About Antti

Antti Tenetz is a visual artist. He’s works are situated at the interface between media arts, biological arts and urban art. His focus is on multi-disciplinary and multi-artistic cooperation between art and science, and he often uses technologies such as drones, satellite tracking, game engines and machine learning. Tenetz’s works and cooperation projects have been exhibited in Finland and internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, Manifesta 12, Istanbul Biennale parallel program, Tate Modern Exhcahenge program, Science Gallery Dublin and Lumipalloefekti exhibitions, X-Border, ISEA Istanbul, Pan-Barentz, and e-mobil art. He has also won national snow-sculpting competition.

http://www.tenetz.com

This residency is a collaboration of BioClub Tokyo, SOLU - The Finnish Bioart Society and the Finnish Institute in Japan.

• The talk will be in English.
• The talk will also be online at https://zoom.bioclub.tokyo

Message from Antti

Nice to meet you all! I am, sub-arctic based artist, curator and facilitator from Oulu, Finland. Situated near arctic circle and have been doing my work from there to Iceland, Siberia to south Europe and now to here. I currently direct More than Planet creative-eu program for Northern Photographic Centre at Oulu and I was previously working as regional artist of biological arts for Art Promotion Centre of Finland. Fancy title but work consisted support and intiation of new at/sci projects and numerous presentations and talks aimed for decision makers in art and science community as also funders, as also by doing AI and bioart work, Perihelion, on Waag societys Super:organism residency with European ARTificial Intelligence Lab and ESA International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ESA/ESTEC, Noordwijk). I have been active member in Finnish bioartsociety and head of board for some years back and also one of the founders of Subzero Collective and head of curatorial team for Finnish Cultural Foundations Pohjavirta project.

I come from diverse backround, raised in pulp and paper factory town, spending my youth on lakes, entering art school, working as portman, trawl fisherman and bouncer in North-Atlantic as also artist and VJ before entering academic and contemporary art world. During that time I also won Finnish championship in snowsculpting and some other colored medals. You could say that my background reflects to my current focus and practice between wilderness, other than human life, forests, waterbodies and academic knowledge. In my artistic work I mainly focus to practices of biological arts and emerging technologies, mutispecies co-exisistennce, critical new material approach to technologies in order to explore how humans, non-humans and machines may envision, dream, perceive and relate to concerning changes in a hybrid environment where the biosphere and technosphere merges. I have worked on wide range of media and mediums form A.I to interactive media arts, installations, sculptures, narrative and abstract video works made with varying technologies such as drones, satellite tracking, 3D printing and laser cutting, lidar, photogrammetry, earth observation data, game engines and machine learning. My focus is on multi-disciplinary and multi-artistic collaboration between art and science and local communities. I often wonder what is role of art and artist during these changing times. Do we nurture our species to annihilation or can we find path trough metaphorical ice plateu to possible future, unknown land(sea)scape. What are those ideas and artistical beings that we have to summon and lure from darkness to visibility in order to survive.

Some of my recent works and collaborative projects to mention have been exhibited in Finland and internationally, including Ars Electronica, work: 

Perihelion, bio/media work, Austria, 2021 https://ars.electronica.art/newdigitaldeal/en/perihelion/ 17 goals of my mind sculpture park project, work: Fishgod, Sanctuary, Sculpture and seaweed growing environment, Denmark2022 https://www.17goalsonmymind.com/life-below-water?lang=enConstructing Context, work: Perihelion, bio/media work, A.I exhibition Hong Kong 2021 https://constructingcontexts.scm.cityu.edu.hk/ Tate Modern Exchange program, work: Tracing, media artwork and workshop Who are we? exhibition and cross platform event, 2017 https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/who-are-we... Science Gallery Dublin, work: Wolfland, Installation, Openl-labs exhibition, 2019 https://dublin.sciencegallery.com/open-labs.../wolfland Venice Biennale in collateral programs Monster of Lagoon 2015 and Body of water with Jaakko 2013 and some other to mention Lumipalloefekti exhibitions, X-Border 2013, ISEA Istanbul 2011, Pan-Barentz 2013, and e-mobil art 2007-2009. Here is my not so often refreshed website : www.tenetz.com Instagram link : https://www.instagram.com/tenetz/?hl=fi I´ll aim to update some new materials to them for you to see for next week.

Antti's Residency Research Project

My Aim at residency to develop new works about slime mold navigation on three different environments and develop 3d printed surfaces and methods of producing those from satellite data, laser scanned and photogrammetry build environments and landscapes. I planned to test three different environments. I also plan to collect other material, mainly sequences of photos of slime mold growth to train machine learning models to build imaginative paths and growth patterns. Possible environments:

1. Venice lagoon navigation as part of new work for Singing for Dark Times group exhibition for Venice Biennale 2024
2. Navigation on asteroid or stellar object like Mars or Moon between habitable places.
3. Navigation inside of cave or mine. This can be also landscape or terrain here in Japan.

One trajectory is to seek possibilities to break out from lab esthetics by testing and exploring Japanese and Finnish wood cutting and crafting methods like hou sugi ban preservation method by burning the wood. Maybe to connect those practices to more contemporary like 3D printing and laser cutting. In addition I dream to find, research and work with other possible lifeforms that would support and guide us on extreme situations and environments.

How this codepency emerges and evolves is in core of project. By questioning expected and habitual, my artistic research also explores in open and critical manner our notions of hierarchies and power structures towards other than human life and also looping back to us on question what might prevent changes in our actions and society at large. Kind of systemic approach to whole matter. I am open to find some traditional lifeforms, crafts, relations and approaches that can be found trough collaboration with you and other locals here in Tokyo.