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

369 Pages·2015·4.584 MB·English

by  Joasia Krysa, Jussi Parikka

Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History
Leonardo
Roger F. Malina, Executive Editor
Sean Cubitt, Editor-in-Chief
From Technological to Virtual Art, Frank Popper, 2007
META/DATA: A Digital Poetics, Mark Amerika, 2007
Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond, Eduardo Kac, 2007
The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science , Cretien van Campen, 2007
Closer: Performance, Technologies, Phenomenology, Susan Kozel, 2007
Video: The Reflexive Medium, Yvonne Spielmann, 2007
Software Studies: A Lexicon, Matthew Fuller, 2008
Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience , edited by Beatriz da Costa and Kavita
Philip, 2008
White Heat and Cold Logic: British Computer Art 1960– 1980, edited by Paul Brown, Charlie Gere,
Nicholas Lambert, and Catherine Mason, 2008
Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media, Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook, 2010
Green Light: Notes Toward an Art of Evolution, George Gessert, 2010
Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art , Laura U. Marks, 2010
Synthetics: Aspects of Art & Technology in Australia, 1956– 1975, Stephen Jones, 2011
Hybrid Cultures: Japanese Media Arts in Dialogue with the West , Yvonne Spielmann, 2012
Walking and Mapping: Artists as Cartographers, Karen O’ Rourke, 2013
The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art , revised edition, Linda Dalrymple
Henderson, 2013
Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles , Erkki
Huhtamo, 2013
Relive: Media Art Histories, edited by Sean Cubitt and Paul Thomas, 2013
Re-collection: Art, New Media, and Social Memory , Richard Rinehart and Jon Ippolito, 2014
Biopolitical Screens: Image, Power, and the Neoliberal Brain , Pasi V ä liaho, 2014
The Practice of Light: A Genealogy of Visual Technologies from Prints to Pixels , Sean Cubitt, 2014
The Tone of Our Times: Sound, Sense, Economy, and Ecology, Frances Dyson, 2014
The Experience Machine: Stan VanDerBeek’ s Movie-Drome and Expanded Cinema, Gloria Sutton,
2014
Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image, Laura U. Marks, 2015
Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History: Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048 , edited by Joasia Krysa and
Jussi Parikka, 2015
See http://mitpress.mit.edu for a complete list of titles in this series.
Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History
Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048
edited by Joasia Krysa and Jussi Parikka
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or me-
chanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) with-
out permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Stone Serif and Stone Sans by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and
bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Writing and unwriting (media) art history : Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048 / edited by Joasia Krysa &
Jussi Parikka.
pages cm. — (Leonardo)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-02958-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Kurenniemi, Erkki, 1941— themes, motives. 2. New media art— Finland. I. Krysa, Joasia, edi-
tor. II. Parikka, Jussi, 1976 – editor. III. Kurenniemi, Erkki, 1941 – Works. Selections. English. IV.
Title: Erkki Kurenniemi 2048.
N7255.F53K8739 2015
709.4897— dc23
2015009375

