Wind machine is 1. An orchestral instrument that imitates the sound of wind. 2. A fan used on stage to make e.g. musical performances seem more dramatic by blowing wind at a singer, famously used at Eurovision Song Contests. Spectacular! 3. Working title of a piece of equipment first developed and tested by Lauri Linna at Rewilding Cultures Residency in Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in the fall of 2024.
The first snow fell in Kilpisjärvi at the end of September. We are walking up a hill in wet snow among the fell birches (Betula pubescens subsp. czerepanovii) to the research site of a global research project that studies biodiversity and the ongoing global change. Samples and data are collected year-round and sent to researchers throughout the world. Insects, pictures, airborne particles of life, soil samples, sounds – small samples of this vast arctic landscape become global knowledge in a relatively short time.
The north is heating faster than other places on earth. Nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen, how the ocean currents change. One model predicts that Northern Europe is once more heading towards an ice age, making the inhabitants – plant, animal, human, and other – climate refugees.
Suddenly we hear reindeer running. What’s making them run? What did they become afraid of? I look at the landscape of arctic fells that reach further than I can see, I have just arried here, and the scenery makes me feel weak. This is a foreign land, and I don’t know yet how to move and behave in this space. I hear an all-terrain vehicle coming from behind the hill next to us. Oh, that’s why the reindeer were running.
On our way back down to the road I try to formulate a question about an unfinished thought I’m having. I can’t formulate it properly and my companion doesn’t know how to respond. I understand them. I had half of a thought and so half of a question.
What I am thinking is about the samples being small – even microscopic – parts of the wholeness of this place. I am troubled by my own incapability to understand the vastness of this place. How could one understand all of this from a dust speck? I realize that the researchers aren’t necessarily interested in understanding particularly the wholeness of this place but rather they collect information about a specific subject that the researchers are interested in: like biodiversity and global warming.
The test field is not collecting data about e.g., how it feels to stand here in wet snow listening to running reindeer and motors revving next to this lake. Or the footprints of a rabbit in snow. Or understanding complex connections of things like people, landscape, power and money. Or the seemingly random connection from this to that, or elbow to my ear and to the rock I see over there. I’m like a visiting researcher on a strange land, I am sent here to do my residency, to study wind.
Lauri Linna · The station (first recording), Kilpisjärvi 2024
Above is the first recording of the Wind Machine. The machine measures wind and the atmosphere. The measurements then affect how sounds are played by the system. So changes in the sounds mark a change in a measurement of the wind and the atmosphere. This is the first recording of the device.
I am sitting in my room at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station. There aren’t many people staying at the station. Researchers and students have fled to the south, like migrant birds they travel with the seasons. The Kilpisjärvi tourist season is also coming to a pause, hotels and restaurants are closing.
At times it feels like I am a monk on a space station orbiting earth. I try to get my equipment running at my desk. Producing numerous audio files, testing them in my wind machine system. Looking at measurements that the sensors of my electronic system make and try to understand how to make them work with my plans. I have some issues with the audio files and finding the right sensitivity for the equipment.
Outside my window the fell Saana is covered in light snow and fog. The fog might be a cloud that is caught by Saana. My sister sends me a link to the classic Finnish children’s song “Kilpisjärven mahtava Saana”, every time I look at the fell this song starts to play in my head.
I am working on a machine that will translate measurements of wind and the atmosphere into sounds, so one could hear the changes in them and become more familiar with the sea of gas we are all surrounded all the time.
Finally, after many days I can make my first test recording. It is noise, but I still send the first interesting part of this recording to my partner back home, who listens to it while cleaning around the house. “At first I was like: usual Lauri nonsense noise, but then I started to hear a beat in it. It was kind of pleasurable.” I feel sorry for the partners of artists who must suffer all kinds of practical and impractical strange work-related matters, and on top of that, suffer from our random first tries.
I haven’t had the time to take a walk at Saana or its surroundings. I have spent days in and around the station. Mostly at my desk. I haven’t been trying to understand the whole place, I am here only to study this one thing. I need to focus to get this thing working. I can’t go out just to walk around aimlessly and marvel at things. I need to work. I can’t be spending time outside looking at the remarkable vegetation. I am very interested in plants, so I’m happy I didn’t come here during summer, I would have just spent all my time looking at plants outside. It would have been painful, to be forced to stay indoors at a desk, while the kingdom of plants outside was in its full glory. But I am not here for that. I am here to get this thing working and then make some recordings that I can then put up on the Bioart Society blog. Focus!
Lauri Linna · "Bog", Kilpisjärvi 2024
This recording was done at a wet soil area, similar to a bog, next to the Biological Station. Listen to the whistling and hiss that change their pitch. These are the TVOC and CO2, the rotting wet soil releasing gases e.g., methane. The clapping and bird sounds are wind speed, the bass and ding ding sounds are temperature and moisture. At the end of the recording the temperature goes beyond the sensitivity settings of the system and the sound stops.
Slowly the collaboration between me and the machine begins to bear fruit. I can now start taking the system out to the fell.
