Perhaps the best description that can be given of Erkki Kurenniemi, the Finnish pioneer and guru of the Nordic music and computer art scene, who documents every second of his life in manic and meticulous fashion, is that of a media art philosopher. Mika Taanilas Future Is Not What It Used To Be is a film portrait of this composer and film-maker, engineer, robotics expert and Nokia advisor, would-be revolutionary and chain-smoker.
As a young physics student he was given the job in the 1960s of setting up an electronic music studio in Helsinki. He demonstrated his enterprise in other fields, too. True to his philosophy that creativity only occurs when technology is used for other than or, indeed, contrary to its original purpose, he not only experimented with electronic tonal studies, but also built very special electronic music instruments that were located somewhere between step sequencers, motion detectors and video-organs: Kurenniemi, the Bob Moog of Scandinavia.
The concert features the Finnish electronica formation, Pan Sonic [aka Panasonic], playing on original DIMI instruments. The nucleus of the Sähkö label in the 1990s [the mother of all Scandinavian techno outprints], but robbed of a letter in their name since 1997 as a result of legal action taken by a Japanese electronics group, Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen, who make up Pan Sonic, exemplify better than anyone else the raw and very individual style of electronica made in Finland. Having recently performed with artists such as Peaches and Chicks On Speed, the Pan Sonics are supported at this concert by the Swedish sound artist, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, and Erkki Kurenniemi himself as they play instruments such as the DIMI saxophone.
Program
8:30 pm »Future is not what it used to be« - film by Mika Taanila about the Finnish electronics pioneer, Erkki Kurenniemi
10:00 pm »Pan Sonic« (Mika Vainio, Ilpo Väisänen) live on historical DIMI electronic instruments built by Kurenniemi 1965-72
special guests: Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Erkki Kurenniemi
- Organization / Institution
- ZKM