Haemocyanin, trailer, 2019
TUOMAS A. LAITINEN
ARTIST
Gallery representation: www.helsinkicontemporary.com
Tuomas A. Laitinen is an artist who works with moving image, sound, light, glass, chemical and microbial processes, as well as algorithms to explore the entanglements of multispecies coexistence. Laitinen composes situations and installations that inquire into the porous interconnectedness of language, body, and matter within morphing ecosystems. In recent years, Laitinen has been working with questions of ecology, the notion of the extended mind, and processes of knowledge production. The works are often made with translucent and transparent materials in order to find ways to layer and diffract material relations and different epistemological systems.
Laitinen´s works have been recently shown in the 21st Biennale of Sydney, 7th Bucharest Biennale, Screen City Biennale 2019 (Stavanger), SADE LA (Los Angeles), Amado Art Space (Seoul), Moving Image New York, A Tale of a Tub (Rotterdam), Art Sonje Center (Seoul), Helsinki Contemporary, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, MOCA Shanghai & Cinemateca do MAM Rio de Janeiro.
Recent articles, interviews, and publications
~Art in America profile feature by Louis Bury 2/2022
~BOMB magazine interview with Owen Duffy, 2021
~Protean Sap, Lighthouse, 2020
~Protean Sap, Fininst.uk, 2020
~TANK magazine, 3/2020, Haemocyanin
~ArtReview, Sep 2019 issue, Review
~Mousse Magazine 60:
Light Play: Twisting Reality and Deepening Narrative through Augmentation by Nora N. Khan featuring Meriem Bennani, Ian Cheng, Tuomas A. Laitinen, Yasaman Sheri
and Martine Syms
~Art Territory interview, 21st Biennale of Sydney,
http://arterritory.com/en/news/7432-3_3
~ AQNB feature of A Porous Share, solo exhibition at Helsinki Contemporary
~ A HBL review, Galleri Sinne, 2017 (in Swedish)
~Soils, Séances, Sciences and Politics , On the Posthuman and New Materialism, Edited by Kristiina Koskentola,
http://www.randian-online.com/np_announcement/sssp/
~Away with Nature, A text written by Jenni Nurmenniemi and Tuomas A. Laitinen for the Finnish Architectural Review. https://www.ark.fi/en/digital-issue-archive/3366-natures-uu-aa-3
Myriagon is the experimental outlet for the collaboration between curator, writer Ki Nurmenniemi and artist Tuomas A. Laitinen. It manifests as performances, publications, and recordings. By fusing aural, written, and visual signs and systems, the duo investigates how language shapes worlds and explore its diverse materialities. Instead of being a strictly human-centric initiative, Myriagon is made possible by multi-species co-operation. Listen to the latest Myriagon audio piece, Wet Code: Atonal Atoll (2019): myriagon.world
ΨZone, 2021
Habitat Cascade, 2019
ΨZone, 2021
Installation with 5-channels of ultrasonic sound, glass, and 3D-animation. Commissioned by Helsinki Biennial, Photos by Maija Toivanen/ HAM/Helsinki Biennial
Online:
ΨFM is a monthly 24-hour ambient radio broadcasting every full moon in 2021. It is made possible by Bronze AI-technology. Link.
ΨZone is like an alien zone or giant microscope. It examines the formation of knowledge within complex systems. The material components – computer-simulated proteins, audio recordings of soil, water and chemical reactions transmitted via ultrasonic speakers, and shapes stored in glass – are inextricably entwined in a symbiotic web. Ecosystems and their biodiversity are born in a similar system of multi-layeredness and porous interchange of reactions. The title ΨZone (Psi Zone) refers to the wave function of quantum mechanics, and the psyche.
Habitat Cascade, 2019
Installation environment, ultrasonic audio installation, video, glass objects made for octopuses.
Exhibition views, WAM-museum, Turku, Finland
Curated by Gina Buenfeld (Camden Arts Centre) & Terhi Tuomi (WAM)
Link to a review of the exhibition in
September 2019 issue of ArtReview
The ecological term habitat cascade refers to the shaping of habitats by one species creating the living conditions of another in a mediated fashion. The work displayed at WAMx is concerned with the indirect interaction of species and artworks, or with the attempt to generate the conditions for such an interaction to take place.
