The multidisciplinary path of Dimi-O

The opening night of the Avanto festival is an homage to Erkki Kurenniemiand his pioneering work. The evening’s attractions include a dance performance realised with the help of the interactive video synthesiser DIMI-O. The dance performance involves new-generation interpreters Mikko Ojanen, musician, and Topi Tateishi, dancer. There is also the premiere ofMika Taanila’s brand-new documentary on Kurenniemi’s versatile projects. The programme culminates in a legendary meeting of generations: Pan Sonic, who performs increasingly seldom in Finland, has prepared a special performance using reconstructed instruments by Kurenniemi.

Erkki Kurenniemi (b. 1941) is best known for the original electronic DIMI instruments, which he designed and built himself in 1962–73 and which have already reached international cult status. Dimi-O is an interactive video synthesiser from 1971. It made it possible to transform images to sound real-time.

Dimi-O inspired dancers, as well as theatre performers, to experiment. It was more than just an instrument: a whole new way of approaching art and creating art. It made comprehensive, real-time manipulation of movement and sound in performances possible.

A MEETING OF PIONEERS

Taanila’s work also highlights another pioneer, as a recording of an encounter between Dimi-O and a dancer was found in the archives of the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE. Celebrating her 40th artistic anniversary this November, Finnish pioneer of modern dance Riitta Vainiodances in a skintight leotard typical of the time as the camera records her movements. The dancer moving in the space is raw material for the device, like a musical score which directs the flow of sounds.

Vainio was involved in importing modern dance to Finland back in the 1960s. Her development as a choreographer progressed from traditional formal modern dance towards visual and communal experiments. Vainio’s improvisation evenings also endeavoured to break down the barrier between the audience and the performers, to make experiencing dance more democratic. Just as the philosophies of John Cage had affected a whole generation of composers of electronic music, American choreographers Merce Cunningham and Alvin Nikolai inspired post-modern innovations in dance.

Vainio recalls the operating principle of Dimi-O and says how she understood the experiment could have led to anything. According to Vainio, the early 1970s were a time when she had many ideas, but little sympathetic response. The aspiration towards multidisciplinary and interactive art was, however, there. Using new electronic music was natural. When the camera in Dimi-O turns towards the audience, the concept of art and its nature also expands. In the same way as dancers in Vainio’s improvisation evenings attempted to abolish the division between the audience and themselves, the turning camera searches for new meanings for communication between the audience and art.

For a brief moment, Dimi-O brought together these two pioneers, who have both followed their own path. But the times changed, became more political, and Vainio became a trailblazer of dance therapy. Kurenniemi, for his part, worked at Rosenlew and Nokia’s cable machinery department, and, most importantly, as the special designer of exhibitions at the Finnish Science Centre Heureka.

INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTS

Vainio was not the only performing artist, who had the opportunity to experiment with stage applications of Dimi-O. University of Oslo conducted a series of experiments in the early 1970s, in which musicians, artists, actors and the academic community experimented with creating artificial contexts for the theatre. One of the experiments was Samuel Beckett’s Act Without Words, which was performed by Scene 7 Theatre Group in the laboratory studio of University of Oslo. The performance has no music or sound, only two actors who perform daily rituals. Connecting a computer to the image system in the experimental situation, the actors’ movements and objects on the stage produced sounds, which created a new expressive level for the performance. The experiment aimed at finding out whether expression created artificially can be reconciled with the other expressive levels of theatre, such as gestures, facial expressions, make-up etc.

Arild Boman of the InterMedia centre of University of Oslo saw these experiments as an opportunity to develop new communication tools for the theatre. According to him, the early experiments in virtual reality by Kurenniemi make it possible to combine different artistic expression. Indeed, the Dimi instruments can be seen as embodying the idea – and ideal – of collectivity. In the series of reconstructions realised by Kiasma Theatre every other year, DIMI-O represents an encounter of early media art, music and dance, which is unique. At the same time, the night’s artistic whole creates a living link between the young-generation artists and the pioneers.

Hommage à Erkki Kurenniemi is the opening event of the Avanto – Helsinki Media Art Festival, and part of Kiasma Theatre’s series of reconstructions.

Virve Sutinen
Producer, Kiasma Theatre