to change when light or a projection hits the surface, especially when the light source is not positioned at a right angle to the surface..
A reflective cluster of helium balloons hovers in front of the video projection’s keystone effect test grid, disrupting the grid’s pursuit of orderliness and predictability by casting convex reflections from the surfaces of the spheres. When people move through the space, the air randomly shifts the balloons and their reflections. The work delves into the struggle to control chaos and the impossibility of doing so. In a world where the intricate trajectories and reflections of visible effects are impossible to fully comprehend, anything can serve as both a locking and completing key and a keystone.
2nd of May /2.Mai
“2nd of May/2. Mai” Installation, wood, lamp, polyurethane, balloons, street stones, paint, plaster, pvc, 2023, size variable
“2. May” is a installation of preserved ritual objects from past days celebration, disobedience and postponed revolutions. The artwork studies the vocal history and “war stories” of mayday resistance and its imagery in relation to objects that are part of mayday, both in Finland and in Antti Pussinen’s native Finland.
Has the historical day of political and social resistance and its symbols become a visual and philosophical token for social media posts? Or is the act of resistance a ritual that is re-enacted yearly, to take part in the mythical tradition of street stones and smoke torches?
The need to challenge the dominant narratives of unfair and gentrifying development in urban and social space is as great as ever. Are the methods of past still relevant in doing this?
The artwork in the gallery space develops and changes during the exhibition, as parts of it would be hung to dry and be preserved.
Ries
“Ries”, 2022, installation consists of a black and white laser printer, 500 script generated printed cut-up artworks and concrete blocks. size variable.
Ries is 500 sheets of paper.
Ries is a cut-up text artwork.
Ries is a work of art generated by an algorithm based on random numbers.
Ries is a digital artwork installed in 5 forms in the exhibition space.
Ries is an NFT artwork.
The rise of NFT artworks was a trend that is divided opinion in the art world. Prices for NFT artworks had soared to absurd heights over the years 2021 and 2022, and the NFT space was and is rife with scams. The hope was that NFTs would have opened up new audiences and collectors for art and enabled artists to sell their art digitally. “Ries” was an experiment to do a meaningful installation and exhibition that utilized a blockchain based mechanism, and to open up a discussion, if the technology could provide something new to art.
For digital generative artworks, NFT allowed for an interesting interaction: the artist creates a system of rules and instructions for creating an artwork, and the act of buying the artwork actually creates it.
The exhibited edition of 500 iterations of the generative artwork “Ries” is generated by a computer script and algorithm. Markov’s Chain-Monte Carlo algorithm generates a repetitive, chopped-up text that is then variously laid into a visual artwork through a procedural process controlled by random numbers. The initial number for the random number generation is the transaction proof number of the sale of the artwork as an NFT.
The installation was made for my solo exhibition Walden Kunstaustellungen gallery in Berlin, and later shown also in the following media art exhibitions: Jättömaa in Finland, 2022 and Projio in Finland, 2022
N:th Wave
N:th Wave installation, 2020, ~3x3x3m, Pvc Ball, Uv-laquer, Uv-Lamp, Motor, Custom Electronics. @ Oksasenkatu 11 Gallery, Helsinki Finland
In the year 2020 we are following a long awaited natural disaster in slow motion, but its scope has surprised everyone. Social life grows ever smaller and hanging around at home is reflected in the overconsumption of the news. How many new covid cases?
The invisible risk to catch the disease is made visible by colours glowing bright in the ultraviolet light as door handles, handrails and buttons all seem lethal. In the post-Christmas time window display of the pandemic era, each new day brings new infection spread maps, and by evening one ponders if tomorrow will be any different. By it you can stop and be amazed by your own minusculity and try to understand that in order to help more you need to do less.
The installation has been shown in Oksasenkatu 11 Gallery in Helsinki, Walden Kunstaustellungen in Berlin, Projio Tampere, Finland and it will be part of LUX Helsinki 2022.
Lissajous Photograms
Lissajous Black & White Exhibition in Turku Kunsthalle 2019
In mathematics and physics, Lissajous curves are graphs that depict oscillation and waves and compare the frequency and intensity of two waves.
