ExoSound
The research project investigates and develops artistic, technological and social prospects for participatory electronic sound arts that take place outdoors.
Introduction
Drawing from the mobile technologies paradigm shift, the ExoSound project contributes to the development of electronic sound practices in an off-grid, outdoor context, with a specific focus on relationality, environmental coupling, and participatory agency. The project envisions future forms of sonic culture, where groups of participants join in to co-inhabit their local environment through shared sonic agency enabled by the existing parc of personal mobile devices, and form an experiential connection with the sound, each other, and the place. The shift to an environmental setting questions the very fundamentals of studio-based sonic arts, such as the silent, individual, laboratory-like listening conditions of the studio space, performer-listener positionalities, reproducibility and situatedness of the sound work, as well as the according technological standards.
Within this project, technology is understood as a “socio-material arrangement”, an interlacing of material and social actions. The environment is constituent of this arrangement, with its inherent ethical and ecological imperatives. To be operable within the socio- material complex, the enquiry is designed as a cross-disciplinary project at the interface of technological development, socio- environmental situatedness and artistic experimentation, merged into a mutually supporting, comprehensive action-research framework. The research team will comprise researchers from music technology, sociology, and artistic research.
The project opens three intertwined lines of enquiry into sonic agency within the outdoor environment: 1) developing lightweight, weatherproof, and wireless tools for environmental sound practices, 2) researching the social dynamics of sound practices transposed to an environmental and public space, and 3) developing environmental, participatory and situated experimental artistic practices with the abovementioned tools and social settings.
The research outputs involve artworks and contributions to the artistic research corpus, open-source technological tools as well as academic outputs in the project’s three disciplines. It contributes to the environmental turn in electronic sound practices, as well as to a shift in sonic arts’ social impact by reinvigorating local social tissue, place-sense and participatory culture.
News
Team members
Otso Aavanranta (ExoSound Principal Investigator) is a professor of artistic research at the Uniarts Helsinki. He holds a doctorate in music from Paris 8 University, with past research appointments at Concordia University, Canada, and Mons University, Belgium. Otso’s approach is rooted in research–creation: combining exploratory artistic creation and academic inquiry into a mutually feeding loop. While the tools and methods of his research stem from music and technology, the themes of enquiry open up to larger, cross-disciplinary phenomena at the intersection of arts, environment and technology. Otso is a prolific artist and author, and has led research projects on instrument augmentation, active acoustics, sound materialities, as well as intersubjectivity in music. Otso’s current research focus is on outdoor electronic music.
Oleksandra Nenko is urban sociology and sociology of arts scholar, collegium researcher at Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Turku, visiting researcher at Uniarts Helsinki. Oleksandra’s research approach is interdisciplinary and focuses on place-making and urban sustainability. Oleksandra has led research projects on urban vernacularity, emotional perception of urban landscapes, grassrooted circular practices, art, war and displacement and has worked as curator in urban culture projects. She is a board member of the Research Networks 37 “Urban Sociology” and 02 “Sociology of Arts” of European Sociological Association. Oleksandra writes about urban culture, creative place-making, subjective perception of urban space, participatory and emotional mapping.
Alejandro Montes de Oca is an electroacoustic music composer and performer, and a sound artist based in Helsinki. He holds a doctorate in music from the Sibelius Academy and works as researcher, and teacher of electroacoustic music and sound art at the University of the Arts Helsinki. His music has been awarded at the 10th Electroacoustic Composition Competition Musica Viva (Portugal), the Franz Liszt Stipendium 2011 (Germany), the EAH Water Soundscape Composition Contest (Finland) and the 10th Luc Ferrari Composition Competition (France). His work has been released on various labels, and presented in different festivals, concerts and exhibitions in Europe and America.
Dominik Schlienger is a researcher, musician, and maker. His research topics include sustainable music technology for performance practices, and participatory design methods in technology development for the sonic arts. His interest centers on the role of technologies in social relations. The ethical question of appropriation and responsibility in the usage of technical tools motivates his research into agency and technology, expressed in a series of articles on the ethics in the discourse on “artificial intelligence”. In parallel, he is founding member and coordinator of the Finnish registered association called GaiaStage Ry, An artistic research practice to develop alternative models for infrastructure projects in the music industry to explore carbon-neutral techniques for live-music stages.
