Pinnannousu

PINNANNOUSU (Finnish for “level elevation”) is an immersive robotic performance that brings together computational design, natural material processes, the audience and an open ended, time-based process with all the schisms and rifts that the differing nature of these elements try to negotiate.

The work grapples with the individual existence in a macroscopic tectonic shift: A robotic arm, equipped with a drill spindle and a flashlight, is set to work to carve a large block of ice, gradually converting it to a sculptural caustic lense, refracting the flashlight illumination to an immersive 3D scene projected on to the walls.

The futility of “ingenuity” is an arms race between the natural process and human intervention. The attempt to seize a form in an amorphous material is an apt metaphor of how we are today faced with an omnipresent global challenge.