I will play a Forces set tomorrow, Saturday the 8th of November, in Puristamo, Kaapelitehdas at a free festival ‘Resonance Vol 1. – Panic Archive, which starts later today at 19.

I will do my first ever six channel ambisonic set, quite noise-y as fit to the theme of a panic/anxiety.

Hope to see you there! ❤

https://www.facebook.com/events/3959819427497735

*****
Program Schedule
📅 Friday, 7 Nov
19:00 — Six Moving Guitars
20:00 — Venus of the Baltic Sea
21:00 — Paژuh
22:00 — ÆNIE

📅 Saturday, 8 Nov
19:00 — Simone Spampinato & Kristine Tukre
20:00 — Bonk~
21:00 — Metal Pulsance
22:00 — Forces

I’m pretty excited to announce the lineup for the SOLA festival 2025! We are celebrating our 10th anniversary this year:)

I think we have a nice varied program; the experimental films of Malena Szlam, Joakim Pusenius live-cinema performance and a stellar music program.

Thanks to all my fellow non-profit association members, to all the different artists that I have met throughout the years and WHS Teatteri Union for continuing the collaboration ❤️

Here’s hoping that we continue the next 10 years:)

Here’s the text I wrote for the SOLA festival 2025 Facebook event:

***********
SOLA festival 2025
The annual festival for experimental music and moving image celebrates its 10th birthday!

SOLA unfolds again to the speakers and cinema screen of WHS Teatteri Union on Friday the 31st of October and Saturday 1st of November as it has done since 2015.

This year the moving image program consists of a live-cinema performance by the Helsinki-based experimental filmmaker Joakim Pusenius and a selection of works by the Chilean filmmaker Malena Szlam. Pusenius’s performance uses a self-made projector and a film made with a DIY slit-scan camera a.k.a. “finish line camera”. The end result is somewhere in between photography and early cinema.

Malena Szlam’s three films give form to lyrical approximations of the natural world. Her works are attentive to the geopolitics of natural phenomena, focusing on geology, earth science, and volcanology.

The music program of SOLA moves through different aural worlds like the electronic music made with branches, twitches and old oscillators of “The Käkkyräs Unlimited” a group spearheaded by Jukka Nousiainen, all the way to the bass clarinet free improvisation of Heikki Nikula.

Lumi Mannermaa works with augmented toy instruments, free improvisation, experimental instrument building, social media streams and uses absurdity as a medium for communication.
Pilar Miralles presents part of her PhD research project, which explores a relationship with the world that is not based on the current logics of disposability through the notions of remembrance, listening, and presence.

Miio Holopainen’s solo violin music lingers on details, errors, coincidences, slow changes and repetition.

Otto Iivari uses the multi-channel sound system of WHS Teatteri Union to present ambisonic electro-acoustic composition.

Yoichi Kamimura explores the hidden sound-scapes of the natural world with deeply focused field recordings, especially different sounds from ice.

And finally; Shakeeb Abu Hamdan performs with an unorthodox setup of drums, bells and cymbals which he augments and amplifies with surface transducers, microphones, pitch and rhythmic modulation effects, modified megaphones and other electronic devices.

Warmly welcome!

More info about the program:
https://solafestival.fi
************

Friday 31.10.
18︎
Joakim Pusenius︎ (live-cinema performance)
Yoichi Kamimura︎
** break **
20.00︎
The Käkkyräs Unlimited
Miio Holopainen︎
Malena Szlam – MORFOLOGÍA DE UN SUEÑO – Morphology of a Dream (DCP, 5’30)︎
Shakeeb Abu Hamdan︎

************
Saturday 1.11.
18︎
Pilar Miralles︎
Malena Szlam – ALTIPLANO (DCP, 15’30)︎
Heikki Nikula
** break **
20.30︎
Lumi Mannermaa︎
Malena Szlam – ARCHIPELAGO OF EARTHEN BONES — TO BUNYA (DCP, 20’30)︎
Otto Iivari︎
************
CW: flashing lights/ strobe effects in Malena Szlam’s films

**Please notice: no admission during the performances/screenings. Please enter between the short pauses between performances/screenings or before 18/20.00 & 20.30.**

