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Page 1: Erkki_Kuriniemmi_Principles2007_088

Design Principles and User Interfaces of ErkkiKurenniemi’s Electronic Musical Instruments of the 1960’s

and 1970’s

Mikko OjanenDepartment of

MusicologyP.O. Box 35

00014 University ofHelsinkiFinland

[email protected]

Jari SuominenDepartment of

Computer ScienceP.O. Box 68

00014 University ofHelsinkiFinland

[email protected]

Titti KallioTeliaSoneraP.O. Box 585

00051 SoneraFinland

[email protected]

Kai LassfolkDepartment of

MusicologyP.O. Box 35

00014 University ofHelsinkiFinland

[email protected]

ABSTRACTThis paper presents a line of historic electronic musical in-struments designed by Erkki Kurenniemi in the 1960’s and1970’s. Kurenniemi’s instruments were influenced by digitallogic and an experimental attitude towards user interfacedesign. The paper presents an overview of Kurenniemi’sinstruments and a detailed description of selected devices.Emphasis is put on user interface issues such as unconven-tional interactive real-time control and programming meth-ods.

KeywordsErkki Kurenniemi, Dimi, Synthesizer, Digital electronics,User interface design

1. INTRODUCTIONErkki Kurenniemi (b. 1941) is one of the leading pioneers

of Finnish electroacoustic music. A musical instrument de-signer, composer, and multimedia artist, Mr. Kurenniemiplayed a central role in the Finnish avant-garde music scenein the 1960’s and early 1970’s. During that time, he builta series of unique electronic musical instruments, each ofwhich can be regarded as unconventional also from today’sperspective. He also founded the first and still operationalFinnish electronic music studio at the Department of Mu-sicology, University of Helsinki. Kurenniemi collaboratedwith several composers and artists including Ralph Lund-sten, Erkki Salmenhaara, Osmo Lindeman, Henrik Otto Don-ner, Jukka Ruohomaki, M.A. Numminen, and the Norwe-gian theater company Scene 7.

Kurenniemi’s best-known achievement as an instrumentmaker is a line of electronic music devices named Dimi (Digi-tal Musical Instrument). As an instrument designer, Kuren-

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work forpersonal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies arenot made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copiesbear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, torepublish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specificpermission and/or a fee.NIME07, June 6-10, 2007, New York, USACopyright 2007 remains with the author(s).

niemi’s particular interests were in digital logic and its ap-plication to user interface design. In the mid 1970’s, Kuren-niemi left the electroacoustic music scene to work for theFinnish industry specializing in industrial automation androbotics. Later he worked as a researcher in Heureka, TheFinnish Science Centre. Kurenniemi became a well-knownspecialist and visionary of modern technology and appearedin many television and newspaper interviews describing hisfuturistic ideas and innovations. In the 1980’s Kurenniemireturned to music-related research by developing a new the-ory of tonal harmony [5].

The early 2000’s saw a renewed interest in Kurenniemi’searly work. In 2002, Mika Taanila directed the documentaryfilm Future Is Not What It Used To Be [16] about Kuren-niemi’s work and philosophy. Taanila also compiled a col-lection of Kurenniemi’s compositions on a CD entitled Erkki

Kurenniemi: Recordings 1963-1973 [6] released by a Finnishrecord company Siboney in 2002. Kurenniemi’s instruments,Dimi-A in particular, have been on display at art exhibitionsin both London and Helsinki. In recent years, Kurenniemihas performed live in Venice, Berlin, and Helsinki playing hisinstruments with artists such as the experimental electronicmusic group Pan Sonic. In 2003, Kurenniemi received theFinland Prize (Suomi-palkinto) from the Finnish Ministryof Education for his work as an artist and researcher of thefuture.

In this paper we will first present Kurenniemi’s instru-ments in general and then take a closer look at some of them.Both technical and user interface issues of the instrumentsare discussed. The methods we have used include interviews,hands-on experimentation with the instruments and studyof the remaining technical documentation. The conductedinterviews consist of several discussions with Kurenniemihimself, composer Jukka Ruohomaki, artist Mauri AnteroNumminen and engineer Hannu Viitasalo. Mr. Ruohomakiand Mr. Numminen were among the first users of Kuren-niemi’s instruments and Mr. Viitasalo worked as an electri-cal engineer in Kurenniemi’s company Digelius ElectronicsFinland Inc.