In a vacuum, energy travels as electromagnetic waves, as oscillating electric and magnetic fields. The combined, reflective and other effects of these energies mould our environment and reality, as well as our visual and auditory sensations.
In these pieces, I study the creation of surfaces and shapes that appear to be simultaneously organic and artificial in images generated using wave patterns.
Artworks are photograms, exposed directly to black and white Fomapan photographic PE paper, using a modified color CRT-tube. The cathode ray (stream of high energy electrons) is controlled with electronic sound waves, drawing the forms and patterns of the images. The ray passes through a tilted lens, creating variation in the sharpness of the images. The visible ”raster” is actually the color-separation grid inside the used CRT-tube. The photographic paper is then hand developed in large baths to enable broad black and white dynamics to each image.
All artworks are unique originals, and are impossible to reproduce because of technique used in making them. An attempt to re-expose and image with same sound, would reproduce a different image.
Maailmankaikkeus
Audio visual installation by Antti Pussinen, Wolfgang Spahn & Dominik Eggermann, 2018, mirrors, electronics, video projectors, optics
Maailmankaikkeus is an artistic remediation of the cosmic background radiation or relic radiation, the static we know from the last century of analog television sets and radio. The starting point for the process is an effect of decaying technology; the dead pixels in video projectors which look like a starry sky, random, but clustered. When designin the automatic actors for their performance/installation, the artists realized that the star artifacts led us towards building images and processes of the universe using light, sound and mechanisms of various kinds. This mis-en-scène uses analog electronics designed and built by the artists.
These circuits are susceptible to interference from radiating energy and thus make the relic radiation visible and audible in the noises,quirks and particularities of the composition. Sound signals are used directly to draw the visuals, video signals are used to make the sounds. This is possible because the difference between an audio and video signal is only the frequency range that they are usually employed for. By shifting the frequency ranges of the analog signals, we can work with a direct (proportional) correspondence between the audio and video material we generate.
According to contemporary cosmology, the universe came to being because of a little asymmetry in the distribution of matter and anti-matter. The composition and libretto of the acts of the installation are governed by a generative code with an initial asymmetry written into it. This “fault” will accumulate over time creating more and more complex seemingly random structures.
The installation is seen through a large scale teleidoscope.
OverUnder
AnttiPussinen: OverUnder, 2014, 83 x 160 x 83cm, wood, steel, electronic components, cardboard, veroboard, speakers & amplifier
OverUnder by Antti Pussinen is an analog synthesizer based sound sculpture, that creates infrasonic sound waves around approximately 16Hz. Over tones of base frequency are created by folding original waveform into itself.
Analog sound synthesis based sound works are like sculptures. In a sound synthesis circuit, electricity is forced to form abstract waveforms in electric current. A speaker transforms these electric waveforms into waves in air pressure. Since no data is lost in digital to analog and analog to digital conversions, a viewer can feel and hear the original sculpted waveform in full detail.
The power of digital revolution is partly based on evaluating what is relevant information, and filtering out the rest (for example outside of hearing range in digital audio). With this development we are maybe losing some feeling or content that is seen irrelevant, but is still there.
Since most of the frequencies in the artwork are below hearing range (and below the range of my recorder), a sense of pressure is missing from the video. The low frequencies one can hear are a product of sound reflections inside the gallery room.
Build Up, 2013, Electronics, Speaker, Acrylic, 30 x 16 x 16 cm
The work consists of analog sound synthesizing circuits and a musically balanced random generator.
The random generator composes ever changing rhytmical patterns and puts out extremely short electric pulses to the synthesizer circuits.
All the sounds are then created one by one, when the electric pulse is travelling through the transistors in the circuit. The circuits are designed to imitate hi-hats of a drum kit, thus creating a never ending rhythmical buildup for a song that never starts.
There are no samples, recorded sounds or prearranged compositions, so the sound sculpture creates a unique sound experience for every viewer.
The possibility of hearing the exactly the same composition with same sounds twice is 1 : 79902720000
The artwork has been shown in: Freies Museum Berlin 2013 and Panmediale:Cosmic Death, Transmediale Vorspiel 2014.
