VES-seminar
The Degree Programmes in Lighting and Sound Design and Design for the Performing Arts will organize an Interactivity in performing arts design (VES) -seminar on Saturday 23.9.2023 in Lighting studio in Kookos, Sörnäinen campus. The topic of the seminar is to open perspectives on questions related to the internationality of performance design from the perspectives of both professionals and students. Language of the seminar is English.
Program (changes are possible):
12:00
Opening words by professors Tuomas Fränti, Tomi Humalisto and Liisa Ikonen
12.15
Keynote speaker: Visual artist and stage designer Ksenia Peretruhkina
Moderator: Professor of Designing for performing Arts Liisa Ikonen
13.15
Professional panel discussion
Moderator: Lecturer of lighting design Raisa Kilpeläinen
panelists: scenographer Oscar Dempsey, sound designer Tuomas Norvio and lighting designer Pietu Pietiäinen
14.15
Coffee break
14.45
Student panel discussion
Moderator: Professor of sound design Tuomas Fränti
Panelists: sound technician Bailey Polkinghorne (M.A.), Vili Pääkkö (MA student in sound design, scenographer Mikko Salminen (M.A.) and Outi Vedenpää MA student in lighting design)
15.45
Summary discussion
16:00
The event ends
About the Seminar
Since 2017, Interactivity in performing arts design (VES) has supported the development of teaching content and learning environments. It promotes the teaching of degree programmes in Lighting and Sound design and Design for the performing arts at the interfaces of virtuality and mediated and physical communication. The work is based on critical examination of phenomena and a research-oriented approach. In the context of VES, interaction is understood as a phenomenon that goes beyond the relationship between people, interactivity. It is about the relationship with different interfaces, such as the definitions of performance, performing, audience relations, technology relationships and the social relationship of art.
The VES seminar provides an excellent forum for reflecting on current phenomena and encounters between Uniarts Helsinki students, teachers, postgraduate students, researchers, and the professional field.
Speaker introductions
Keynote speaker: Ksenia Peretruhkina
Ksenia Peretruhkina has been working as a professional visual artist since 2000 and as a stage designer in drama theatre and in the opera since 2005. From March 2022 she has lived and worked in Finland. She was forced to leave Russia because of her strong statements against the war in Ukraine.
Peretruhkina has had several solo exhibitions and extensive experience in group projects in Russia, Europe and the United States, and have designed more than thirty productions in drama and opera, both small and big stage. She is also a practitioner and theorist of contemporary theatre and experimental theatre and is consistently engaged in the development of theatre language.
Ksenia Peretruhkina is the author of a course of lectures and workshops on social theatre, theatre as a tool for building social trust and comforting society, horizontal processes in theatre, ecological thinking in theatre, and theatre as a laboratory for freedom and democracy. She has received several awards for contemporary art and theatre. She is laureate of the INNOVATION contemporary art prize (2020), nominee for the BLACK SQUARE contemporary art prize, KANDINSKY art prize, repeated nominee and winner of the GOLDEN MASK National Theatre Prize (2013, 2018, 2019).
Projects in Finland:
- DEATH AT WORK, dir. by Semyon Alexandrovsky, Pop Up Theatre & Baltic Circle Festival, TINFO, Helsinki, 2018
- DALEN, directed by Dan Henriksson, KLOCKRIKETEATERN, Porvoo, 2022
Play A SHORT EPISODE IN THE UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF THE MUSHROOM CIVILIZATION, directed by Essi Rossi, Klockriketeatern, Espoon Kaupunginteatteri, Espoo, January-February 2023 - Installation THE STATE OF THINGS, with Anastasia Trizna and Toni Randell, New Theatre Helsinki Festival, Svenska Teatern, Helsinki, February-March 2023
- currently working on MERIMONSTERIT, directed by Laura Ruohonen, Tampere Workers’ Theatre (TTT), work-in-progress, premiere October 2023
Professional panelists:
Oscar Dempsey
Oscar Dempsey is a scenographer and visual artist, originally from Northern Ireland, UK. They have lived, studied and worked in four different countries including Ireland, England, Denmark and Finland.
Tuomas Norvio
Tuomas Norvio is a sound artist and sound designer, with a background in electronic music. His current work is multidisciplinary and straddles various art forms and genres. He is interested in rhythmic and arrhythmic masses of sound, in immersive sound, and in the use of acoustic and concrete sounds as his material.
