Erkki Kurenniemi facts for kids

Young Kurenniemi in 1965

Erkki Juhani Kurenniemi (born July 10, 1941, in Hämeenlinna, Finland – died May 1, 2017, in Helsinki) was a brilliant Finnish inventor, thinker, and artist. He is most famous for creating electronic music and designing the electronic instruments he used. Many people see him as one of the first and most important pioneers of electronic music in Finland. Kurenniemi also enjoyed sharing science with others, thinking about the future, exploring new media, and making experimental films.

Kurenniemi created most of his instruments, electronic music, and experimental films in the 1960s and 1970s. From 1962 to 1974, he designed and built ten electronic instruments and studio devices. He did this while working as a volunteer at the Department of Musicology at the University of Helsinki. He also worked as a designer at Digelius Electronics Finland Oy, a company started in 1970. Besides the Musicology Department, Kurenniemi also worked as an assistant and senior designer at the Department of Theoretical Physics from 1962 to 1973. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in 1968.

Later, he worked on control systems for robots at Oy W. Rosenlew Ab (1976–78). He also designed industrial automation and robot systems for Nokia (1980–86). From 1987 to 1998, he was a special consultant and Head of Planning at the Science Centre Heureka in Vantaa, Finland.

Kurenniemi received the Finland Prize from the Ministry of Education and Culture in 2003. In 2004, the University of Art and Design Helsinki made him an honorary fellow. In 2011, he was awarded the Order of the Lion of Finland medal by the President of Finland, Mrs. Tarja Halonen.

Designing Music Machines
Artistic Creations
Scientific Ideas
Music Recordings
Film List
Instruments He Built

Designing Music Machines

Kurenniemi started designing music instruments at the University of Helsinki's Musicology Department in 1961–1962. Some music students suggested that Professor Erik W. Tawaststjerna invite Kurenniemi to design an electronic music studio for the university. Kurenniemi worked there as an unpaid assistant.

Kurenniemi's idea for the studio was different from the tape editing studios common at the time. He wanted to use digital control technology and automation. From 1964 to 1967, the main part of his studio was an "integrated synthesizer." This machine was more like the digital RCA synthesizer from the 1950s than the voltage-controlled synthesizers by people like Robert Moog. While working on the studio, Kurenniemi also built electronic instruments for other artists. These included avant-garde artist M. A. Numminen, composer Osmo Lindeman, and Swedish composer Ralph Lundsten.

Kurenniemi worked on a series of synthesizers called DIMI (which stood for DIgital Music Instrument). In 1970, a company named Digelius Electronics Finland Oy was created to make these DIMI machines.

Kurenniemi's instruments were special because they used digital control early on. They also combined sequencers (machines that play a series of notes) with synthesizers. Kurenniemi was also the first to use a completely digital design to figure out the pitch of the sound. He even explored using digital memory in his instruments. His first digital memory was in the Dico instrument, built for Osmo Lindeman in 1969.

Kurenniemi also studied how different control systems could be used in his instruments. For example, the Dimi-O (1971) used an optical interface. This was originally meant to read sheet music visually. The instrument could also be played with a regular keyboard or even a video camera. Dimi-O was also used with a dancer, turning their movements into music.

Dimi-O was an early example of an interactive instrument. Kurenniemi was inspired by American composer Manford L. Eaton's "bio-music." He designed instruments that used bio-feedback (signals from the body). These included Dimi-S (1972), which made sound based on the electrical conductivity of the skin. Another was Dimi-T (1973), where sound was controlled by electrical activity from the brain.

After working in other areas for many years, Kurenniemi started building digital instruments again in the mid-2000s. His early work was becoming very popular around the world. In 2005, he worked with Thomas Carlsson, an electronic systems designer from the UK. Together, they designed a new version of the Dimi instrument. This new Dimi-H made sounds based on Kurenniemi's ideas about mathematical harmonies. Dimi-H is a computer program that lets the player create "notes out of the air" using a camera in a 3D space.

Artistic Creations

Music Compositions

The most famous part of Kurenniemi's music is his electronic compositions. He created these in the Electronic Music Studio at the University of Helsinki. Besides his own work, he helped other composers, like Erkki Salmenhaara. He also made sound tapes for them.

Some of Kurenniemi's well-known compositions include "On-Off" (1963) and "Andropodien Tanssi" (1968). Part of "Andropodien Tanssi" was released on an album by the Finnish progressive band Wigwam. It was called "Dance of the Anthropoids" on their album Tombstone Valentine (1970).