Tickets
Friday 31.10. 15e
Saturday 1.11. 15e
Friday & Saturday 25e

Discount tickets (for students, unemployed, low-income, pensioners):

Friday 10e & Saturday 10e

Tickets from WHS Teatteri Union website:
https://teatteriunion.fi/elokuva/sola-festival-2025/

The festival is supported by the Helsinki City – Culture & Leisure Division. It is organised by the non-profit Välirivi ry with collaboration of WHS Teatteri Union.
**********************

I’m playing a Forces live set Saturday 18th of October in the Huvila festival in Rauhanasema, Pasila organised by the Makamik Squat! My showtime is at 19.15.

Should be fun times and the whole festival is free of charge! I’ll be live-coding with SuperCollider and my trusty Yamaha Rm1x groovebox plus some janky General MIDI wonkiness and other sound oddities:)

Facebook event is here

Program:

Friday
18:00 Vernissage
20:00 Räkälicious
21:00 Paura
22:00 Jyrki Nissinen & Hot Visions
Sauna is warm from 7pm to 10pm!

Saturday
15:00 Panel discussion on autonomous spaces
16:45 Spectacle
18:00 Sirpa Jokinen, Juha Rautio & Melik Turunen
19:15 Forces
20:30 Atug
21:30 Pinnat
22:30 DJ Regular Music Lover
23:30 dj dyykkiruusu
00:30 drama funk

Sunday
14:30–16:00 Virkkaustyöpaja | Crochet workshop
15:00 Vishnu Vardhani Rajan
16:15 Sini Silveri
17:30 Ty Roxy

Artists participating in the exhibition ☆
Annika Arminen
Krasimir Jovanovič Hyvärinen
Inka Kynkäänniemi & Iiris Kaarlehto
Nuutti Maikola
Ilmi Penkkala
Marjaana Rantala & Alex Raitanen
Deniz Satir
Róza Turunen

This is a nice surprise!

Back in 2021, me and the poet/writer/interdisciplinary artist Milka Luhtaniemi made a collaborative kinetic text/sound/network called ‘Kesken kaikista paikoista’  on the online digital/experimental poetry platform Nokturno.

You can experience it still here.

Not much else happened after releasing it, but now four years later we got an in-depth review of it on the Finnish literary website Kiiltomato by the critic Otso Venho (in Finnish though). Really appreciate this deep reading of the work, so thanks to Otso! <3
https://kiiltomato.net/critic/kesken-kaikista-paikoista/

I have a new site-specific work at Art for All association’s “Success & Glory” festival this weekend 22.-24.08.2025. The festival takes place in the district of Itäkeskus in Helsinki at unused spaces of Easton shopping mall. I made a gestural/sound/moving image/still image -installation called ‘Capital Logic’. I don’t want to give away too much before the exhibition, but I used the sound commercials of Easton and different objects I found in the parking lot of the shopping mall + some still photography and SuperCollider/Processing coding at home. Come and see it, it’s only open this weekend:)

The opening of the festival is on Friday 22.08. at 19 with different performances and a music program!

Friday 22.8.2025
7 pm Festival opening performance by 𝑓ourest
7:30 pm Festival opening words
7:40 pm Performance by Alan Guerra
8 pm Artworks open to audiences
8 pm Performance by Minja Yletyinen and Arto Muukka
8–10 pm Artist present: Vilma Vanhanen
10 pm Artworks close
10 pm–03 am Garage Rave

https://ffforces.bandcamp.com/album/sediment-archive

Hellooooo, I have a new album out today on evo-natura. Digital and cassette, but unfortunately the cassettes haven’t arrived from the plant yet. The cassettes are rad so I will post about them later!

The album is called ‘Sediment Archive´’ and like the name implies, it’s an archival record of sorts. Although, all the tracks have been randomly chose by an algorithm I wrote, from a massive audio folder. More info about the process below.

Because of the age of the tracks, the records is quite different than my previous albums. Maybe more somber and dare I say emotional? Hope you like it!

Thanks to xato/Ioannis for all the hard work, thanks to Ronja-Elina for the album cover and thanks to Manu-Sophie for the cassette design.