Norvio has created sound designs and composed music for contemporary dance and circus productions, installations and for individual artists. He has collaborated with Kimmo Pohjonen, Tapani Rinne, defunensemble, Pekka Kuusisto, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Circo Aereo, Thom Monckton, Johanna Nuutinen and Tero Saarinen Company, among them. Norvio has been awarded Säde and Teosto prizes for his work.
Pietu Pietiäinen
Pietu Pietiäinen is a Helsinki -based lighting & video designer and entrepreneur offering design & installation solutions for contemporary stage, visual arts and music. He has worked and lived in Finland, Sweden and U.K. during the 4 decades of his professional career. His recent works include projects in Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Estonia and U.K.. Besides the mentioned countries he has toured with stage projects in Norway, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Netherlands, Spain etc
Student panelists
Bailey Polkinghorne
Bailey is a sound technician from UK who has recently graduated with an MA Sound in New Media from Aalto University.
He now works as the sound technician for Helsinki Open Waves radio at Kulttuurikeskus Caisa, and has recently secured a position as a technician in the Mylly building at UniArts Helsinki Theatre Academy. In his spare time, he and friends craft audiovisual performances using old footage, cassette tapes and modular synthesizers, and he enjoys exploring the wealth of sound material that Finnish nature has to offer.
Vili Pääkkö
MA student in sound design
Mikko Salminen
Mikko Salminen is Helsinki-based scenographer and performer. Salminen has worked locally and internationally on site-specific performances and theater productions with themes such as eco-catastrophe and interdependencies between humans and landscapes.
In spring 2022 Salminen participated in Erasmus master class in Narva, Estonia with focus on site-specific performance environments and international artistic collaboration. The master class was organized by the Visual Thought Laboratory of EKA in cooperation with the EnsAD (École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs) in Paris, the The University of the Arts Helsinki and the Dailes Academy in Vilnius.
Most recently Salminen took part in the Prague Quadrennial 2023 as an artist in the Finnish student department and as an Ecoscenography panelist. Overall Salminen works flexibly, internationally and multidisciplinary with different projects, spaces and materials.
Outi Vedenpää
MA student in lighting design
The Degree Programmes in Lighting and Sound Design and Design for the Performing Arts will organize an Interactivity in performing arts design (VES) -seminar on Saturday 23.9.2023 in Lighting studio in Kookos, Sörnäinen campus. The topic of the seminar is to open perspectives on questions related to the internationality of performance design from the perspectives of both professionals and students. Language of the seminar is English.
Program (changes are possible):
12:00
Opening words by professors Tuomas Fränti, Tomi Humalisto and Liisa Ikonen
12.15
Keynote speaker: Visual artist and stage designer Ksenia Peretruhkina
Moderator: Professor of Designing for performing Arts Liisa Ikonen
13.15
Professional panel discussion
Moderator: Lecturer of lighting design Raisa Kilpeläinen
panelists: scenographer Oscar Dempsey, sound designer Tuomas Norvio and lighting designer Pietu Pietiäinen
14.15
Coffee break
14.45
Student panel discussion
Moderator: Professor of sound design Tuomas Fränti
Panelists: sound technician Bailey Polkinghorne (M.A.), Vili Pääkkö (MA student in sound design, scenographer Mikko Salminen (M.A.) and Outi Vedenpää MA student in lighting design)
15.45
Summary discussion
16:00
The event ends
About the Seminar
Since 2017, Interactivity in performing arts design (VES) has supported the development of teaching content and learning environments. It promotes the teaching of degree programmes in Lighting and Sound design and Design for the performing arts at the interfaces of virtuality and mediated and physical communication. The work is based on critical examination of phenomena and a research-oriented approach. In the context of VES, interaction is understood as a phenomenon that goes beyond the relationship between people, interactivity. It is about the relationship with different interfaces, such as the definitions of performance, performing, audience relations, technology relationships and the social relationship of art.
The VES seminar provides an excellent forum for reflecting on current phenomena and encounters between Uniarts Helsinki students, teachers, postgraduate students, researchers, and the professional field.
Speaker introductions
Keynote speaker: Ksenia Peretruhkina
Ksenia Peretruhkina has been working as a professional visual artist since 2000 and as a stage designer in drama theatre and in the opera since 2005. From March 2022 she has lived and worked in Finland. She was forced to leave Russia because of her strong statements against the war in Ukraine.
