bio

I am a musician/researcher with a keen interest in the role of technology in sonic arts and society. I am a grass-roots musician and a music-technology practitioner and developer, and I have taught creative workshops and classes in music technology and free improvisation for over 10 years. My research explores ethical implications of technology in the sonic arts and the possibilities of sustainable practices in music technology.

Through my musical work, I try to share with the listener things/thoughts/moments which touch me and move me in that peculiar ephemeral/eternal way only sound can. In participatory practices that is easier: as participants, we share those moments' creation. Whereas in composed forms I rely on shared idioms to pave the way, on the co-creations of our sonic pasts.

As a an activist music researcher, I aim to provide evidence that the conscious reconceptualisation of technologies as socio-material arrangements bears the potential for positive change. Socio-material arrangement, the term American anthropologist Lucy Suchman suggested as an alternative word for machine, draws attention to the fact that no technology is solely material but a performed (material) practice.

Based on my thesis from 2022, I appeal to conceptualise technologies as socio-material arrangements, and explore the possibilities such a paradigm change involves. In an ongoing series of articles and conference presentations (ISTAS 2024 Puebla Mexico, ESDiT 2024 Twente NL, and TETHICS 2024 Tampere FI) I apply the concept of machines as sociomaterial arrangements to technologies commonly grouped under the “Artificial Intelligence” term, and consequently question the alleged autonomy of such technologies.

I am also project coordinator of GaiaStage Ry, a not-for-profit organisation that builds, maintains and operates pedal-powered low carbon performance stages for music- and other performances. Further, I am a member of Suoni Ry, a researchers’ association with the purpose of advancing knowledge about and actions for social and environmental justice within the field of music and in music studies. Before moving to Finland in 2012, I studied Audio Production (MSc. 2012) and Creative Music Technolgy (BSc, 2010) at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK.

composed

3.141 is a composition/installation/performance for 16 channel hemispheric dome, recorded viola (fixed media), cor anglais and violoncello in 3 parts.

Part I "e pur si muove" is for recorded viola (fixed media) for the recording I played single motes of all pitches used in the series, (two "chords" of 16 pitches each) and looped them. A Matlab script spatialises the pitches so, that they rise and set over the 16 loudspeakers of the Uniarts Helsinki SibA MuTe "Dome".

In Part II, “irrational transcendental”, an english horn and a cello improvise over the fixed media. Their material is based on one chord cluster each.

In Part III, “eπlogue”, the two acoustic instruments play diffused via wireless loudspeakers handed to the audience to pass around.

3.141 Part III eπlogue: Saku Mattila, (english horn) and Saara Viika (violoncello) 2021.

3.141 was premiered at the Sibafest 2018 in Musiikkitalo Helsinki. From the program notes: "3.141 is a composition/installation/performance for 16 channel hemispheric dome, recorded viola (fixed media), cor anglais and violoncello. The musical material consists of a series of intervals losely based on the number Pi. The fixed media creates a spherical universe in which the two improvising performers (on cor anglais and cello) have to find their place in the sound world revolving around them. However much the univers's regular harmonic movements churning their foreseable paths across the firmament inscribe themselves on us, loving and fighting in the midst of it, we lose sight of how the simplicity of the circle too, contains in it an irrational transcendantal (the number Pi) the last decimal point of which will always elude us. Here, in this performance we try to pause and find an inner peace we could share, while the world churns on - and a computational machine somewhere finds the next decimal point of Pi, as we meditate on the circle. Maybe peace is an irrational transcendental? The piece ends in a (scored) ePilogue for cor anglais and cello, an individual account of what it might feel like to find a place of peace, a pause..."

(For more composed click here)

applied

Zero Carbon Karaoke is a video of an instantiation of Gaia Stage, pedal-powering a (nearly) carbon neutral Karaoke event at the Kulturhuus Björkoda in Kemiönsaari as part of Mintaidefestivaali Norpas. As the karaoke music was copyrighted, I wrote and recorded this track for it.

Power Of The Audience is a short music-video promoting Gaia Stage, a pedal-powered performance stage: The audience comes to GaiaStage by bicycle and docks their bikes to a number of generator-stations. By pedalling their bikes on the stations, they provide the electrical energy for the off-grid stage infrastructure, like lights and audio amplifiers. At the time, no such stage was built yet, so for the video and music I tried to capture what GaiaStage could feel like. (more on the project: https://gaiastage.org)

(For more applied click here)

impro

This video shows a short excerpt of a free inderdiscplinary improvisation session held in 2016 as part of the workshop on Music, Space & Interaction (MS&I). As a participatory practice, documentation can always just show a limited aspect of a multidimensional, complex experience accessible to participants.

(For more situated impro's click here)