The liner notes:

“In June 2024 I was in the midst of making a new live set for an upcoming concert. Instead of making new tracks, I decided to use archival recordings and experiments from the past 20-22 years that I have stored in six old external hard drives. I wrote a SuperCollider algorithm to select audio randomly from a massive folder, where all the archived audio was copied. The recordings range from early ‘00 Board of Canada inspired electronica, to analog noise/drone recordings around ‘06-09, to ‘11 modular synth improvisations, to all the way forward to unused SuperCollider experiments of recent years.

Using the algorithm was uncanny. I encountered a lot of sounds that I have no memory of ever making. This felt like unearthing deep, hidden sediments of myself.

What do these different layers reveal? Much has changed during these years of music making, personally and historically. The early recordings have a sense of melancholy and longing that I can’t quite access anymore. Still they are distantly familiar. During those years, my gaze was turned inwards to personal struggles and a sense of sadness that I wanted to reflect with my music. Nowadays, I want to focus on more general discourses instead of personal ones.

After the concert, I used the SuperCollider algorithm again to make this album. All the tracks have been chosen by it. The algorithm also provides some additional manipulation like sudden jump-cuts and fx’s while recording. Only some fade-outs and mastering have been edited
afterwards.

I hope that the serendipitous nature of the album reveals something hidden, perhaps interesting, beautiful or meaningful, among the shifting aural sediments of different temporalities.”

Artwork by Ronja-Elina Kappl
Cassette Design by Manu-Sophie Linder
Produced, written, mixed by Joonas Siren
Mastering by Ioannis Nafpliotis

I have a new album ‘Sediment Archive’ upcoming from evo-natura!
https://ffforces.bandcamp.com/album/sediment-archive

First single ‘Salt Tectonics‘ out now plus a video for it:

A bit different album from me as it’s made of archival material. I have so many hard drives filled with audio and i didn’t know what to do with those. Last year i pooled all the audio from past 20 years in one massive folder and made a simple SuperCollider algorithm that selects those audios at random. I played a set last year with the patch and liked the results and a bit later we discussed with xato (of evo-natura) that we could use the same patch to compile an album.

The video up there is made with similar methods, just re-using different videos that i found on my hard drive.

I’ll post more about the album in few weeks!

I have been postponing this for awhile, but I just updated my works page with a missing work from last year: Yhteispeli.

Yhteispeli is a public game art installation that was revealed January 2024 in the new multifunctional building of Valkeala. The building is a primary school, library and a public health station.

The basis of the installation is to function as a treasure hunt like game for the kids at the school; 14 small screens are located in different parts of the school and the kids have to find seven correct ones, which are activating at random, to complete the game within decreasing time limit.

I made the piece together with Petteri Nisunen, Tommi Gröndlund and Jari Lehtinen. We actually won a public art contest for this public art work (here is more about the public art competition (in Finnish))

Read more about it here (on my website)

Here are some documentation photos of our Object Permanence – Algorave Helsinki festival last Saturday 17 th of May in Caisa Cultural Centre!

All photos by Juho Liukkonen.

Thanks again to all the artists, the Caisa staff and everyone who attended <3

me:

Petri Keckman

sofi

Viktor Toikkanen

Maija Anttila

~bonk (Jonatan Snapir & Otso Kauniskangas)

Algorave Helsinki

Notstandskomitee

pulu

Aleksandar Koruga

I’m part of Algorave Helsinki and we are organizing a new festival for livecoded and generative electronic music called Object Permanence!

It takes place at the culture center Caise here in Helsinki, Saturday 17th of May 2025, from 17 until 22.

Here’s more info:

Object Permanence is a festival of livecoded and algorithmic electronic music organised and curated by Algorave Helsinki in collaboration with Caisa Culture Centre.

Algorave Helsinki is an open collective/workshop, where the members learn music live-coding languages together. Live-coding is essentially typing and evaluating computer code, which produces music.

