Fabulous inventions and awing expositions of Otto Urpelainen

A water installation and a booklet of rain diaries, created together with Ana Mrovlje. The diaries contain some writings about rain while the installation produces artificial rain. Both of these were developed simultaneously and are intended to be experienced together. The installation provides a physical representation for the abstract ideas contained in the diaries.

The second part in Post Maker Camp series, a media art exchange between Koelse and Cirkulacija 2, held in Future Lake - Hiidenvesi Centre for Art, Research & Design and supported and co-produced by Pixelache. 11 participants spent a week together in remote location, exploring the title of post maker by producing art objects, performances and music.

The spark generators are three electric sculptures that arc high voltage through the air. They create the Jacob’s ladder effect and generate sound in different ways.

After success of the Pig robot, Zoran and I got invited for another robotic project by Kapelica gallery in Ljubljana. Continuing with the animal theme, we decided that the next robot should be a horse. Kapelica specializes in bio art, se this one was to have some biological component as well. We chose microbial fuel cells as such element. In the final piece, we had a life size horse moving its four legs based on movement and proximity sensors and signal from a microbial culture.

V zavetrju časa was a multi-media spatial installation by Meta Grgurevič and Urša Vidic, loosely based on the novel To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. It was on display on June 2016 in Ljubljana Puppet Theatre and included lights, sound, music, video, performance and kinetic objects. If you have already read other articles about my projects with Meta and Urša, you probably guessed that my role in this project was the automatisation of the kinetic objects.

Undeniable, Awe-inspiring, Entertaining
FIVE PROOFS OF AFTERLIFE
From Señor V.G.A. and Doctor af Urpelainen
The parapsychologists

Address to the citizens of the Republic of Slovenia, the guests of said great nation, and the general public.

Señor V.G.A. and Dr. af Urpelainen will present their recent findings in the field of parapsychology, consisting of no less than first ever proof of existence of life after death. Having discovered the Key of Afterlife and the Secret of 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Dimension, the aforementioned Philosophers have gained complete mastery of these Worlds and their inhabitants. In interest of advance of Science and Happiness, owing eternal Gratitude to generous support from Svetlobna Gverila festival, the Philosophers will reveal the Secrets, simultaneously undeniably proving the existence of Afterlife on 6th of June in the Year of Lord 2016 at half past nine in the most respected and highly regarded Gallery of Arts Nočna izložba Pešak, Metelkova, the exhibits being viewable every night thereafter after sunset.

Free entry for every Lady and well behaving Gentleman.

A tree enclosed in a glass bottle, with fog periodically filling and vacating the bottle, conjuring up images of misty mountains in China where the immortals live. Glassworks #1 was an independent project by Urša Vidic for the 2016 edition of Svetlobna gverila lights festival in Ljubljana. I got involved because I agreed to participate in V zavetrju časa where this piece also appeared.

I have been thinking about the meaning of everything. It seems to me that the important things are 1) to climb the highest mountain, 2) to penetrate a wild uncharted jungle to rescue a gentleman in distress, and 3) to stand under the midnight sun on the south pole.

This automatic magician is an amalgam of engineering, physics and the occult. The premise is from ceremonial magick, which holds that the course of events can be affected by drawing appropriate symbols. Invocation of Asta repeatedly lifts and casts little golden sticks. The hope is that eventually a magickally significant shape will come up, and a magickal phenomenon is observed.

Through a common friend (thanks Ra!), I heard that Zoran Srdić of The Gulag Institute for Contemporary Arts and Cultures needed some assistance with electronics. He was already involved in a long series of works about pigs and men, and for the newest part he wanted to create machine pigs and machine men. As I had never really built a robot before, I though this would be a great opportunity to have some impact on that field as well. So I signed up for the project.

This is a piece of performance gear I built for Koelse show in 2015 edition of H2Ö festival, Turku, Finland. The theme of the show was given in somewhat cryptic terms: Twisting the progress of time, water, mechanics and occultism and even lotta spiritus post installation. Since I was in Finland at that time, I decided to contribute something.

Another project together with Meta and a group of other people. As always with her, the aim was to find something very simple and basic about the laws of nature, and twist it into something impossible. This time, we chose time. As suggested to me by an unnamed person (or maybe I know him? I just completely forgot who told me this), to invert time you just have to get the sand in a hourglass run upwards. I happened to mention this idea to Meta when she was despairing over what to make for the 31st Ljubljana graphic biennale. She liked the idea, and now such an hourglass exists.

