Hardware ghost

Abstract

This thesis is the written component of the Master of Fine Arts work titled Hardware Ghost. The artistic component with the same title was exhibited as a part of the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki's MFA exhibition, Kuvan Kevät 2024.

The artistic component was “an interplay between a sounding circuit and a piece of writing that constitute a sonic intervention in the gallery space”, as per the exhibition text. The sounding circuits, based on a CD4093BE chip, were made to produce a sonic portrait of a specific event at K-Rauta Otra Nekala hardware store in Tampere, sometime in spring 2023. The text, handwritten on graph paper, was a poetic description of that event and of the impression that arised from the sound. By utilizing the commonalities between the gallery space and the hardware store, as well as by pointing to the sound, the text was an attempt to project the event from one space to the other. The installation of the work leaned on found materials—such as repurposed electric cabels and junk metallic bars found at the loading dock right beside the work's location—as well as the existing structures of the space, namely the cable racks in the ceiling, to camouflage the work as a part of the space.

As the exhibition text also stated, “the work explores an occurrence of mundane dissociation and the possibility of re-enchantment in the electrified built environment” and the written component is made alongside this inquiry. In trying to knit together a bundle of experiences, thoughts and ideas the work took part in, the thesis goes through things such as the affectivity of sounds, thresholds of perception and questions concerning the gallery space. Literary references from fields of philosophy and art accompany and broaden the themes discussed, as do the references to works by others. The goal is to map the different approaches taken to the subject matter of the thesis.

A large part of the thesis is description of the many stages of the artistic action, from the inspiration, through building a sounding circuit and installing it in space, to reflections of the end result and speculations of what may follow. The materials, parts and techniques that took part in making the work are explained and described less and more in detail, as well as the frustrations around and the fondness with them.