The term Algorave is used for the international live-coding parties, which started to form around 2010 in the UK. In these parties people perform live by using different coding languages and projecting the code/visuals behind the performer. The Algorave Helsinki workshop started in 2018 and it has since been held in different places. At the moment the workshop meets semi-irregularly at the WHS Teatteri Union’s Unika Gallery and it’s organised by the artists pulu (Miranda Kastemaa) and Forces (Joonas Siren).

Friday 16.05.2025 workshop

The festival starts with an open and free workshop of SuperCollider and Strudel languages on Friday 16th of May 2025, 18.00 – 21.00 at Caisa Centre lecture room. No previous coding language is needed. There is a limited number of seats, so secure your place by just sending an email to: algorave.helsinki@protonmail.com On Saturday 17th of May 2025 there is a full evening of algorithmic music performances. The artists were selected from an Open Call.

Saturday 17.05.2025 lineup

klo 17–19.30
Petri Keckman
sofi
Viktor Toikkanen
Maija Anttila
~bonk

*break*

klo 20–22
Notstandskomitee
Forces
pulu
Aleksandar Koruga

Welcome!

Tickets 11€/6€:
https://www.caisa.fi/en/events/event/91615898C92EED0CC83D76B68D0A65DD/Object_Permanence_2025

I have a new Linktree profile for putting all my different Forces albums, compilation tracks, videos, interviews, radio mixes, etc etc. Basically everything that is accessible online I have linked into my Linktree, which is super handy.
Take a look, if you are interested!
https://linktr.ee/fffforces

Helloo and happy 2025. I want to share this remix here, which I did with my Forces alias.

A bit over a year ago, the label (and my friends) at Failed Units asked, if I would like to join in into a remix compilation consisting solely of remixes of Eurovision tracks!

I gladly joined in, and couldn’t see any other possibility than remix the absolute banger Finland presented two years ago the Cha Cha Cha of Käärijä, which came in second in the actual Eurovision.

Sadly the remix complilation didn’t see the daylight, but I decided that I could still put it on my SoundCloud account. I pretty much un-bangified the Cha Cha Cha. I guess it sounds bit like some weird transmissions from inside of a massive mecha-robot:

I’m one of the organizers of the Algorave Helsinki workshop / collective. I started the workshop back in 2019 with Viktor Toikkanen. Basically the idea of the workshop was to have a relaxed, free and open workshop on a monthly basis (at the start it was actually a weekly one at the Helsinki main library Oodi), where the participants just learn different music live-coding languages together.

The “rave” part of the name is just a reference to the international live-coding community. Our members have not only dealt with beat/rave music, instead we have had members with various different backgrounds. Also I didn’t want to be an unpaid teacher, so we didn’t have that many organized learning sessions, more just freeform knowledge sharing ones.

The workshop is still ongoing and I nowadays organize it with musician, programmer and artist pulu alias Miranda. The current version of the workshop is to meet semi-irregularly at the WHS Teatteri Union‘s Unika Gallery to share knowledge, techniques and tips etc… about live-coding related practices.

But, some new developments! There is a big demoscene festival here in Finland called Alternative Party. It has been about 10 years when it was last held, but it will have a new iteration in a just few days: Alternative Party 2024 at the Technical Museum of Helsinki. Algorave Helsinki is going to participate as well:)

On Friday 11.10.2024 We will have a SuperCollider & TidalCycles workshop organized by me and Miranda from 15 until 18. Anyone interested in these languages can just join in by paying the museum entrance fee or using a Museum Card. No previous coding knowledge is needed.

Later on in the evening we will have a two hour showcase slot for livecoded music by:

Viktor Toikkanen,
sofi (Sofia Zaiceva),
Forces (aka me) and
pulu.

This one requires an AltParty festival ticket.

I have been interested in the demoscene for a long time, so it was great to have this collaboration. If you haven’t bumped into it before: demoscene is a computer subculture that already started in the 80s. Basically it boils down to coding executable files that form AV visuals, ie. demos. The different demoparties (and the big computer festival Assembly) host competitions (or compos), where people present them and compete with them.

The demoscene ethos is pretty similar to making music with live-coding languages, so I was very glad that they accepted this collaboration, when I approached them:)

See u there!

The 2024 SOLA festival lineup has been revealed!