Peretruhkina has had several solo exhibitions and extensive experience in group projects in Russia, Europe and the United States, and have designed more than thirty productions in drama and opera, both small and big stage. She is also a practitioner and theorist of contemporary theatre and experimental theatre and is consistently engaged in the development of theatre language.
Ksenia Peretruhkina is the author of a course of lectures and workshops on social theatre, theatre as a tool for building social trust and comforting society, horizontal processes in theatre, ecological thinking in theatre, and theatre as a laboratory for freedom and democracy. She has received several awards for contemporary art and theatre. She is laureate of the INNOVATION contemporary art prize (2020), nominee for the BLACK SQUARE contemporary art prize, KANDINSKY art prize, repeated nominee and winner of the GOLDEN MASK National Theatre Prize (2013, 2018, 2019).
Projects in Finland:
- DEATH AT WORK, dir. by Semyon Alexandrovsky, Pop Up Theatre & Baltic Circle Festival, TINFO, Helsinki, 2018
- DALEN, directed by Dan Henriksson, KLOCKRIKETEATERN, Porvoo, 2022
Play A SHORT EPISODE IN THE UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF THE MUSHROOM CIVILIZATION, directed by Essi Rossi, Klockriketeatern, Espoon Kaupunginteatteri, Espoo, January-February 2023 - Installation THE STATE OF THINGS, with Anastasia Trizna and Toni Randell, New Theatre Helsinki Festival, Svenska Teatern, Helsinki, February-March 2023
- currently working on MERIMONSTERIT, directed by Laura Ruohonen, Tampere Workers’ Theatre (TTT), work-in-progress, premiere October 2023
Professional panelists:
Oscar Dempsey
Oscar Dempsey is a scenographer and visual artist, originally from Northern Ireland, UK. They have lived, studied and worked in four different countries including Ireland, England, Denmark and Finland.
Tuomas Norvio
Tuomas Norvio is a sound artist and sound designer, with a background in electronic music. His current work is multidisciplinary and straddles various art forms and genres. He is interested in rhythmic and arrhythmic masses of sound, in immersive sound, and in the use of acoustic and concrete sounds as his material.
Norvio has created sound designs and composed music for contemporary dance and circus productions, installations and for individual artists. He has collaborated with Kimmo Pohjonen, Tapani Rinne, defunensemble, Pekka Kuusisto, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Circo Aereo, Thom Monckton, Johanna Nuutinen and Tero Saarinen Company, among them. Norvio has been awarded Säde and Teosto prizes for his work.
Pietu Pietiäinen
Pietu Pietiäinen is a Helsinki -based lighting & video designer and entrepreneur offering design & installation solutions for contemporary stage, visual arts and music. He has worked and lived in Finland, Sweden and U.K. during the 4 decades of his professional career. His recent works include projects in Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Estonia and U.K.. Besides the mentioned countries he has toured with stage projects in Norway, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Netherlands, Spain etc
Student panelists
Bailey Polkinghorne
Bailey is a sound technician from UK who has recently graduated with an MA Sound in New Media from Aalto University.
He now works as the sound technician for Helsinki Open Waves radio at Kulttuurikeskus Caisa, and has recently secured a position as a technician in the Mylly building at UniArts Helsinki Theatre Academy. In his spare time, he and friends craft audiovisual performances using old footage, cassette tapes and modular synthesizers, and he enjoys exploring the wealth of sound material that Finnish nature has to offer.
Vili Pääkkö
MA student in sound design
Mikko Salminen
Mikko Salminen is Helsinki-based scenographer and performer. Salminen has worked locally and internationally on site-specific performances and theater productions with themes such as eco-catastrophe and interdependencies between humans and landscapes.
In spring 2022 Salminen participated in Erasmus master class in Narva, Estonia with focus on site-specific performance environments and international artistic collaboration. The master class was organized by the Visual Thought Laboratory of EKA in cooperation with the EnsAD (École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs) in Paris, the The University of the Arts Helsinki and the Dailes Academy in Vilnius.
Most recently Salminen took part in the Prague Quadrennial 2023 as an artist in the Finnish student department and as an Ecoscenography panelist. Overall Salminen works flexibly, internationally and multidisciplinary with different projects, spaces and materials.
Outi Vedenpää
MA student in lighting design