[ISEA2004] Artists Statement: The Executives & Amfibio – concert

Artists Statement

Concert

The Executives (of nine2five recordings) gave concerts with visuals by Amfibio.

The history behind nine2five recordings goes hand-in-hand with the development of underground breakbeat culture in Finland. Meeting Goose (Pasi Saarinen) at the legendary Helsinki nightclub Nylon, where he held a Saturday residence for a good two years, Dizzy (Juha Ponteva) and him soon found out they shared the same interest in music. Later hooking up with Nenis (Sami Nenola), the skater-turned-dj, they named themselves The Executives, in accordance with the labels profile and after a long history in underground music business, they finally set up nine2five recordings in 2000.

The six members of Amfibio Antti Ahonen, Maippi Ketola, Teemu Kivikangas, Mika Meskanen, Antti Silvast and Pauli Ojala have gathered around a common main theme: their personal relationships to the sea. Each member of the group explores this subject from their own viewpoints to produce a collection of visual stories.

The approaches of the individual artists towards their Stories of the Sea are as widely varied, both technically and thematically, as their backgrounds. The techniques range from software art and 3D-algorithms to animation, documentary cinema and photography from cunning custom software solutions to good old low-tech devices. Their thematic viewpoints vary from explorations of deeply personal, emotional relationships to sociological, almost scientific approaches. Some of the stories are abstract, some are expressive, some narrative and from some stories you might even learn something. Based around the musical sets performed by the Finnish musicians of the nine2five label on Sunday, and the selection of Swedish musicians from Fylkningen on Monday, the Amfibio-artists will remix and partially create in real-time this cinematic experiment. As the end-result a number of visual stories will merge into something between an episodic movie and an audiovisual concert in two long VJ performances based on a combination of careful planning, playful improvisation and pure luck.

The Executives:

  • Pasi Saarinen, Juha Ponteva & Sami Nenola. A bunch of explorers of the audiovisual, combining their incredible virtues in arts and science to produce most diverse and unpredictable results.

Amfibio

  • Antti AhonenMaippi KetolaTeemu Kivikangas, Petrie LievonenPauli Ojala. Amfibio founded in 2002 is Helsinki-based collective of artists with wide variety of backgrounds ranging from media art to cinema and from engineering to graphic design. They collaborate with sound artists, dancers and theatre groups to create visual media performances.

Full document (PDF) p. 133