Hillitön valo - Boisterous Light

Weather Report, 2023
acrylic paint, animation 

The initial inspiration for the work came in 2019, when I began to notice the red and yellow colour palette used in weather forecasts. When I read more about the topic, I came across a theory in the margins of the internet, claiming that the colours in weather maps were changed to scare the public. This made me wonder to what extent bending the truth would be acceptable if it was done to benefit humankind. Through its meditative atmosphere, Weather Report invites the viewer to contemplate the inevitable changes and our capacity to adapt to them.

Janne Ahola (b. 1984) is a Helsinki-based designer and media artists who primarily uses video and animation techniques in his works. Recently, he has combined painting techniques with the digital environment.

Untamed, 2023
VR glasses, video

Untamed is an immersive journey towards the flickering edges of light, realised with VR technology. It is the movement of darkness, the oscillation between the abstract and the recognisable, the provoking of presence and empathy. Its constant movement draws us towards it and captivates us, causing us to question what we are seeing. The work was inspired by the desire to explore the material essence and plasticity of light and its ability to reflect our inner visions.

A graduate of the University of the Arts, Meri Ekola (b. 1984) is a lighting designer and artist who uses light as her primary medium. She creates installations and works as a lighting designer in performing arts. At the moment, she is interested in exploring how the VR technology can be used to experience light art and to expand its boundaries.

Log, 2023
LED light strip, cardboard tube, 3D printed plastic, loudspeakers, electronics 

Log is like a modern open fire, which meditatively tells stories about light art and the physical properties of light. These stories, created by artificial intelligence, initially seem to make sense but gradually the listener realises that they cross a line, becoming nonsensical. The work challenges the viewer to contemplate the accuracy of information generated with artificial intelligence and the boundaries for the definitions of art.

Jukka Hautamäki (b. 1971) is a Helsinki-based media artist who works with artificial intelligence, lens-based media, sound and electronics. The themes of Hautamäki’s art explore the relationship between machine vision and human perception, materiality and the serial, continually changing repetition of images.

DJ Plantastic, 2023
bass amplifier, drum machine, mobile spotlight, loudspeakers, fiddle-leaf fig Ficus lyrata, sensors 

Fern Orchestra aims to present plants, typically seen as passive organisms, as functioning beings that coexist with us in our world of experience. In their new work DJ Plantastic, a plant arranges a DJing gig, where it controls both light and sound. The data collected by sensors attached to the plant is transmitted to a drum machine and a spotlight, which create a performance filled with drum solos, unexpected gobo rotations and shakes, unpredictable colour combinations and speedy pans.

This art work has been implemented with the support of Intersonic Oy.

Vespa Laine (b. 1977) is a lighting designer (Master of Arts -Theatre and Drama) and the founder of Fern Orchestra. Since 2017, Laine has worked in the field of photosynthesis with plants and microalgae. She has created light art with Fern Orchestra, on her own and with various work groups.

Markus Heino (b. 1978) is a sound designer (Master of Arts -Theatre and Drama) and Laine’s artistic partner. The techniques used by Fern Orchestra are often invented and realised by Markus.

Optical Arrangement, 2019/2023
a rotating base, an LED lamp with a very narrow beam, prisms and dichroid cubes 

Despite its small size, Optical Arrangement is a spectacular, kinetic work that plays with light and colours. It consists of a rotating base with prisms on top of it. The white, narrow-beamed light is dispersed by the work’s prisms and dichroic cubes into a colourful riot of light.

The viewers may touch the prisms and the dichroid cubes of one of the bases.

Kimmo Karjunen (b. 1967) is a lighting, video and sound designer (Master of Arts - Theatre and Drama) who works in the fields of exhibition organisation, opera and contemporary dance. Since 1995, Karjunen has worked as a senior lecturer in lighting design at the Theatre Academy of Finland. He received the State Prize for Arts in 2009.

Absence III, 2023
installation 

The work, which consists of large projected areas of colour, has been installed in the space so that it is in a state of constant flux. The colours shift from one hue to another, covering and revealing each other, endlessly forming new compositions. The layered nature of the overlapping projections directs the viewer’s thoughts to colour symbolism and synaesthesia. The work’s tranquil rhythm invites the viewer to step back from the world defined by linear time.

Juan Kasari (b. 1974), who lives and works in Helsinki, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts’ time and space arts programme. Kasari’s exhibitions are holistic installations that contain elements built in the space, sound, photographs and both natural and artificial light.

New York, no. 5, 1995
transmission hologram

Movement in space, 1989
transmission hologram

Typically, the central feature of Luukela’s abstract works is the experience of light. The viewer should move around while looking at the holograms: rise on tiptoes, bend down and step sideways, because the works change depending on the angle they are viewed from. When moving sideways in front of the New York no. 5, the viewer can see how the red flicker in the centre of the work undulates. This unique feature of the work, the rippling flicker, is a rarity in holography.

New York, no. 5 belongs to the collection of the Finnish Museum of Photography.

