Jumping into cold water

"Funny how that improves your circulation…"

The programme of the first AVANTO – Helsinki Media Art Festival focuses on electronic and digital music. The festival explores the junctions and interaction of electronically produced sound and visual expression in our increasingly digitised culture.

Experimental digital music, sound art, and new kinds of musical visualisation are some examples of this, one of the most exciting and vivid sector in media art.

A lot of recent electronic music is digital, and one of the most interesting niche of it remains in the ghetto, outside the genres of academic contemporary music and electronic club or dance music. The artists often use light computer equipment when performing, and create their music with the aid of portable Power Books. The performances are usually complemented by interesting experimental elements, such as non-narrative video projections comprising finalised works, real-time edited video material, or image collages produced interactively with the audience through the Internet. Many artists combine formalistic cinema, pure sound and even kinetic art in their performances. AVANTO is the first festival in Finland to present an extensive survey of this new electronic avantgarde.

The superb technical solutions in Kiasma Theatre offer an exciting point of departure for the noted groups of artists. Scanner (UK), Merzbow (JPN) and Pan Sonic (FIN) have already established their position as international stars. Kaffe Matthews from England is famous for noisy improvisations with an electronic violin. Pita, Fennesz, Skot and Hecker , the artists of the Mego company from Vienna, are (for the time being) less well-known laptop virtuosos in Finland. Both Matthews and the entire Mego company have received Ars Electronica’s special award for their pioneering work.

AVANTO’s most anticipated cinematic event is the premiere of the first "full length" 35mm avantgarde film in Finland. Seppo Renvall’s Film1999 has been enthusiastically received internationally and is already an original milestone in the history of Finnish cinema. Hanna Haaslahti’s dance CD-rom, Falling Through The Force of Gravity, is now being complemented by a hypnotic linear sister production, also as a premiere screening. A spectacular sonic event, which offers both film and four different live soundtracks in the spirit of remix, has been built around Ilppo Pohjola’s Routemaster. The artists include Merzbow, Jim McKee and Wieslaw Pogorzelski.

Another unique event is the Finnish premiere of Ed Quist’s (USA) film Kuvakupki. This extremely graphic work in black and white is a visually highly evocative documentary about the performances of Pan Sonic.

The programme also features several short films and videos, which outline the (surprising) similarities of electronic music and moving pictures, and there is also a selection of recent experimental music films with an inseparable image/sound relationship.

Mika Taanila
The writer is an artist and a curator for the AVANTO festival

AVANTO - Helsinki Media Art Festival 9-12 November 2000