Some of Kurenniemi's compositions were made with others. For example, "Saharan Uni I & II" (1967) was with Kari Hakala. "Inventio/Outventio" (1970) and "Mix Master Universe" (1973) were with Jukka Ruohomäki. Many of Kurenniemi's pieces were first made as tests for his equipment. For example, "Andropoidien Tanssi" was made with Andromatic, "Improvisaatio" with DICO, and "Inventio/Outventio" with DIMI-A. In 2002, Mika Taanila put together a CD called Äänityksiä/Recordings 1963-73 which featured Kurenniemi's electronic music.

Films and Videos

Kurenniemi made 14 experimental short films using 16-mm film. These films explored themes like nature, the environment, travel, and technology. He shot them between 1964 and 1971. It's hard to know the exact dates they were finished because Kurenniemi only showed his work to a few friends at home. Only one film, Ex nihilo, was shown publicly when it was finished.

Kurenniemi said all his other films were more or less unfinished sketches. All the films were originally silent. But in 2003, Kurenniemi and Mika Taanila added soundtracks of Kurenniemi's electronic music to six of them. The dates listed for the films are Kurenniemi's guesses for when he finished editing them.

From 1972 to 1974, Kurenniemi recorded diary entries on tape cassettes. From the early 1980s onwards, he constantly recorded his surroundings and personal life using video and photographs. His goal was to create material for a digital virtual world that would be put together after his death. In this world, his own life would be the main focus.

Kurenniemi's Work in Exhibitions

Today, all of Kurenniemi's films, the Dimi-S instrument, and Master Chaynjis (an early robot from 1982) are part of the collections at the Finnish National Gallery (FNG) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma. His large personal collection of documents is kept in the Central Art Archives of the FNG. It is being organized and made digital there.

Some of Kurenniemi's instruments (like the integrated synthesizer, Sähkökvartetti, Dico, Dimi-A, Dimix, and Dimi-6000) are in the Musicology Department's studio at the University of Helsinki. Others (Andormatic, Dimi-O, and another Dimi-S) are in Ralph Lundsten's music studio Andromeda in Stockholm. Another Dimi-A synthesizer is in the Museum of Music in Stockholm.

The Documenta (13) art exhibition in Kassel showed a colorful collection of Kurenniemi's archives and artworks in 2012. Parts of these private and public collections were also shown in a solo exhibition at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki from 2013 to 2014.

Scientific Ideas

Kurenniemi shared his ideas about mathematical music in articles like "Harmonioiden teoria" ("Theory of harmonies," 1985) and "Musical harmonies are divisor sets" (1988). In these, he explained harmony using the idea of "divisor sets" of numbers. He believed harmonies are symmetrical, meaning their musical relationships stay the same whether you read them forwards or backwards. In his theory, both major and minor chords create the same harmony. He thought this explained why they are equally important in Western music.

His theory of harmonies did not use traditional musical scales or octaves. Instead, he saw harmonies as natural scales. Kurenniemi also thought that rhythm followed the same mathematical rules, but at a level too fast for us to hear. Around the early 1990s, he wrote some articles that were never published. These were about a theoretical idea called "Graph Field Theory" which explored space, time, and matter.

Music Recordings

Various performers: An Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music: Third A-Chronology, Vol. 3, 1952–2004. © 2004 Sub Rosa [220].

Film List

Carnaby Street (around 1971, 4:07, color)
Computer Music (around 1966, 6:29 black and white)
Electronics In The World of Tomorrow (around 1964, 4:56, color & black and white)
Elämän reikänauha (The Punched Tape of Life, 1967, 8:03, black and white)
Ex nihilo (1968, 12:47)
Firenze (around 1970, 9:15, color)
Flora & Fauna (around 1965, 5:59, color)
Joulumysteeri (Christmas Mystery, 1969, 5:50, black and white)
Huumaava elämänlanka (The Intoxicating Thread of Life, around 1968, 7:04, color)
Talo (House, 1969, 2:44, black and white)
Tavoiteltu kaunotar (Coveted Beauty, 1965, 4:15, black and white)
Tuli ja vesi (Fire and Water, around 1968, 10:55, color)
Winterreise (around 1964, 9:53. color & black and white)

Instruments He Built

Integrated synthesizer (for the University of Helsinki's Musicology Department) (1964–)
Sähkökvartetti (Electric Quartet, for M. A. Numminen) (1967–1968)
Andromatic (for composers Ralph Lundsten and Leo Nilsson) (1968)
Dico (for composer Osmo Lindeman) (1969)
DIMI-A (1970)
DIMI-O (1971)
DIMI-S (1972)
DIMIX (1972)
DIMI-T (1973)
DIMI-6000 (1973–1974)
DIMI-H (2005–2006, with Thomas Carlsson)

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