Mechanit Project

Mechanospheres (working title) by Mechanit Project explores the agency of small devices called solenoids.

Still in the draft phase, Mechanospheres is an ‘ecosystem’ of devices. Placed every half metre and spread out like a net, the sounds of the 180 electromechanical solenoid engines pass physically through the performance space. They are reminiscent of the sound of rain, the whisper of the wind and the rustle of a living creature moving about. The sounds slide gently right by the visitor, curving across the space, swaying around its edges and enveloping the visitor completely. The working group is interested in the types of associations that machines and devices arouse in the person observing them and how sound can be choreographed as part of sound design.

At Saari, we will work with questions such as: How do we analyse and understand non-human agency as agents and experiencers ourselves? Can a device be simultaneously a willing agent that does things and a ‘mere’ non-human machine?

Mechanit Project is a Helsinki-based art collective that explores the agency of light and sound and the devices that produce them. The collective includes media artist Atte Olsonen, lighting designer Teo Lanerva, media artist and sound designer Jani Hietanen and choreographer Soili Huhtakallio. The group’s previous works have been displayed at the Finnish Labour Museum Werstas’ Steam Engine Museum in Tampere, the LUX Helsinki festival of light in 2022 and 2023, and the Burning Man event in Nevada.

mechanitproject.com

Atte Olsonen is a performance and media artist (MA) who works across a wide range of disciplines, including installations, traditional performance art and experimental electronic music. In his practice, he explores different levels and ways of agency and of interacting and being emotionally present.
atteolsonen.com

Jani Hietanen is a sound designer, media artist and musician (BA) who works in various fields of sound and visual art, including interactive installations, film, radio, performing arts, AR/VR and music. Hietanen’s latest media artworks (Värikuru and Metsänpeitto, 2023) have been displayed, for example, at the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki.

Teo Lanerva is a Helsinki-based freelance lighting designer (MA, Theatre Arts). He works with contemporary performances and events at both small underground clubs and large festivals. He has won the Trade Union for Theatre and Media Finland’s Säde Award and his works have been displayed in more than ten countries.

Lanerva’s most recent works include contributions to Alpo Aaltokoski’s Okon Fuoko and Mikko Hyvönen’s Kosmos – Reunion at Dance House Helsinki, Mechanit Project’s Koneistos at the LUX Helsinki festival, Nuua Company’s Vaarna at Cirko in Helsinki, Juhani Nuorvala’s opera FLASH FLASH at Musiikkitalo, Helsinki, and the Musica Nova festival at the Espoo Theatre.
teolanerva.com

Soili Huhtakallio is a contemporary choreographer and performer (MA) and a co-founder of Energpriests. Huhtakallio is particularly interested in creative processes based on research/theory and the interplay between sound, music and movement. In her most recent choreography, Pro Matria (2023), she used the theory of embodied trauma as the source of the work’s language of movement.
soilihuhtakallio.com