2012
One Love
One Love Group: One Love, 2012, 30 x 30 x 30 cm, Padlocks (of love)
In June 2012 We (One Love Group, Antti Pussinen & Kaija Papu) cut off around 700 padlocks that people had hanged as a sign of love to a bridge in Tampere, Finland. We used the locks as a material to make a solid 140 Kilo cube of love that was displayed in Tampere Kunsthalle, only one week after the cutting action. also a video of the process was shown as part of the installation.
The artwork is about love. If the padlocks would somehow contain the love that the people felt when they locked their locks in the handrail of the bridge, we would have 140 kilos of solid love. What is the Half-Life of love? Can one destroy love, or is it like energy, ever changing its form?
We have both worked in public space before and with the artwork we wanted to raise questions and rethink our own methods.
The artwork got a lot of media attention in Finland and continued the discussion of ethics of art. It also Sparked discussion about legality of art and other projects in public place, and what kind of art state owned museums can show.
Great White Hunter
Great White Hunter, 2012, 1 x 12 m, Digital print on acrylic, Objects shot by the artist
I like shooting. But i’ve never shot anything other than cardboard targets and plastic toys. Great White Hunter project started in summer of 2011 when i tried again my favourite childhood pastime. I remembered that as a child, i didn’t think of killing or hunting as i pressed the trigger. Around 20 years later that thought was very present.
The artwork consists of 7 images photographed through a rifles scope sight and 14 cardboard practice targets shot by the artist on different days during 2011-2012
Great White Hunter has been shown in The Finnish Labour Museum as part of Pirkanmaa Trienale in 2012
Killer Laser Robot 1
Killer Laser Robot 1, 2011, Size of the robot 100 x 140 x 100 cm, Wood, Electronics, Aluminium, Mechanics, Motors, Rifle Scope, Wireless camera, FM wireless control, Laserpointer, Television, Joystick
The process for the artwork started when i was visiting a friend that lives in the middle of the forest in Finland. He told me that he has a powerful laser pen (one that burns eyes faster than we can blink) as self-defense against the suspicious neighbours that live 5 Km away. I told him that I could make him a laser turret robot that he could control wirelessly or over internet.
That idea of conquering fear of other people by building a laser shooting robot got stuck in my head, and 3 months later i had my first prototype ready. During the process I often thought that maybe fear of people is making dystopian future controlled by killer robots into a realistic scenario.
The artwork has been shown in: Hyvinkää Art Museum, Finland, Kouvola Art Museum, Finland 48 Stunden Neukölln Freies Museum Berlin, Suomesta Galleria, Berlin, Westwerk, Hamburg, PING 12 dOCUMENTATION, Kassel and in Walden Kunstaustellungen ,Berlin.
Contemporary Radio
2011, Interactive surround soundscape, Fm Radios, Fm transmitters, Multichannel Sound interface, Computer
Contemporary Radio is an interactive installation, where contemporary radio broadcasts (in the time of exhibiting) are used as material for interactive soundscape. The work plays with taking old media, processing its messages with contemporary computer and putting it back in to the old media and creating a moving surround sound experience. First version of Contemporary Radio was about the situation in Egypt and Cairo during 2011 revolution. With radio correspondances, radio speeches of Hosni Mubarak and interviews from demonstrations.
2009
Medicine City
Antti Pussinen & Martta-Kaisa Virta: Medicine City, 2009, 3 x 3 x 3m, Pill Blister Packs, Glue, Wood, Fiber Optic Lights
A big, illuminated installation surprises the viewer. At first it seems like a beautiful and a mesmerizing night time cityscape: realizing the material of the buildings takes the themes of the artwork into deeper levels. Medicine City is made of tens of thousands used and empty medicine aluminium packages (pill blister packs).
The artwork is about medicalization of our society. It is also about how cities can be seen as a medicine for loneliness and light as a medicine against fear.
Installation has been shown in: Tampere City Art Museum,Finland, Suomesta Gallery Berlin, Germany, Kuopio City Art Museum, Finland, and in LUX Helsinki Festival, Finland