I built this sequencer during Hrup smo mi - Noise is us festival organized by Circulacija2. The workshop Advanced electronics and electronic sound workshop by Uwe Schuler and Jördis Drawe from KulturGüter- Schuppen was based on Uwe’s LuSy_Seq sequencer, which is what powers Biafra.

Like the circle drawing robot Bowed, this one went to Venice Biennale in Venice, as part of Jaša’s Utter show in the Slovenian pavilion. Utter was sponsored by Arcadia Lightwear, providing lights for the installation. One of the ideas was to make the lights to follow the sound, so that poetry and music and everything would translate to a visual effect. I do not know if the problem was technical, financial, project management related, or what, but for some reason they could not provide a solution for that. So, the next one to call for help was me. This article is about the solution.

Here is yet another project that I made as part of a team assembled by Meta and that went to a show by Jaša. This time it was the Venice Biennale, where Jaša had his show Utter in the Slovenian pavilion. In addition to this circle drawing robot, I also made a custom sound to lights interface for controlling the lighting fixture of the pavilion. Hopefully it has its own page here soon.

After having great time with Techno Food event, me and Nina decided to make organize a second event in Florovo Gastronomsko Podstrešje series. Since we were in Finland at the time, we got Koelse involved and set the theme as do-it-yourself kitchen technology. Koelse modular synthesizer system is amazing, so we decided to hook it up with the kitchen, too.

The first night in Floro’s Gastronomical Loft will be devoted to technology in the kitchen. We shall be using various kitchen utensils that are never or scarcely used in our everyday cooking adventures. On our Techno food event they will shine in all of their glory. Literally.

We made a site specific sculpture with my ex-girlfriend Nina, in the apartment of our friend Andreja. Andreja was in India practicing yoga, and we were staying at her place in the meantime. We thought the place could be nicer with a small extra touch, so we built this thing. It was quite a surprise for Andreja, because we did not tell her anything beforehand. We just set it up, wrote usage instructions on bathroom wall, and went to hiding in the seaside. Luckily, she liked it.

This project was hugely influential in my life. In the summer of 2013, I was feeling not so happy with my life in Helsinki and, for some undiscernible twist of psychology, I decided to reset everything. I quit my software engineering position at Documill, gave up my apartment, threw away everything I could not not fit into a backpack, and bought a one-way ticket to Berlin. By incredible stroke of luck (not the only one I got during that very chaotic and magical period of my life), Meta contacted me again. It had already been some years since we built the first levitation machine. Now she was about to work on that topic again. As I happened to be about as free as a human being can, I immediately agreed to come to Ljubljana and make another, bigger and better levitation machine with her.

Simasammio was a project for making people amused on vappu, the 1st of May celebration in Finland. It combined three customs of brewing and drinking sima, getting out on the streets and celebrating together, and consuming atrocious quantities of alcohol. We pushed a barrel full of alcoholic variery of sima around the city, offering drinks to anybody who cared to try. On the second and third editions we also had a positioning system and website for locating the cart in real time.

Ever curious, I once took part in a shamanistic drumming session in a psychedelic trance festival. Perhaps expectedly, the experience was an appalling disappointment. I walked out of the festival’s healing village filled with contempt towards the shamanist. Curiously, at the same time I was certain that there was a better way to do shamanism. This soon turned into determination, and determination turned into a Koelse project to develop a different kind of shamanistic experience. The result was a series of urban shamanistic sessions in Berlin and Helsinki, closing spectacularly in Kovaydin Vastarinta’s Brainbashers: 2012 Fest in Tampere, Finland.

In spring 2012, when I was still living in Helsinki, Koelse, got an email from an artist in residency in Helsinki international artist programme. She asked for technical assistance for a project involving building a Tesla coil. After discussing this invitation for collaboration, we reached the understanding that a) we have no idea how to build a Tesla coil and b) the whole idea sounds quite unsafe. Because of these conclusions, we turned down the offer. The reply we got was an intriguing one: If Tesla coils are out of question, how about a levitation machine? This artist certainly seemed to have curious interests. Since I thought she has to be an interesting person, so I signed up for levitation machine collaboration. It turned out to be only a first in long series of works we have made together with Meta.