Creative Computation for Visual Communication Design 2020—Present

In 2020 I was invited to design and teach a new compulsory course on creative coding for the Visual Communication Design MA programme at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. There had not previously been a coding course in the VCD MA curriculum, so I was tasked to outline the learning outcomes, plan the entire syllabus and create the teaching material.

The aim of the intensive, six-week course is to introduce creative computation as a practical and experimental method for visual communication design. Students learn the basics of programming through visually and creatively engaging coding exercises. Using JavaScript and the p5.js library, students learn to produce generative and interactive illustrations, visualisations and motion graphics, as well as simple applications and games. During the course, students participate in approachable live-coding workshops and tackle creative programming assignments individually and in groups. The course also provides a critical context for discussing the aesthetic and ethical implications of computational practices in visual communication design. Throughout the course, students are encouraged to adopt a curious, hands-on approach, where explorations and mistakes can lead to surprising and successful outcomes.

The course information can be found here.
All the student projects from 2020—2024 can be found on the course showcase website.
The course coding exercises can be found on GitHub or directly on the p5.js web editor.

Kodinhengetär / Homemaker 2024

My third solo exhibition explores the relationship between home and technology. Mundane domestic objects are rarely considered advanced technology, yet many seemingly simple inventions have had a significant impact on gendered housework. Since the development of household technologies has been closely tied to prevailing gender roles and the customary division of labor, what does this tell us about the evolution of values and attitudes in our society? Under whose terms is new technology being developed? And how do stereotypical roles and assumptions influence what technology designed for different users looks like?

In this exhibition, these static conventions are challenged as familiar objects come to life through technology. Absurdly automated devices shed light on our contradictory relationship with technology: Is a home dominated by machines a progressive utopia or a ghostly dystopia? What happens when technology infiltrates even the most intimate aspects of our lives?

Modern technology often seems infallible and almost immaterial, yet even the most advanced inventions are ultimately prone to error. Kodinhengetär makes technology visible and tangible: circuits, wires, and microchips are presented as extensions of feminine handicrafts, and the image of the modern ”smart home” is comically exaggerated to reveal its inherent irrationality.

The exhibition was presented at the Sivuraide Gallery at the Salo Art Museum from May 18 to September 1, 2024. The production of the artworks was funded through a working grant from the Kone Foundation.

Romurobotit 2024

During my Kodinhengetär exhibition at the Salo Art Museum in 2024, I was asked by the museum to run a public workshop relating to themes of the exhibition.

During the one-day workshop the participants crafted imaginative and whimsical robots from recycled materials. The aim was to explore the basic principals of electrical engineering and robotics through hands-on experimentation and joyful crafting. The participants learned how to build simple electrical circuits that could give a new life to abandoned or broken household objects.

Photo: Oskari Pekonen / Salo Art Museum

Fuzzy Logic 2022

Do you know how a telephone, a remote control or a faucet works? We often take these mundane technologies for granted, and forget to marvel their operational logic, or question the underlying conventions.

Fuzzy logic is a branch of science that studies non-binary systems: What if the truth value of a statement is not true or false but something in between? In the same vein, the exhibition strives to challenge our perception of the positivistic logic inherent in science and technology: Does a machine always either function or fail? What happens if a piece of technology does not aim to be infallible or functional at all?

Science and engineering are often seen as inaccessible, masculine and authoritarian institutions guided by hard values and mechanistic truths. Women and other marginalised groups have historically been neglected or excluded from the technological discourse, and cast as either domesticated users and consumers or servile assistants and avatars.

The exhibition’s interactive installations merge soft and hard both literally and metaphorically: by combining electronics and hardware with plush textiles, familiar technologies are transformed into absurd systems of fuzzy logic. The artworks attempt to demystify the hard sciences by unsettling the predominant values and aesthetics of modern technoscience. In a society governed by machine logic, can softness, fallibility and inclusivity prevail?

My second solo exhibition was held at Huuto gallery in Helsinki 4–27 March 2022. The exhibition was supported by Finnish Art Society.

Soft Synesthetic Synthesis 2021

How are our senses connected to one another? How could we translate touch into sound?

The aim of this two-day workshop was to explore the sonification of touch by creating haptic textile instruments. Participating artists and designers learned how to design and construct simple electronic textile circuits using various conductive soft materials and the Arduino programming environment.

The workshop was organised 31 June — 1 July 2021 in collaboration with the Softislab pilot project.

