Petri Kuljuntausta

Kuljuntausta has composed digital music for experimental films, video art, visual art and dance projects, and made media and sound installations in museums, galleries and concert halls. His works has been performed in many European countries, Australia, Mexico and the US, and he has made recordings for various labels in Australia, Colombia, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Sweden and the USA. In 2004 Star's End and Inner Space radio shows selected Kuljuntausta's Momentum as one of the most significant CD releases of the year. In 2005 he won an award, The Finnish State Prize for Art, from the Finnish government as a distinguished national artist. NPS, the Nederlandse Programma Stichting (Dutch broadcasting foundation), and Yleisradio (Finnish Broadcasting Company) has produced extensive artistic profiles on Kuljuntausta. Kuljuntausta is famous for music composed of sounds both natural and extraordinary. In close collaboration with natural scientists, he has composed underwater installations from underwater materials and made music out of whale calls and the sounds of the Northern Lights. In many ways Kuljuntausta's art is based on good knowledge of tradition. Environmental sounds, live electronic music, improvisation and collaborations with Media Artists has influenced him as a composer. In collaboration with zoomusicologist Dario Martinelli, Kuljuntausta released in 2008 a CD entitled Zoosphere. A Musical Encryptation of Animal Sounds, which is entirely based on animal sounds, like the sounds of birds, whales, wolves, shrimps. Kuljuntausta has also composed extensive body of works in the style of Minimalist music. Since mid-1990s he has developed new composition technique based on Phasing. Repetitive music could be heard especially in his film and video soundtracks. In collaboration with visual artist and experimental film director Sami van Ingen Kuljuntausta has created media installations where the energy of light waves reveal audible sounds (Wave Motion), and the sound waves in water reveal moving light figures with the help of laser beams (Waves & Patterns). Soundscapes and environmental sounds are often present in his works. Another distinctive character in his music is the use of feedback noise. Kuljuntausta has developed his own electronic system to generate and control feedback sounds live. The most extreme musical environment for Kuljuntausta's music is Saturn's moon Titan. When Cassini-Huygens spacecraft (Titan-IVB/Centaur) started its journey in 1997 from Kennedy Space Center, United States, his composition Charm of Sound was inside the Huygens probe of Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, stored on the CD-rom. When Huygens probe reached its destination on Friday January 14, 2005, Kuljuntausta's Charm of Sound landed on the ground of Titan after travelling seven years and four billion kilometres through Space. Kuljuntausta has collaborated with composers and artists Morton Subotnick, Atau Tanaka, Richard Lerman, David Rothenberg, Robert Jürjendal, Markus Reuter, Pat Mastelotto, Chris Mann, Jim Nollman, Dario Martinelli, Al Margolis (If, Bwana), Helmut Lemke, Ocean-North, Juhani Liimatainen, Juhani Nuorvala, Hepa Halme, Jukka Orma, Markku Veijonsuo, Markus Fagerudd, Rihmasto, John Richardson, and VJ group Random Doctors, and he has produced and coordinated many album projects since late-1990s. In 2006, Kuljuntausta published his second book, Äänen eXtreme (eXtreme Sound) (Like Publishing), on his own approach to music and sound. Together with the book was released a DVD, which was simply entitled as Petri Kuljuntausta (also known as 1994-2005, referring to the composition period of the disc), which contains almost nine hours of electronic music and sound works (42 works) composed and performed by Kuljuntausta. His third book, First Wave (Like Publishing), on Finnish electronic music was published in English in 2008. Kuljuntausta was the founder and main editor of "..." ezine (electronic magazine, 1997–2001) and he also founded Charmlist emailing-list in 2001, both focused on distributing information on the activities on electronic music and sound art. ==Radio programme==