There is a photo exhibition by Merja Paakkanen at the station. I meet her at the station and we discuss how not to create photos that make delicate places and sceneries desirable for tourists to visit. This raises the question of what to photograph and what to show publicly so you won’t end up making a new tourist site. So how can I now not feed the monster of “Look at this scenery! I must travel to Kilpisjärvi once in my life”? How not to add to the fetishization? After all, it is just another place on Earth with beings living their life. To address this issue, I have decided not to include pictures or other documentation taken by me while working here, except for images of the system on Soundcloud. And on this blog I am using a picture of a postcard of Saana which I sent home, a pic that has already been sent to millions of homes, and doesn’t add anything new to the pictorial story of Kilpisjärvi region.
I meet with Leena Valkeapää at the station. Leena is an artist and researcher living at Kilpisjärvi and she is the mentor of Bioart Society’s residencies here. She tells that I am staying where the famous Nils-Aslak Valkeapää’s family is from. Nils-Aslak is well known for his joiks, recordings, poems and texts. Later Leena sends a link to Nils-Aslak’s recording “Beaivi, Áhčážan” (The Sun, My Father). I listen to his records while staying in Kilpisjärvi. It becomes clear how these joiks are born of this place. In this place they make a lot of sense. They blend in well to the soundscape. His “Goase Dusse” (The Bird Symphony) became my favorite. It is mostly not really joiks but compositions made with bird sounds, that for me – an outsider – sound like joiks performed with bird recordings. I listened to this album a lot while in Kilpisjärvi. Now back in Helsinki it seems like the recording needs so much more space and quiet for its nuances, that it almost feels wrong to try to listen to it here among the loud sounds and busyness. The nuances and small details disappear here. Only bold and loud things prevail.
I am hiking up the hill side of Saana. I have in my backpack the Wind Machine and my aim is to finally record out in "the wilderness". (Later I meet locals on their daily walk, and the illusion of wilderness is somewhat broken, as it seems these people are just taking a stroll around the neighborhood.) I feel happy and light walking through the protected birch grove between Saana and the station. It’s warmer than previous days, the wet soil smells nice. I was told that the lemmings have their home among the rocks and between the rocks the climate can be different from the surrounding climate. I spent time looking at the plants getting ready for winter. The vegetation here is spectacular. I hear small birds singing and we seem to have the same direction. I go higher along the side of the fell. Suddenly there are no trees around me. Among snow and small bushes, next to a big rock, I set up my equipment and record for the first time with a system I think and feel is now properly functioning. The sun is setting on the other side of the lake Kilpisjärvi. Back at my chamber I listen to the recording. The recording still has weird glitches.
The day before I leave, I hike to the other side of Saana, to Lake Saanajärvi. At the beginning of my hike it is warm and sunny, I have to remove layers of clothing. The vegetation seems to change as I climb higher, different species like different conditions. It becomes colder. I don’t recognize these plants anymore. During the weeks I’ve learned how to walk on these rocky hills, it reminds me of the way I have to walk in Kuusamo. The snow makes things slippery. I miss my trekking pole, which I forgot at the station. It is cold in the shadow of Saana. The wind is coming strong from north between Saana and Iso-Jehkas. Between rocks there is a stream that seems to run towards the village. After the stream the shadow of Saana ends and there are small huts where one could light a fire and have a rest. The sun is warming me a bit more. I don’t have time to make fire. I need to get down from here before it gets dark. I set up my equipment for the last time in Kilpisjärvi.
Lauri Linna · Saanajärvi, Kilpisjärvi 2024
In this recording the clapping sounds are two different wind speed meters, left channel is the left wind speed meter, the right channel is the right wind meter. The bird sounds are another wind speed meter, the speed effects the panning of the bird song. The whistling is CO2 measurement, the low bass sounds are TVOC (=volatile compounds, meaning all kinds of chemicals among the gasses of the atmosphere), the ding ding sound is temperature and hiss sound is moisture level (the moisture level kicks in around 3:30 min). The weather was bright, a little below zero, quite windy. I was looking towards the southeast, my back towards lake Saanajärvi. I see fells beyond fells. While recording, I still hear a sound in my headphones that I haven’t planned to be there. Later back in Helsinki I found out that among the hundreds of sound files I have done for the machine to run, one has a minor glitch in it and it is causing all the trouble.
I hope that the Wind Machine can enable people to observe the wind and atmosphere in a new way. To better understand the gases, its movement, the chemicals and its life. And perhaps do so on a more personal level. So that we can better understand that we live in it. That it is here touching our skin, with every breath we inhale it becomes a part of our bodies. With an exhale we give it new things that we leave in the air. The atmosphere is always with us, in our homes, in offices, in forests and even a space station has it. Without it we can't live.
Electronics and coding of the Wind Machine by Marloes van Son
The emphasis of the Rewilding Cultures residency is to support the repositioning of the wild within art practices connecting to science and technology. The residency is meant for initiatives, projects and individuals who aim to inspire, entertain, question and otherwise relate to the ways in which we can enhance sustainability, inclusivity and accessibility in the field of art and culture.