All photographs on this page are by Antti Sompinmäki

There are different kinds of objects laid out on the table and each object has its corresponding sound. The sound starts playing when the object is placed on the elevated area in the middle of the table. More complex soundscapes can be created by placing multiple objects on the table at the same time. The objects and their sounds are divided into four different categories: Tampere, nature, work and leisure.

Video of the table on YLE Areena

More information about the project (in Finnish).

The team working on the project:

• Production: Rupriikki Media Museum (as a part of the Kulttuurikaari project)
• Producer & Designer: Niklas Nylund
• Programming & Interaction Design: Matti Niinimäki
• Sound Design: Mikko Koskinen
• Models: Lauri Karskela

Månsteri Store is a place where you can get Arduino boards in its many varieties, sensors, basic electronic components, prototyping tools and much much more for your interactive art projects. Currently, I have distribution agreements with Arduino and SparkFun, but there might be some others in the near future. I try to only stock items that I have personally used and found to be useful in my own projects, but feel free to send me an email if you would like to get some specific stuff that is not on the website.

I already thought about doing this back in 2007 when I first started messing with the Arduino. Back then there were no Finnish Arduino distributors around and not so many elsewhere in Europe either. I couldn’t do it then, but the idea was stuck in my head.

Fast forward to 2011 and suddenly I have the resources to do it, so I thought: “Why not? It’s not like I’m working part-time at the university, doing dozens of art and design projects and trying to finish my MA studies at the same time. I have plenty of time to run an online store!”

For those who don’t know me personally, that is exactly what I’m doing + trying to have an actual life on top of that. Sometimes my stupidity surprises me…

Anyway, it’s been fun for the first few days since the store opened and the feedback has been great. A big thank you to all those supporting me! So head over to http://store.mansteri.com/ and shop til your voltage drops.

Månsteri Store is also on Facebook.

Thu 10/03/2011, 4:30 PM – Artist Talk

I will do a small artist talk/Q&A session at The Jyväskylä Art Museum. I will also do a small performance using The Beat Blender and Made In Iron controllers.

Fri 11/3/2011, 6 PM – The Future Roots & VJ Månsteri

I will be VJing to the sounds of The Future Roots in The Jyväkylä Art Museum. The visuals will be based on the cover art made by Minja Revonkorpi & Rita Vargas.

Sat 12/3 & Sun 13/3 – Arduino Workshop

On saturday and sunday I will do an Introduction to Arduino workshop. I’ll try to post some pictures about that during the weekend All the places for the workshop are reserved already.

More info about the whole Live Herring ’11 event. Lots of exhibitions, gigs, artist talks etc. Check it out.

More info:
Mediamaja
Facebook

Update on the Iron project. Not perfect but it’s starting to sound pretty decent. Listen through proper speakers or headphones to hear the full effect of the bass.

Testing my new instrument and ironing my wrinkly papers at the same time. This is the beat slicing mode. Still needs a lot of work but I wanted to shoot some documentation anyway.

It’s a wireless controller for making music.

Features include:
- 6 different modes
- A mega wobble bass generator
- Beat slicer
- Sampler
- ???

Tech specs:
- Senses the grayscale values of the surface
- Accelerometer
- Tactile feedback (vibration)
- RGB LED
- Completely wireless

Stay tuned for more.

Also on YouTube (for slower connections)

Feather light or deadly serious? 


Ville Walo’s solo performance, Mortimer, is a contemporary circus theatre performance where juggling and electrical sensor technology come together. The focused, subtle performance juggles sound and video projections, brings small fluffy things to life and laughs at mortality. The performance’s soft hint of breath brushes the viewers’ skin.

Walo juggles with video projection and plays music by juggling objects equipped with movement sensors. Sensor technology and programming turn the stage into an interactive electronic instrument that reacts to Walo’s movements in perfect unison. Although the performance relies on sophisticated real-time computer controlling, its visual style is far from technology oriented sci-fi aesthetics. The stage is filled with humanely warm and clumsy everyday objects and jerky hand-drawn animations that create an intimate atmosphere.

Although Mortimer is a solo performance, Walo is by no means alone is the stage. He communicates with the objects he holds in his hands, with the puppet figures that share the stage with him, peculiarly assembled form various bits and pieces, with the skeletons and birds of the projected animations. Together they form the population of this special universe.

It’s a twisted little fairy tale world filled with death, naivety, playful cruelty and dark humour. Mortimer is a performance that provokes silent internal laughter.

Mortimer was first performed on the 16th of September 2010 in Kiasma Theatre, in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland.

Creation: Ville Walo, Anne Jämsä
Performer: Ville Walo
Lighting design: Meri Ekola
Music and sound design: Samuli Kosminen
Programming and projection design: Matti Niinimäki
Set design, costumes and drawings: Anne Jämsä
Choreographic assistance: Jyrki Karttunen

“Feather light or dead serious?

Ville Walo’s solo performance, Mortimer, is a contemporary circus theatre performance where juggling and electrical sensor technology come together. The focused, subtle performance juggles sound and video projections, brings small fluffy things to life and laughs at mortality. The performance’s soft hint of breath brushes the viewers’ skin.”

Can’t really say much about this yet. You will have to wait until September. All that I’m saying is that I built some custom toys for Ville. Including a real-time projection mapping system and some juggling birds embedded with wireless sensors. The dates and more info here: http://www.kiasma.fi/index.php?id=2639&L=1

It was hanging by its neck from a tree in the festival area. You could power it up by turning the handle on its chest. This would cause it to come back to life and then die again by hanging.

I wanted to play with the idea of life and death of artificial beings – especially when it was the festival crowd that gave the robot its life and then left it to hang to its death. The theme also suited the festival site as it was used as an execution site during the Finnish Civil War.

Jättömaa was a nice small festival with interesting bands and artists, including Joose Keskitalo, Jaakko Laitinen & Väärä Raha, Katja Tukianen, Sara Milazzo (the lovely lady appearing on the video above) and many others. I have some random video clips from the festival that I might edit together in the near future.

Original concept & background graphics: Päivi Hintsanen
Programming and interaction design: Matti Niinimäki
Full credits and other information (in Finnish)

Photo by: Sirja Moberg

The idea of the workshop/installation was that anyone could participate in the workshop by walking in, drawing their own character and then animating that character just by moving their own body.

This video shot by YLE for Keski-Suomen uutiset illustrates the process. (In Finnish)

The dances were streamed live to the internet. The first video (the last dance we did) has all of the characters on screen at the same time.

You can also browse all the videos over at the bambuser channel http://bambuser.com/channel/animoituliik. Unfortunately due to some technical problems, some of the dances were not recorded. Another issue is the sound. On some of the videos the sound is clipping very badly and on some of them there is no sound at all.

Almost 90 people came and drew their characters, 94 dances were recorded online and probably double that amount came just to see what was going on during the three days this project was running.

The movements of the participants were tracked by a custom built solution based on tBeta and Quartz Composer. The participants wore infrared “beacons” on their ankles and wrists that were being tracked by an infrared camera. The information was then sent over to Animata to animate the characters.

The infrared light can be seen weakly in normal photos as well:

Photo by: Sirja Moberg

Here are some photos from the workshop and behind the scenes. The first photos are from a little workshop that I taught covering the basics of Animata for some of our assistants.

A HUGE THANK YOU to Live Herring and all of the other people who made this possible.

• Animoitu liike website
• Review of the workshop at liikekieli.com (in Finnish)