Publications
Dominik Schlienger, Otso Aavanranta, Chris Pierssené, Alejandro Montes de Oca and Oleksandra Nenko. 2026. ”Rethinking Technology — Alternative Outdoors Music Practices”. WiderScreen 29 (1–2). https://widerscreen.fi/numerot/1-2-2026-widerscreen-29/rethinking-technology–alternative-outdoors-music-practices/
Oleksandra Nenko, Otso Aavanranta, Alejandro Montes de Oca and Dominik Schlienger “Mobile sonic citizenship.” Seismograf, vol. 34, 2026, doi:10.48233/98. https://seismograf.org/da/peer/mobile-sonic-citizenship
Otso Aavanranta, Oleksandra Nenko, Dominik Schlienger and Alejandro Montes de Oca (2025). Connectivity and Adaptability: Evaluation of Signal Flow Scenarios in Shared Outdoor Electronic Practices on Mobile Devices. Proc. of the 17th Int. Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research, London, United Kingdom.
Otso Aavanranta (2025). Elektronisen musiikin luonto, Taidemusiikin ja luonnon kosketuskohtia, Matti Huttunen & Eveliina Sumelius-Lindblom (toim.), Sibelius-Akatemian julkaisuja 33.
Conference and seminar presentations
June 2, 2025 Dominik Schlienger, Oleksandra Nenko, Liisa Tuomi presentation “ Music Making towards Sustainable Socio-Material Arrangements” at Workshop on Contemporary Art, Urbanocene and the More than Human World. University of Rennes II, France.
June 5, 2025 – Oleksandra Nenko and Otso Aavanranta, presentation “Enabling the “possible” in urban places: collective electronic musicking in Helsinki”, at the 7th International Art and the City Conference, Villa Arson School of Fine Arts, June 5-8, 2025, Nice, France.
September 8, 2025 – Oleksandra and Dominik Schlienger (together with Polina Golovatina-Mora, NTNU), presentations at the round table “Artistic and Creative Place-Making in the Cities” (organised and moderated by Oleksandra Nenko), ESA Arts 13th Midterm Conference “Questioning Artistic Hegemony: Old and New Resistances in Algorithmic Capitalism”, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
September 11, 2025 – Oleksandra Nenko and Dominik Schlienger, presentation “Co-Sounding Outdoors: Reflections & Open Questions of ExoSound Sonic Practice”, at the Symposium “A line drawn on water — adventures & exchanges at the art-academia interface”, organised by TRACTS (Trace as a Research Agenda for Climate Change, Technology Studies, and Social Justice) EU COST Action and the sixth Uniarts Helsinki Research Pavilion, University of the Arts Helsinki, September 11-12, 2025, Helsinki, Finland.
October 23, 2025 – Otso Aavanranta, Oleksandra Nenko, Dominik Schlienger, Alejandro Montes de Oca, Reflections on ExoSound project experience, at the “Situated Sonic Practices” Study Days at Uniarts Helsinki and Aalto University, October 23-24, 2025, Helsinki, Finland.
November 3, 2025 Otso Aavanranta, Oleksandra Nenko, Alejandro Montes de Oca, Dominik Schlienger “Connectivity and Adaptability: Evaluation of Signal Flow Scenarios in Shared Outdoor Electronic Practices on Mobile Devices”, presentation at the Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR), University College London East, U.K.
November 11, 2025 Dominik Schlienger Machines as Socio-Material Arrangements — A shift in the Technology Paradigm? Poster presentation at the 8th Conference on Technology Ethics TETHICS 2025 in Vaasa, Finland.
November 27, 2025 – Alejandro Montes de Oca, ExoSound, Autumn leaves sound composition presentation and panel discussion at the Space, Place and Sound Symposium, Uniarts Helsinki, November 27, 2025, Finland.
December 4, 2025 – Alejandro Montes de Oca ExoSound, Autumn leaves sound composition presentation at the Sound Art in Latin America Symposium (ALSP), Univerisidad Autonoma de México, December 4, 2025, Mexico.
January 19, 2026 Oleksandr Nenko “Floating Musics, Breathing Cities: Ecologies of Sonic Belonging”, LIAS Workshop Artscapes and Radical Ecology in the Urbanocene: Theories & Praxis in Dialogue, LIAS, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany.
February, 5, 2026 Dominik Schlienger, Oleksandra Nenko, We need to refuse the difference between technique and technology to reclaim technologies as human practices. Presentation at ‘No & …’ Forum on Tech Refusal, at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of University of Maastricht, Netherlands.
May 8, 2026 Oleksandra Nenko “Creating Sonic Places of Hope through Outdoor Electronic Musicking in the City”, Finnish Urban Studies Conference, Tampere, Finland.