Soft Tech for Hard Times 2021

I was invited to teach a one-week remote workshop for the Graphic Design BA students at the Estonian Academy of Arts in March 2021. In the context of the workshop, softness was considered both figuratively and literally: By learning about electronic textiles, wearable tech and interaction design, the students imagined and created soft technologies that might offer care, comfort and companionship, help with communication, or support physical and mental well-being.

During the week the students learned how to make simple electronic circuits, examined different aspects of human-technology interfaces, and produced their own interactive textile devices ranging from electronic sock puppets to gesture-controlled gloves.

Example Prototypes

Example Soft Circuits

Student work

Mutta metsän polkua kuljen kummallista 2021

Mutta metsän polkua kuljen kummallista

On aurinko vaipuu,
on tähdet ja karjojen kellot

Kiiluu kautta huikaisten sädekirkas tieni.
Muistelen päivin ja intohimon syvyys,

jonka tuntee tulen suonissaan
ja valaa kastehenki

Ken eli hetken, hälle musta multa

armasta, ah, sydänjuurihin saakka!
ystävät elon suuren, runsaan

Häntä vartoi Suomen suurilla kankahilla,
karkoitan toimin ja taiteet

aarnihongan alle taivaankannen,
veisti hän kaukomatkaltansa

Nousi päivä lämmin paistoi,
Kata, talvi, laulun sekä kantaa aatteet

pois mun päästät, kun kesäpäivä painuu

Päämme päällä kesäheinän,
haaveet haihtuneet on kaikkeuden luomisvoima

Tuo tuli pilkkoinen pimeä pilvi kuun yli kulkee

taivaan korkean nilkan,
ääntä, mi ruokkinut koskaan rinnassaan

Ma sammua tahdon taas pisaraksi tulla.
Outo hälle ei unelmien kirjokipinä-lento

The installation reacts to its environment by producing poems in the style of Finnish romantic nationalism. The verses generated by the algorithm are based on the works of the Finnish national poet Eino Leino, and they change according to the weather, the season and the time of the day.

By automating the romantic and nationalistic imagery and pathos, the machine presents a non-human experience of nature that renders human observation unnecessary.

The installation was exhibited in the Mätäkuu group exhibition at TUO TUO Kulttuuri Tila & Residency in Joutsa 15 July — 29 August 2021. The exhibition reopened in the spring 2022, with all the artworks having hibernated outdoors through the winter. The exhibition was part of Liina Aalto-Setälä’s curatorial project Tainaronin galleria.

Mutta metsän polkua kuljen kummallista Eevi Rutanen

Visceral Petting Zoo 2021

Visceral Petting Zoo is a participatory sound performance where a menagerie of cute but creepy creatures come to life. The performance demonstrates the ambiguous relationship between affection and revulsion through the concept of “cute aggression” — a cognitive phenomenon that describes the strong urge to bite, squeeze or otherwise harm particularly cute beings. The audience is also invited to interact with the critters, creating an engaging but perhaps uneasy experience that exposes the subversive power of cuteness.

The performance was presented at EKA Gallery in Tallinn 27—29 August 2021. Supported by Arts Promotion Centre Taike.

Garbage Patch Kids 2020

Artificial life is beginning to form amongst the flotsam and jetsam of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Curious bionic creatures, animal-machine hybrids consisting of junk and debris, crawling ashore with whatever appendages they have, squeal “I’m finally alive!”.

I was invited to teach a one-week workshop for second year graphic design BA students at Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn in August 2020. During the workshop the students learned how to build analog electronic circuits and mechanical structures, and applied those skills into making robotic creatures out of recycled materials. Drawing inspiration from the natural process of evolution and role-playing techniques, the students bred and evolved the robots throughout the week. The end result of the workshop was a taxonomy of robotic creatures that have emerged from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Eevi Rutanen: Garbage Patch Kids workshop

Uncanny Dimple 2019

Uncanny Dimple examines the close proximity between the cute and the creepy. Drawing from roboticist Masahiro Mori’s concept of the Uncanny Valley, which explains the eeriness of lifelike robots, my theory of the Uncanny Dimple portrays a parallel phenomenon in the context of cuteness. The robotic creatures inhabiting the soft depths of the dimple demonstrate the subversive power of cute, where adoration borders on aggression, delight turns into disgust, and meek dependance is a clandestine way of asserting dominance and demanding attention. Like the cyborg of Donna Haraway, these creatures defy the boundaries between natural and unnatural, subject and object, submission and domination, creating queer couplings between humans, animals and machines.

The work was exhibited at the Uncanny Dimple exhibition at Kosminen gallery in Helsinki in July 2019, and was later expanded for Goldsmiths Computational Arts MFA degree show in London in September 2019.