Annikki Luukela (b. 1944) is one of the first light artists in Finland. In addition to her early holograms, she has created light sculptures, spatial works and lumino kinetic artworks, as well as light visualisations for shadow dance performances.

Blue fire, 2023
installation

Four lights, gradually increasing in size, are alight within one another, around a single central point. A blue light blazes and dies down again. The rhythm of the lights dimming and brightening causes the viewer to see an after-image: the light is a ring, with darkness in its centre. After a while, the viewer realises it is light after all.

Dedicated to Päivikki Palmu.

Ainu Palmu (b. 1974) is a lighting designer who lives in Helsinki and creates light art. To Palmu, light means small miracles and the opportunity to achieve three-dimensionality: light gives objects their shape. Light can be used to create the world and also to comment on it.

Peace Ltd, 2018
neon light, galvanised metal 

Since the 1910s, neon signs have been used for advertising and informative purposes. Numerous examples of the use of neon lights can also be found in the history of light art. In Peace Ltd, the worlds of advertising and art blend together when the peace sign is broken, revealing something else. The work draws our attention to the way a small technical defect can radically change the meaning of a message.

Ilkka Paloniemi (b. 1964) is an artist, curator and designer who works in the fields of light, art and architecture and never ceases to be amazed by light.

Part of the Game, 2022
installation 

In his works, Rauhala explores questions related to day-to-day life. Part of the Game, which plays with scale, combines everyday events and absurd scenes into a larger entity. The work’s various elements are brought together by spatial soundscapes and the video image projected on it. In the world of the work inspired by scale models and architectural plans, individual bubbles and their miniature realities become visible.

Based in Lohja, Pasi Rauhala (b. 1978) is a media artist, who has studied at Aalto University, the Academy of Fine Arts, the University of Art and Design and the University of Lapland. In his works, he uses the latest media art techniques alongside recycled materials and nostalgic items. His art is characterised by interactivity and humour that is intertwined with serious topics. 

Seascapes, 2023
installation

The work, which drew inspiration from the seascapes painted by the romantic English landscape painter William Turner, combines elements of light and video art. The generative images projected through a shroud of mist are positioned on the interface between the abstract and non-abstract when the material is dispersed in the storm simulated inside an aquarium. With a humorous touch, the work explores the relationship between algorithms and human observation and the material nature of light. It is a dance of light and colour on the surface of a constantly changing shape. The soundscape of the work is the handiwork of the Helsinki-based musician and composer Willie Budsko.

Tomasz Sekular (b. 1993) is an artist and curator, who lives in Helsinki. He works with installations, photography and moving images. In his installations, ready-made, cinematic storytelling and the blurring of space, time and perception come together.

Hope, 2022
light bulb, microscope, camera feed

In the work Hope, a tiny light bulb flickers, dies and groans. At times, a brighter light of hope gleams. The work proposes that, amid everything that is going on, hope may occasionally be so small that it can only be examined, explored and observed with a microscope.

Space-time Continuum, 2017
fan, plastic bag, light 

Space-time Continuum is a work that swirls at the boundaries of a kinetic light sculpture and organised junk in a self-willed manner. The materials, which have been collected intuitively and arranged as a rotating vortex of light, give the viewer the opportunity to step away from the human perspective. On one hand, the work is an abstract overview of the cosmological structure surrounding us. On the other hand, it is a perceptive picture of the time we are living in; what will we leave behind us but electronic waste and plastics?

Continuous standard operations (22 September 2022 at 7.00–7.02 pm), 2022
found items, light bulb, loudspeaker, recording of breath sounds, electricity

The term “continuous standard operations” emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when steps were taken to distinguish permitted operations from risky, and therefore prohibited, activities. At the same time, a large proportion of cultural activities were defined as something other than “continuous standard operations”. I created the work after mulling over what would be the most normal and constant activity for a human being. Perhaps breathing? The work is in fact a self-portrait in abstract form: A sculpture in which a light shines when a recording of the artist’s breathing (22 September 2022 at 7.00–7.02 pm) is converted into electricity.

Jere Suontausta (b. 1994) is a multisensory artist who lives in Helsinki and Jyväskylä. He graduated with a master of arts degree (Theatre and Drama) from the lighting design programme of Uniarts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy. His artworks often find their form when found items, recycled materials and light come together.

Distance and heat, 2022
video, diffraction glasses, low-frequency sofa

Distance and heat is a multisensory media work where the viewer watches an approaching light floating in a void through diffraction glasses, which break the light into a spectrum. The work can be viewed sitting on a massaging low-frequency sofa that plays music. As we drift through the black void of space towards the slowly approaching star, we calmly listen to our feelings and contemplate how things sound in the space of our minds and how they resonate with the things around us. Ultimately, you may ask if things are ever really separate from one other. In the end, does a distance exist between things?

Antti Tolvi (b. 1977) is a sound artist and performer from Turku. Since 2002, Tolvi has been one of the most important artists in the field of experimental music in Finland. He has performed on three continents, published records and held exhibitions.