In 2002, the remaining instruments in Finland, as well astheir contemporary technical documentation, were gatheredand stored in the University of Helsinki Electronic MusicStudio. Also some restoration work was done in collabora-tion with the Finnish Museum of Contemporary Art, Ki-

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Instrument Y ear Qty Description Working condition

Integrated Synthesizer 1964- 1 Modular synthesizer with digital and analog modules. Out of orderElectric Quartet 1968 1 Collective instrument for four players. GoodAndromatic 1968 1 Polyphonic synthesizer with 10-step sequencer. FullDico 1969 1 Synthesizer with 12-step sequencer and digital memory. FullDimi-A 1970 2 Programmable 256-step sequencer with digital memory. PartialDimi-O 1971 1 Synthesizer with a video interface. GoodDimix 1972 1 Electronic patchbay with video output. PoorDimi-S 1972 2 An instrument controlled by skin resistance of players. FullDimi-T 1973 1 A brainwave controlled instrument. Out of orderDimi-U - - Combination of Dimi-A and Dimi-O. Never constructedDimi-6000 1973 2 Computer controlled analog synthesizer. OS destroyed

Table 1: Erkki Kurenniemi’s Electronic Musical Instruments

asma. The authors Mikko Ojanen and Jari Suominen haveplayed Kurenniemi’s instruments in concerts together withKurenniemi. The documentation includes schematics andKurenniemi’s sketches. It lacks, however, explicit operatinginstructions. Therefore, much of the playing techniques hadto be revived by experiment.

This is the first study of Kurenniemi’s instrument pub-lished in English. Former studies of Kurenniemi’s instru-ments, published in Finnish, include Kalev Tiits’s M.A. the-sis [17] and our recently published article in the Musiikki

musicological periodical [12]. Also, related to the subject isMikko Ojanen’s M.A. thesis [11] about Jukka Ruohomaki’smusic. Kurenniemi’s earliest instruments are also mentionedin Petri Kuljuntausta’s book On/Off [2] about early Finnishelectronic music.

2. A BRIEF HISTORY OF KURENNIEMI’SINSTRUMENT DESIGN

The Electronic Music Studio of the Department of Mu-sicology, University of Helsinki can be regarded as the first”instrument” designed and built by Kurenniemi. Instead ofa conventional tape music studio of the early 1960’s Kuren-niemi designed his studio as an automated composition sys-tem. As the heart of the studio Kurenniemi built a de-vice called Integrated Synthesizer (1964-), which consistedof three separate units: a tone generator, a mixer and a fil-ter. Integrated Syntheziser was intended to also control thestudio tape recorders. The vision of a fully automated studiowas never completed. However, Integrated Synthesizer re-mained in use for a few years. In the late 1960’s, Kurenniemienvisioned a mainframe computer based composition systemwith terminals distributed around the university. Amidst hisambitious studio design plans Kurenniemi built three cus-tom made synthesizers: Electric Quartet, Andromatic, andDico. [12]

Kurenniemi built Electric Quartet - also the name of theband that used the instrument - for the Finnish undergroundartist Mauri Antero Numminen (b. 1940) in 1968. This”collective” instrument consists of a main unit (with tonegenerators and a sequencer) and a set of controllers (Melodymachine, Electrical trumpet, Violin machine, Drum machineand a controller for distorting the vocalist’s voice). Nummi-nen - the singer and leader of the band - aimed to provokethe audience and his request was to have a somewhat chaoticinstrument to reach this goal. The repertoire of ElectricQuartet was limited to one piece entitled Kaukana vaijyyystavia (Far away lurk some friends). Their finest hour -

according to Numminen - was in Bulgaria 1968 where theirperformance for an audience of 4000 people was interceptedby the concert organizers [2, 10].

Andromatic (1968) was designed in collaboration with theSwedish composer Ralph Lundsten (b. 1936). Andromaticis a polyphonic synthesizer with a 10-step sequencer whereevery step has its own oscillator. Initially, the instrumentwas designed for the Emotion exhibition in the Samlaren artgallery in Stockholm. In the exhibition it played music andcontrolled the lights of a sculpture. The name of the instru-ment originates from the name of the Lundsten’s studio,Andromeda, where Andromatic is also currently located.[12] The third custom made instrument, Dico (1969) wasdesigned for the Finnish composer Osmo Lindeman (1929-1987). Dico is described below in more detail.