FB event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1044787200653164 & website: https://solafestival.fi/

I think we got together an interesting lineup with pretty limited means (with just a small grant from the Helsinki City). We organize the festival with the Välirivi ry non-profit association, of which I have been the chairperson since the beginning. We actually registered the association in December 2014, so pretty close to our 10 year anniversary!

Quite a lot of free labor I have worked for the festival throughout the years, but I guess it’s enjoyable enough in its own way, so I’m sure the festival will continue:)

Here a copypaste from the info blurb I wrote:

“SOLA festival 2024

The yearly festival for experimental music and moving image lands on the speakers and screens of WHS Teatteri Union again, already for the 9th time!

This year the moving image program will focus on the pioneering Scottish filmmaker / poet / doctor Margaret Tait (1918-1999). We will show a selection of her works from the early 50s to late 70s, six different short films that she referred as ”film poems”. Tait stands out as one of Scotland’s most innovative and stridently independent filmmakers.

We will also screen renowned British artist Luke Fowler’s experimental film ”Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait” (2022). The film is a portrait of Tait’s beloved Orkney, the place she lived and filmed for most of her life, as much as it is about her.

The moving image program concludes with the expanded cinema performance Warm Data by Natalia Kozieł-Kalliomäki with music composed by Jonna Karanka.

The music program of SOLA 2024 fuses together the different worlds of acoustic and electronic experimentation: the Canadian Oslo-based composer Mike McCormick’s audio processing of the double bass of Mikael Saastamoinen, Mercedes Krapovickas’ traditional bandoneon instrument and electronics form urban sound textures, Luke Lund’s tectonic aural shifts from the electric guitar and computer processing, Katrin Enni’s manipulation of sculptural sounding objects, Essi Hirvonen’s thematic concert ”The Saints” on the double bass, the microscopic (and multichannel!) experimental electronics of Atte Elias Kantonen and Maja Jantar’s extended vocal techniques!

The full line-up and detailed descriptions can be found from our website:
https://solafestival.fi/

Tickets:
Friday 1.11. 15e
Saturday 2.11. 15e
Friday & Saturday 25e

Discount tickets (for students, unemployed, pensioners etc). Friday 10e & Saturday 10e

Tickets available from:
https://teatteriunion.fi/elokuva/sola-festival-2024/

The festival takes place at WHS Teatteri Union, Helsinki Finland – Friday & Saturday, 1st and 2nd of November, 2024, 18 – 22.30.

The festival is supported by the Helsinki City – Culture & Leisure Division and organised by the non-profit Välirivi ry with collaboration of WHS Teatteri Union.

—-
Friday 1.11.
18->
Luke Fowler: Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait (DCP, 61 min, 2022)
Essi Hirvonen
Mercedes Krapovickas
-intermission-
21->
Natalia Kozieł-Kalliomäki, expanded live cinema performance Warm Data
Luke Lund
———————————————
Saturday 2.11.
18->
Margaret Tait films I (DCP)
Mike McCormick & Mikael Saastamoinen
Katrin Enni
-intermission-
21->
Margaret Tait films II (DCP)
Maja Jantar
Atte Elias Kantonen
”

Warmly welcome!

I recently joined in the Discord of a Japanese label Tokinogake, which has released a stellar patch of interesting computer music. I was glad to notice that in their Discord there was an open call for a remix. The remix was for the computer music luminaries farmersmanual of their nullgerät record and I took part on the remixing duties as well as Forces .

Here’s my track, waveset manipulation with SuperCollider of the original track:

Was super fun to do it as I actually have a formative experience w FM. Back in 2005 I saw Mathias Gmachl of farmersmanual play here in Helsinki at Avanto festival. I guess I was listening to a lot of Warp stuff back then, so encountering more wild computer music really made an impact:) I love when computer music is this alchemical amalgam of sounds, and u have no idea how it’s produced. Still trying to do just achieve that:)

Helloo, I have an upcoming Forces concert next Saturday 14th of September 18 onwards at the pilote event of a new space of Äänen Lumo / Charm of Sound association.

FB link here: https://www.facebook.com/events/881054270751997.

