Imagine a place where the sun never drops below the horizon
where so-called night time has to be initiated by an alarm clock
as the darkest hours approaching midnight seems
just as bright and tinted as the afternoon sun
Above the Arctic Circle under the midnight sun
who passes through the sky of Lapland
in sinusoidal phases
Round and round and round
I lose sense of time
I lose my habitual rhythm
In the time of these summery polar days
I came to Kilpisjärvi to exist and be with the place and people for a month
deep diving into the perspective and vibrations of static electricity and electrical flows
within ecological systems.
The summer arrived early this year, I was told.
During the transition from a white snow covered giant body with rinds of ice,
the aquatic choir of melting ice sang the dwelling creatures awake
and I witnessed a strange and mysterious (sonic) world unfold.
Earth is electric
with a beating heart of iron
the spinning globe is electrical
with fluctuating fields of magnetism
Bodies of bioelectrical flows
with souls of tumbling charge
and wires and veins hosting life-giving rhythms
circulate in continuous complicated commitments
as conditioned conductors
in airy or rooted connection
to the great grounded network of
electric ecologies.
Electric charges constantly shift and change in this system.
Airborne insects like bumblebees and butterflies accumulate positive charge
while they fly their distances gathering nutrition from flowers and more.
The bilberry flowers are my allies when attracting the winged bumble bees I wish to observe and admire.
While landing on the plant, as it is in deeply rooted connection with the ground, Earth,
positive charge flows from the bumblebee to the bilberry plant
that become more positively charged than before.
Now, other bumblebees can sense these tiny changes of charge through electroreceptors
and fine thin hair on their body.
They know that this flower has been visited and most probably does not hold sugars to the same extent
as other unvisited flowers.
This is a rich sense to navigate the world of the Alpine tundra.
Can I sense these changes through electrostatic sensors and navigate this electric ecology too?
I try.
With multiple analog and digital prototypes and diffrent experiments
of copper coil circuits and microcontrollers with SD cards
inspired by a number of skilful amateurs, scientists and artists.
I slowly take the first steps into these electrical fields
guided by the breathing human and strange-than-human residents of the area.
How can I understand ecological systems and interactions with regards to the electrical charges
that bind together the different bodies of an ecological community?
How can I approach an ecosystem like the Kilpisjärvi area not in terms of taxonomic, social, or functional relations,
but with respect to the subtle ubiquitous force of electric flows?
Bizarre sounds from someone in the high fell in the late afternoon.
Is it a frog, a mammal, a spirit of the place?
I have never heard such an incredible and incredibly weird sound before.
There is something magical and at the same time extremely hilarious about it.
It shows to be Riekko
Lagoous Lagos
Discovering Arctic Tiger Moth
I take a picture of a scientist
He seems delighted and
wants to document this special moment
Click
I take the picture of him with his phone
Click click
He pins up the dead moth
On to the board with the other dead insects
Tells me proudly that it is a very rare species
Acerbia Aplina
Why kill it if it is so rare ?
Why kill it in order to study and admire it?
Is this rightfully an ideal way of committing science?
I plant metal sheets between stones and mosses, dwarf birch and cranberries,
in tree trunks with mosquito and under roots and tiny ponds.
During the month they weather and attune to the place
as they gradually leave parts of themselves and are mutually slowly consumed.
These sheets will vibrate the sounds of Kilpisjärvi sonic bodies a
s sound sculptures in a future sound installation.
The deep roaring thunder created from accumulation of charges
in the passing by clouds shivers and sounds in my bodies.
These humongous monster structures of atmospheric electricity
helps me remember the global chaotic mysteries of weather
caused by (amongst others) such tiny elements as the electrical charges of an electron or ion.
Accumulated micro makes macro right there.
Building non-harmful instruments for monitoring other life
as a doctrine for studying and learning from other life
insisting on a basic respect for the same life under observation
honouring them by studying them.
Experiments fails while changing settings from the lab to the field
Crocked birch roots.
Wrapping around each others.
Bending and bowing and whirling and weaving themselves in and out of the soil.
Birch bark.
Does Seidas (holy places related to Sámi culture) have a particular electrical charge?
Orange colours and shapes.
Writing about Darkness as technology and as a being — an entity — in the endlessly bright sunlight.
Expanded day.
I walk for hours and hours. During day. During night.
Without instruments to help me keep my learned time, time expands.
Equipped with the coil circuits to sense the electrostatic charges .
Walking down from the top of holy Saana,
From cloudy and rainy night weather
I meet rocks and stone forms
from minuscule beings and mineral dust to whole rocky mountain chains carrying two tiny eyes
to the end of the world where Sky and Earth blends
Cold wind
Discovering a stone where the coil sensor captures a charge
Enchanted by the coils!
A sound reveals Kiiruna. Extremely close up.
Morphing from stone to bird.
As a guardian of the rocky mountainside
Kiiruna allows us
to be here, just right here, with it in these early hours.
It is so special
Majestic Saana
showed me Gaia up here.
Breathing and alive.
Stone and spring on Earth and in the Sky.
Thunder at one place while ‘fair weather’ another.
A balancing homeostatic system
that keeps it all together
this we call life
and beyond.
Cold wind
Electrical charge created by friction.
Friction created by opposing forces.
How does the water molecule in a cloud experience the world passing by?
Does it too experience the movement of matter (land, water, particles)
morphing into forms, passing by only to become a new shape ?
Saana welcomed me and showed us another temporality to being.
The High Fell Sun welcomed us and showed us another temporality.
We are cold.
On the bag of Saana
It rains and wind is blowing.
Until we move the warmth in place.
Sensing electrostatic impulses. Not much yet.
Saana reveals to us a mountain hare.
Complete silence.
It is not shaken by our presence.
A fox is sneaking in on it.
Hare hides behind a cliff.
Fox notices us and runs off into Saana’s many arms.
We spend quite some time with Hare.
It feels holy.
It feels as if it surely senses us without any fear.
And Hare holds this moment with us.
Generously letting us experience it.
We are deeply moved.
Thankful.
Honoured and humbled.
Thank you Milla Millasnoore, Hannu Autto, Anu Ruohomäki, Leena Valkeapää, Pirjo Hakala, Yvonne Billimore, Piritta Puhto, Lisa Kalkowski, Jonne Viljanen, and Janne Markkanen for making this residency possible and together with Anttoni Halonen, Jyrki Letho, Tanja Lindholm, Kazu and Co., Maja, the rest of the human crew and other visitors at the station, Saana, Malla, Kilpisjärvi, Dwarf birch, Reindeer, Riekko, Kiiruna, Bilberry, Thunder, Clouds, Rocks, Bumblebee, Butterflies, Snow hare, Fox, Sun, cold Water, Salix, Sauna, even Misquitoes, and all the rest, for the longterm or momentary encounters and for enriching my first visit ever to Finland and Lapland.This is a trips I will rest deep in my body and mind.
The impressions of this residency will be exhibited in Helsinki October - December 2024.
Snippets of this text was written while creating a contribution for the book Slow Technology Reader, Edited by Carolyn F. Strauss and published by Valiz.