Since 2016 one strand of Tuomas A. Laitinen’s artistic practice has touched upon the research into cognition and consciousness in other-than-human minds, focussing on octopuses in particular. This endeavour is emerging through different material agencies: glass objects made for octopuses, multiple video and audio works, and a series of glyphs—made both as a font and as glass objects—derived from research on octopus arm movements.
Images: Ville Mäkilä / WAM
A Proposal for an Octopus (series), 2019
Glass objects made for Cephalopods
Photographs: Jussi Tiainen
Biomipeli / The Game of Biomes, 2019-20
Biomipeli/The Game of Biomes 2019-2020
Permanent public installation, Jätkäsaari comprehensive school, Commissioned by Helsinki Art Museum
Biomipeli is a multi-part permanent public commission for the Jätkäsaari comprehensive school. The work consists of several glass eggs/biomes and a video installation produced with a differential growth algorithm.
The third part of the work is a continuous performative/social setting approaching the questions of economy and ecological reconstruction. In this phase of the work, the pupils of the school will receive resources for projects concerning climate action and justice.
Project team: Laura Jantunen, Marko Tandefelt (Kunstventures), Tatu Heinämäki (Kunstventures)
Project manager: Paul Flanders
Images: Maija Toivanen / HAM
Swarm Chorus, 2019
Swarm Chorus, 2019
Video installation, performance, ultrasonic audio
Performers: Valisa Krairiksh, Eeva Semerdjev, Amel Sihvonen, Ullamai Varis
Costume design: Pauliina Sjöberg
Coding and technical consultation: Marko Tandefelt
Supported by
Ultrasonic Audio Technologies Ltd.
The Library’s Other Intelligences, a project organized by the MOBIUS Fellowship Program of the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York.
Curated by Shannon Mattern and Jussi Parikka
Swarm Chorus is a performance and sound installation produced with various generative tools. The work is an experiment with the form of the canon (especially medieval canons), a kind of an algorithm that allows us to generate complex polyphony from seemingly simple collections of organised sound. Here, the canon form is as a morphing and churning organism, a layered progression without a definitive beginning or end. The work as a whole presents an ecosystem of circulating substances. The words are inspired by ecological science fiction, functioning as fictional recipe poems describing and decoding an alchemistic combination of matter and meaning. In Swarm Chorus, one can find ancient modes layered with the notion of extended mind as a conductor for accumulated knowledge.
The aural events of the work are channelled with ultrasonic speakers and singers who are wirelessly connected to the library's primary public address system. A speculative score for the composition is displayed in the form of a video installation and series of silkscreened scrolls.
Dossier of Osmosis, 2018
Cryptospores, 2018
Text: Nora N. Khan
Costume design: Julia Valle
Voice: Deborah Birch
Glass: Lasismi / Joonas Laakso
Production assistant: Paul Flanders
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney
Courtesy the artist and Helsinki Contemporary, Finland
Dossier of Osmosis is a multifaceted installation initially commissioned for the 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018). The work seeks to decompose binary logic by adopting forms of thought and knowledge production that rely on complex systems of connections rather than oppositions. Assemblages of glass and other objects, biochemical processes and their traces form an open-ended installation that is continually changing and evolving at each iteration.
Sound is an integral part of the work. An ultrasonic speaker scans the space emitting glass sounds created in collaboration with an algorithmic system. Embedded within its layers, Dossier of Osmosis also includes text elements by writer Nora N. Khan.
During a weekly activation, a performer beamed the sound in the space with a tight-beam ultrasonic speaker. This emission of sound resembles a spatial version of ASMR- technique, a widespread phenomenon designed to create tingling sensations in the listeners body (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response).
Ctongue, 2018
Dossier of Tentacular (Project Management), 2018
Liminal Cluster, 2017
Receptor, 2017
A Porous Share, 2017
Thicket, 2016
LTC, 2016
Sensory Adaptation Devices, 2015
Deep Time Séance 1-2, 2015 Residency Unlimited, New York and Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki
The Powder of Sympathy, 2015
Contamination, 2015
Conductor, 2014–2015
Sweet Spot of No Escape, 2014
Azure Dune, 2015
A Room for You, 2015
Map/Maze, 2012
Lightboxes, 2006-2008