Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History: Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048

(Hardback)

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A critical mapping of the multiplicities of Finnish artist and technology pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi-composer of electronic music, experimental filmmaker, inventor, collector, futurologist. Over the past forty years, Finnish artist and technology pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi (b. 1941) has been a composer of electronic music, experimental filmmaker, computer animator, roboticist, inventor, and futurologist. Kurenniemi is a hybrid-a scientist-humanist-artist. Relatively unknown outside Nordic countries until his 2012 Documenta 13 exhibition, "In 2048," Kurenniemi may at last be achieving international recognition. This book offers an excavation, a critical mapping, and an elaboration of Kurenniemi's multiplicities. The contributors describe Kurenniemi's enthusiastic, and rather obsessive, recording of everyday life and how this archiving was part of his process; his exploratory artistic practice, with productive failure an inherent part of his method; his relationship to scientific and technological developments in media culture; and his work in electronic and digital music, including his development of automated composition systems and his "video-organ," DIMI-O. A "Visual Archive," a section of interviews with the artist, and a selection of his original writings (translated and published for the first time) further document Kurenniemi's achievements. But the book is not just about one artist in his time; it is about emerging media arts, interfaces, and archival fever in creative practices, read through the lens of Kurenniemi.

Author Bio

Joasia Krysa holds a collaborative post at Liverpool John Moores University in partnership with Liverpool Biennial, where she is Director of the Exhibition Research Centre and Head of Research respectively. She is the former Artistic Director of Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark, andserved as part of the curatorial team for Documenta 13. She is part of the Curatorial Faculty for Liverpool Biennial 2016. Jussi Parikka is Professor of Technological Culture and Aesthetics at University of Southampton's Winchester School of Art and Docent in Digital Culture Theory at the University of Turku, Finland. He is the author of What Is Media Archaeology and other books. Erkki Huhtamo, media historian and pioneering media archaeologist, is Professor in the Department of Design Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the coeditor of Media Archaeology- Approaches, Applications, and Implications. Susanna Paasonen is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Turku in Finland. She is the coauthor of NSF- Sex, Humor, and Risk in Social Media (MIT Press). Lars Bang Larsen is an art historian and curator. He is coeditor of several volumes published by Sternberg Press, including Fundamentalisms of the New Order and The Phantom of Liberty. Geoff Cox is Associate Professor in the Department of Aesthetics and Communications at Aarhus University, Denmark. Florian Hecker is a German electroacoustic composer/sound artist,. Robin Mackay is a philosopher, Director of the UK arts organization Urbanomic, and Associate Researcher at Goldsmiths University of London.