Excited to play at this new space as Helsinki desperately needs new spaces for experimental music. There is also an open call for the space, if anyone is interested organizing something there themselves:
https://aanenlumo.com/2024/09/03/open-call-for-the-new-sonic-arts-space-for-october-december-2024/

The concert kind a brewed up from the fact that my fellow SHAPE+ alumni Felisha Ledesma is at at a residency in Turku and we thought that this would be perfect opportunity for Felisha to perform in Helsinki as well. Kati Roover and J.Koho also joined up in the lineup so it should be a stellar night:)

Welcome!

My friends Aapo & Aatos (of the Timate Ynts no-wave band) are hosting an awesome live video game soundtracking event called “Tiistain duibadaiba” next Tuesday 20th of August -24 at Teatteri Underground.

I selected an old FromSoft game “Eternal Ring” from the year 2000, which my friend Miša Skalskis (aka ang3l_sp1der) is going to play live, while I’ll try to improvise nice, weird and hopefully interesting background music on my trusty Kurzweil K2000 synthesizer. Should be a very fun evening!

Shows (in order):
Maiju Jouppi + Shadowgate
Roope Eronen + PowerWash Simulator
Fuzz ro dah + The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Forces + Eternal Ring

Event link:
https://www.facebook.com/events/847251146941912

An Austrian avant-garde concept label evo-natura was kind enough to ask me to do a radio mix, which aired on the Greek radio station Stegi radio on last Tuesday!

I wanted to do more of a historical take on experimental music, so I played a lot of different stuff from different decades from the 70s to 2020s. Sometimes I feel that the contemporary electronic music scene is quite stuck in the state of presence, but for me doing radio mixes is an interesting platform to do deeper digging into the legacy of experimental music in different times.

I have built a whole system in the SuperCollider programming language to mix multiple different tracks together with automated fade-ins and fade-outs, which is also fun way to do these.

The mix is 30min (playlist above) and the other half is from the Helsinki based artist / musician Romance Relic!

Listen here:

A few months ago, I actually did an another radio mix that would be fun to share it as well. I did it for the NYC based label/collective International Winners and for their States United show on n10-as radio. For this mix I mainly wanted showcase the different interesting video game composers mixed in with more contemporary glitch, experimental and club music. Listen here:

The playlist for IW show:

01. Ippu-Do – Fear For The Future x John Wall – [M – B] Version 1
02. Kota Hoshino (Lost Kingdoms II) – Card Shop
03. Soichi Terada – Dosukoi Wrestler Pumpin’
04. Nuno Canavarro – Wolfie
05. Tsukasa Saitoh (King’s Field IV) – City Ruins
06. Tujiko Noriko – Shore Angel
07. FreQuency (Keiichiro Segawa, Tsukasa Saitoh) (Eternal Ring)- Noah
08. Kota Hoshino (Evergrace II) – Camp
09. Angelforces – ???
10. Yoko Shimomura (Parasite Eve) – Arise within You
11. Ikue Mori – Small Fortune
12. Masahiko Kimura, Motoaki Furukawa, Mariko Egawa (Castlevania 64) – Castle Center
13. GS Sultan – Nightblind in Two Steps
14. Yoko Shimomura (Front Mission 1st) – Canyon Crow
15. Carl Stone – Sumiya
16. Nobuyoshi Sano (Tekken Tag Tournament) – Yoshimitsu Stage
17. Toiret Status – #149.5

I have three concert this weekend!

Sat 15.6. 16.00 Forces presents “Algorithmic Ambiance 2004-2024” at Sound Gifts : Closing of GIFTS/PRESENTS/PRESENCE (an algorithmic live set comprised of randomly chosen unreleased ambient/drone recordings, recorded between 2004-2024)

Sat 15.6. later that evening, part of randomly formed free improv group at you need 2 be friendly after the roof has collapsed

Sun 16.6. 22.30 Forces set at SWÄG 20yrs fest in Tampere

Welcome!✨💜

My live-streaming / live-coding set for the online, semi-regular Eulerroom event is now on their Youtube! I think it went fine so I want post it also here as well:)

https://youtu.be/OWFGhIQbxiA?t=31