Project name
ExoSound: artistic, technological and social prospects for environmental sonic arts
Time
09/2024-08/2028
Funder
Research Council of Finland
Team
Otso Aavanranta
Oleksandra Nenko
Alejandro Montes de Oca
Dominik Schlienger
Contact
-
Otso Aavanranta
Professor, Research Institute, Research Institute+358469216117otso.aavanranta@uniarts.fi
Introduction
Drawing from the mobile technologies paradigm shift, the ExoSound project contributes to the development of electronic sound practices in an off-grid, outdoor context, with a specific focus on relationality, environmental coupling, and participatory agency. The project envisions future forms of sonic culture, where groups of participants join in to co-inhabit their local environment through shared sonic agency enabled by the existing parc of personal mobile devices, and form an experiential connection with the sound, each other, and the place. The shift to an environmental setting questions the very fundamentals of studio-based sonic arts, such as the silent, individual, laboratory-like listening conditions of the studio space, performer-listener positionalities, reproducibility and situatedness of the sound work, as well as the according technological standards.
Within this project, technology is understood as a “socio-material arrangement”, an interlacing of material and social actions. The environment is constituent of this arrangement, with its inherent ethical and ecological imperatives. To be operable within the socio- material complex, the enquiry is designed as a cross-disciplinary project at the interface of technological development, socio- environmental situatedness and artistic experimentation, merged into a mutually supporting, comprehensive action-research framework. The research team will comprise researchers from music technology, sociology, and artistic research.
The project opens three intertwined lines of enquiry into sonic agency within the outdoor environment: 1) developing lightweight, weatherproof, and wireless tools for environmental sound practices, 2) researching the social dynamics of sound practices transposed to an environmental and public space, and 3) developing environmental, participatory and situated experimental artistic practices with the abovementioned tools and social settings.
The research outputs involve artworks and contributions to the artistic research corpus, open-source technological tools as well as academic outputs in the project’s three disciplines. It contributes to the environmental turn in electronic sound practices, as well as to a shift in sonic arts’ social impact by reinvigorating local social tissue, place-sense and participatory culture.
News
Team members
Otso Aavanranta (ExoSound Principal Investigator) is a professor of artistic research at the Uniarts Helsinki. He holds a doctorate in music from Paris 8 University, with past research appointments at Concordia University, Canada, and Mons University, Belgium. Otso’s approach is rooted in research–creation: combining exploratory artistic creation and academic inquiry into a mutually feeding loop. While the tools and methods of his research stem from music and technology, the themes of enquiry open up to larger, cross-disciplinary phenomena at the intersection of arts, environment and technology. Otso is a prolific artist and author, and has led research projects on instrument augmentation, active acoustics, sound materialities, as well as intersubjectivity in music. Otso’s current research focus is on outdoor electronic music.
Oleksandra Nenko is urban sociology and sociology of arts scholar, collegium researcher at Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Turku, visiting researcher at Uniarts Helsinki. Oleksandra’s research approach is interdisciplinary and focuses on place-making and urban sustainability. Oleksandra has led research projects on urban vernacularity, emotional perception of urban landscapes, grassrooted circular practices, art, war and displacement and has worked as curator in urban culture projects. She is a board member of the Research Networks 37 “Urban Sociology” and 02 “Sociology of Arts” of European Sociological Association. Oleksandra writes about urban culture, creative place-making, subjective perception of urban space, participatory and emotional mapping.
Alejandro Montes de Oca is an electroacoustic music composer and performer, and a sound artist based in Helsinki. He holds a doctorate in music from the Sibelius Academy and works as researcher, and teacher of electroacoustic music and sound art at the University of the Arts Helsinki. His music has been awarded at the 10th Electroacoustic Composition Competition Musica Viva (Portugal), the Franz Liszt Stipendium 2011 (Germany), the EAH Water Soundscape Composition Contest (Finland) and the 10th Luc Ferrari Composition Competition (France). His work has been released on various labels, and presented in different festivals, concerts and exhibitions in Europe and America.
Dominik Schlienger is a researcher, musician, and maker. His research topics include sustainable music technology for performance practices, and participatory design methods in technology development for the sonic arts. His interest centers on the role of technologies in social relations. The ethical question of appropriation and responsibility in the usage of technical tools motivates his research into agency and technology, expressed in a series of articles on the ethics in the discourse on “artificial intelligence”. In parallel, he is founding member and coordinator of the Finnish registered association called GaiaStage Ry, An artistic research practice to develop alternative models for infrastructure projects in the music industry to explore carbon-neutral techniques for live-music stages.