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Series Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xi
Foreword: Fragments as Monument xiii
Erkki Huhtamo
Introduction: Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History xvii
Jussi Parikka and Joasia Krysa
I Archival Life 1
Foreword 1
Perttu Rastas
1 “ Oh, Human Fart” (2004) 5
Erkki Kurenniemi
2 Relative Life (2003) 11
Erkki Kurenniemi
3 Audio Diary C4008-1 (1971) 19
Erkki Kurenniemi
4 Fleshy Intensities 29
Susanna Paasonen
II Visual Archive 41
III Artistic Practice 85
Foreword 85
Joasia Krysa
vi Contents
5 Message Is Massage (1971) 91
Erkki Kurenniemi
6 Computer Eats Art (1972 – 1982) 97
Erkki Kurenniemi
7 Computer-Integrated Art (ca. 1986) 107
Erkki Kurenniemi
8 The Unbearable Non-Artist from “ l ’ Homme machine ” to
Algorithmic Afterlife: Non-Cartesian Cybernetics and Aesthetic
Embodiment in Erkki Kurenniemi 113
Lars Bang Larsen
9 Archiving the Databody: Human and Nonhuman Agency
in the Documents of Erkki Kurenniemi 125
Geoff Cox, Nicolas Malev é , and Michael Murtaugh
IV Science/Technology 143
Foreword 143
Jussi Parikka
10 The Origins of Life, Intelligence, and Technology (1994) 149
Erkki Kurenniemi
11 Supermegatechnologies: Some Thoughts on the
Future (1999 – 2000) 159
Erkki Kurenniemi
12 Graph Field Theory (1990) 173
Erkki Kurenniemi
13 Interfaces of Future Authenticity: Erkki Kurenniemi ’ s
Media Archives (From a Postcybernetic Perspective) 191
Morten S ø ndergaard
14 E-Kurenniemics: Becoming Archive in Electronic Devices 203
Wolfgang Ernst
15 Capturing Life: Biopolitics, Social Media, and Romantic Irony 213
Eivind R ø ssaak
Contents vii
V Music 225
Foreword 225
Petri Kuljuntausta
16 Tonal Theory (2003) 231
Erkki Kurenniemi
17 Chords, Scales, and Divisor Lattices (2003) 233
Erkki Kurenniemi
18 On Electronic Music Instruments (1971) 255
Erkki Kurenniemi
19 Interaction of Music and Technology: The Music and Musical
Instruments of Erkki Kurenniemi 261
Kai Lassfolk, Jari Suominen, and Mikko Ojanen
20 On Sound and Artificial Neural Networks 279
Florian Hecker and Robin Mackay
VI Interviews 291
21 Drifting Golf Balls in Monasteries: A Conversation with
Erkki Kurenniemi (2001) 293
Mika Taanila
22 Artificial Reality: An Interview between Teppo Turkki and
Erkki Kurenniemi (1987) 307
Teppo Turkki and Erkki Kurenniemi
23 Robots Go to Work: Interview with Aura (1979) 317
Erkki Kurenniemi
Contributors 323
Index 329

Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology
(ISAST)
Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology, and the
affiliated French organization Association Leonardo have some very simple goals:
1. To advocate, document, and make known the work of artists, researchers, and schol-
ars developing the new ways that the contemporary arts interact with science and
technology and society.
2. To create a forum and meeting places where artists, scientists, and engineers can
meet, exchange ideas, and, where appropriate, collaborate.
3. To contribute, through the interaction of the arts and sciences, to the creation of the
new culture that will be needed to transition to a sustainable planetary society.
When the journal Leonardo was started some forty-five years ago, these creative disci-
plines existed in segregated institutional and social networks, a situation dramatized
at that time by the “ Two Cultures ” debates initiated by C. P. Snow. Today we live in a
different time of cross-disciplinary ferment, collaboration, and intellectual confronta-
tion enabled by new hybrid organizations, new funding sponsors, and the shared tools
of computers and the Internet. Above all, new generations of artist-researchers and
researcher-artists are now at work individually and in collaborative teams bridging the
art, science, and technology disciplines. For some of the hard problems in our society,
we have no choice but to find new ways to couple the arts and sciences. Perhaps in
our lifetime we will see the emergence of “ new Leonardos, ” hybrid creative individu-
als or teams that will not only develop a meaningful art for our times but also drive
new agendas in science and stimulate technological innovation that addresses today ’ s
human needs.
For more information on the activities of the Leonardo organizations and networks,
please visit our websites at h ttp://www.leonardo.info/ and h ttp://www.olats.org.

Roger F. Malina
Executive Editor, Leonardo Publications
ISAST Governing Board of Directors: Nina Czegledy, Greg Harper, Marc Hebert (Chair),
Gordon Knox, Roger Malina, Tami Spector, Darlene Tong