Washington Post:

Finnish Exhibit Puts the `You` in Virtual Art

Conventional notions of Finland may still be blanketed in endless nights and wintry snow. But an interactive new-media art show at the Finnish Embassy suggests the creative climate is hotter than sauna.

The show, which opened Wednesday, is called F2F, an acronym for face-to-face communication in an Internet world. What viewers will encounter is nine wired, participatory installations at the leading edge of creativity. Visitors may even come face to face with virtual reconstructions of themselves.

The artists, Finns ages 22 to 40, have borrowed dot-commer´s dream toolbox. There are Webcams, Internet links, phones, mouse devices and monitors. But this is not simply a display of technological prowess. The content is mystical, even disturbing. The artist make points out societal alienation, brand consciousness and the absurdities of Freud, all in a fantasy context inspired by the Web World.

There is a physical component. Archery skills are tested first at "Hit2morrow": those who can hit the bull´s-eye with a bow and ball-tipped arrow will awaken. Kristian Simolin´s eerie projection of the future on the screen, a technicolor revelation about global warming and overpopulation.

"This is physical computing art," explains Marko Tandefelt, technical adviser and co-curator. " The main thing in the exhibit is not technical but human contact."

It should come as little surpise that the techno-art works are highly provocative as well as technically complex. Thanks to the success of Nokia cell phones, Finns have been building a reputation for being more modern than we are. Nearly 80 percent of Finnish homes have mobile phones. With smart card technology, phone-wielding Finns can order junk food from vending machines and pay when the phone bill comes. Finns have even developed lamps that respond to a phone call.

"Nokia keeps the Finnish economy up." Tandefelt says. "But there should be other things."

A project called "IceBorg" will do. The work of Andy Best and Merja Puustinen encourages visitors to create their own avatars. Heidi Tikka´s "Mother, Child" asks you to hold a baby, whose image is projected onto a blanket in your arms. The virtual infant giggles and cries as you squirm. "Mirror ++" by Juha Huuskonen uses a surveillance camera to turn the viewer in to a morphing paint projected like a constellation against a Black Hole.

You move. Art happens. Participate, and the art is altered. Don't participate, and the two lonely people in Teijo Pellinen´s "Aquarium" will remain in suspended virtual animation, waiting for your phone call. Hanna Haaslahti´s "The Battle Over Indifferent Minds" sends a scanner to capture the viewer´s image, which will be incorporated into the next motorized sound-and-light scene of men at war.

Marita Liulia´s "SOB" CD-ROM is a witty multimedia mystery tour around the world of men- and into the virtual apartment of a psychoanalyst named Jack L. Froid. Tuomo Tammenpää has created a virtual artificial brand called "Need." A spoon of marketing, it seduces viewers into becoming customers, though there is no product.

The exhibition was first presented in Los Angeles last fall and is expected to travel to Toronto, Montreal, New York and San Francisco. It was organized by Anneli Halonen, the embassy´s cultural councelor, with the Finnish Foundation for the Visual Arts in New York, and designed by Ilkka Suppanen, creative director of the Finnish group Snowcrash.

Just as the Italian design group Memphis attracted notice for its postmodern designs in the ´80s, and the intellectual Dutch collaborative Droog defined the avant-garde in the ´90s, Snowcrash has led the way in designing for the Cyber Age. Among its witty but functional designs are a surfboard inspired computer workstation, an "airbag" chair, artful acousticall wall panels, an interactive, remote-controlled inflatable lamp, and an "infinite light" that would be stored on video.

"Finns have always had a fascination with technology and new things," says Juulia Kauste, New York-based executive director of the Finnish Foundation for the Visual Arts. Tandefelt pointed out that new media art works are being encouraged by the European Union. "The digital maintenance of culture…is going on all over Europe."

By looking hard at the installations at the embassy, one can detect a distinctly Finnish minimalist streak. But the only chair in the show is no sinuous modern work by Alvar Aalto but a cushy leather lounger. It is set up at Pellinen´s Aquarium, which the artist sees as an interactive nighttime TV show.

In Washington, the artists had to brave more than cultural and artistic divides. The embassy building is just across the street from the vice president´s ultra-secure residence. To make the elctronic work, "strange" local phenomena involving unusual magnetic field had to be overcome, according to Tandefelt.

Ambassador Jaakko Laajava, who presided over a series of opening reception this week, rolled his eyes at the mention of complexities. At the eleventh hour, he had to place an urgent call to a key official in Finland, who could be reached only on his sailboat. " You have to have a cell phone," Laajava said.

By Linda Hales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 10, 2001