Publications
Dominik Schlienger, Otso Aavanranta, Chris Pierssené, Alejandro Montes de Oca and Oleksandra Nenko. 2026. ”Rethinking Technology — Alternative Outdoors Music Practices”. WiderScreen 29 (1–2). https://widerscreen.fi/numerot/1-2-2026-widerscreen-29/rethinking-technology–alternative-outdoors-music-practices/
Oleksandra Nenko, Otso Aavanranta, Alejandro Montes de Oca and Dominik Schlienger “Mobile sonic citizenship.” Seismograf, vol. 34, 2026, doi:10.48233/98. https://seismograf.org/da/peer/mobile-sonic-citizenship
Otso Aavanranta, Oleksandra Nenko, Dominik Schlienger and Alejandro Montes de Oca (2025). Connectivity and Adaptability: Evaluation of Signal Flow Scenarios in Shared Outdoor Electronic Practices on Mobile Devices. Proc. of the 17th Int. Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research, London, United Kingdom.
Otso Aavanranta (2025). Elektronisen musiikin luonto, Taidemusiikin ja luonnon kosketuskohtia, Matti Huttunen & Eveliina Sumelius-Lindblom (toim.), Sibelius-Akatemian julkaisuja 33.
Conference and seminar presentations
June 2, 2025 Dominik Schlienger, Oleksandra Nenko, Liisa Tuomi presentation “ Music Making towards Sustainable Socio-Material Arrangements” at Workshop on Contemporary Art, Urbanocene and the More than Human World. University of Rennes II, France.
June 5, 2025 – Oleksandra Nenko and Otso Aavanranta, presentation “Enabling the “possible” in urban places: collective electronic musicking in Helsinki”, at the 7th International Art and the City Conference, Villa Arson School of Fine Arts, June 5-8, 2025, Nice, France.
September 8, 2025 – Oleksandra and Dominik Schlienger (together with Polina Golovatina-Mora, NTNU), presentations at the round table “Artistic and Creative Place-Making in the Cities” (organised and moderated by Oleksandra Nenko), ESA Arts 13th Midterm Conference “Questioning Artistic Hegemony: Old and New Resistances in Algorithmic Capitalism”, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
September 11, 2025 – Oleksandra Nenko and Dominik Schlienger, presentation “Co-Sounding Outdoors: Reflections & Open Questions of ExoSound Sonic Practice”, at the Symposium “A line drawn on water — adventures & exchanges at the art-academia interface”, organised by TRACTS (Trace as a Research Agenda for Climate Change, Technology Studies, and Social Justice) EU COST Action and the sixth Uniarts Helsinki Research Pavilion, University of the Arts Helsinki, September 11-12, 2025, Helsinki, Finland.
October 23, 2025 – Otso Aavanranta, Oleksandra Nenko, Dominik Schlienger, Alejandro Montes de Oca, Reflections on ExoSound project experience, at the “Situated Sonic Practices” Study Days at Uniarts Helsinki and Aalto University, October 23-24, 2025, Helsinki, Finland.
November 3, 2025 Otso Aavanranta, Oleksandra Nenko, Alejandro Montes de Oca, Dominik Schlienger “Connectivity and Adaptability: Evaluation of Signal Flow Scenarios in Shared Outdoor Electronic Practices on Mobile Devices”, presentation at the Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR), University College London East, U.K.
November 11, 2025 Dominik Schlienger Machines as Socio-Material Arrangements — A shift in the Technology Paradigm? Poster presentation at the 8th Conference on Technology Ethics TETHICS 2025 in Vaasa, Finland.
November 27, 2025 – Alejandro Montes de Oca, ExoSound, Autumn leaves sound composition presentation and panel discussion at the Space, Place and Sound Symposium, Uniarts Helsinki, November 27, 2025, Finland.
December 4, 2025 – Alejandro Montes de Oca ExoSound, Autumn leaves sound composition presentation at the Sound Art in Latin America Symposium (ALSP), Univerisidad Autonoma de México, December 4, 2025, Mexico.
January 19, 2026 Oleksandr Nenko “Floating Musics, Breathing Cities: Ecologies of Sonic Belonging”, LIAS Workshop Artscapes and Radical Ecology in the Urbanocene: Theories & Praxis in Dialogue, LIAS, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany.
February, 5, 2026 Dominik Schlienger, Oleksandra Nenko, We need to refuse the difference between technique and technology to reclaim technologies as human practices. Presentation at ‘No & …’ Forum on Tech Refusal, at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of University of Maastricht, Netherlands.
May 8, 2026 Oleksandra Nenko “Creating Sonic Places of Hope through Outdoor Electronic Musicking in the City”, Finnish Urban Studies Conference, Tampere, Finland.