In 1970, Kurenniemi founded Digelius Electronics FinlandInc. with Jouko Kottila and Peter Frisk as his partners. Un-der Digelius Kurenniemi designed a line of electronic musicdevices including five synthesizers: Dimi-A (1970), Dimi-O(1971), Dimi-S (1972), Dimi-T (1973) and Dimi-6000 (1973),as well as the digitally controlled mixing console and patch-bay Dimix (1972). [12]

After Dimi-O Kurenniemi started to design a new instru-ment called Dimi-U. There, his aim was to combine thestrengths of both Dimi-A and Dimi-O. However, the projectwas halted when Kurenniemi got interested in designing amicroprocessor controlled synthesizer which eventually be-came Dimi-6000. [12]

Kurenniemi’s instruments are listed in Table 1.

3. DESCRIPTIONS OF SELECTED INSTRU-MENTS

Below, some of Kurenniemi’s instruments are described inmore detail. The focus is on the best known instruments ofthe Dimi series: Dimi-A, Dimi-O, Dimi-S and Dimi-T. Alsoincluded is a description of one of the earlier instruments,Dico. It can be seen as a starting point of Kurenniemi’s moreexperimental user interface design. A noticeable aspect inKurenniemi’s design work is its evolutionary nature. Manybasic ideas of the early instruments emerged in advancedforms later on. Dico, for example, shares the same designcore with Dimi-A and Dimi-O consisting of static oscillatorscombined with a frequency division network and analog fil-ters. As synthesizers, Dimi-S and Dimi-T are more like mu-sical toys than serious instruments. However, they representan interesting experimental approach to instrument control.

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Figure 1: Dico. Note the grounded cable which hasreplaced the metal brush.

3.1 DicoOsmo Lindeman switched from composing instrumental

music to purely electroacoustic music in the late 1960’s andbuilt a private studio for this purpose. To complement aset of tape recorders and sound processors he needed anelectronic tone generator. Lindeman ordered an electronicinstrument from Kurenniemi and after a few consultationswith Lindeman Kurenniemi built Dico (Digitally controlledoscillator) (Figure 1). [12]

Lindeman’s basic idea was that the instrument shouldbe a programmable sequencer. Kurenniemi’s answer was amonophonic synthesizer equipped with a 12-step sequencer.Dico’s interface consists of a 4x4 point patchbay, a matrixof three rows by twelve columns of metal pins, a row of lightbulbs (one bulb placed above each pin column), a specialmetal brush and a set of switches, buttons and potentiome-ters to start and stop the sequencer and to control pitchand tempo. The state of each sequencer step is representedby 10 light bulbs (the remaining two were left as a ’futureexpansion’). The sequencer is programmed in ”step time”by using the metal brush to connect a pin in the middlerow to either the pin above it (setting a bit on) or the pinbelow it (setting the bit off). On each step the user can ad-just the diatonic pitch (four bits), octave range (three bits),articulation (two bits) and the output channel (one bit). As-signment of the signal to one of the instrument’s two filterbanks can be made at the patchbay.

The idea of the sequencer is based on Kurenniemi’s expe-rience with early digital computers. The sequencer design isbasically identical to a primitive computer with twelve ten-bit memory locations. The user can edit the bits of eachmemory location by first selecting the memory location andthen altering the bits individually with switches. The lightbulb on the top of each switch tells the state of each bit.

The use of the metal brush (later replaced with a groundedwire) adds randomness to Dico’s operation. One way ofplaying it is to start the sequencer with high tempo to pro-duce an arpeggio. If the player touches the metal pins withthe brush lightly or quickly enough, some bits in the se-quence are changed while some are not. This makes it pos-sible to ’crossfade’ from one chord to another slowly andsomewhat randomly in a similar way to a painter layeringbrushstrokes on a canvas one stroke over another.

3.2 Dimi-ADimi-A (Figure 2) is a two-voice programmable synthe-

sizer and it is probably the best-known of Kurenniemi’s in-struments. Dimi-A was built as a research project where thefocus was to explore the potential applications of the digitaltechniques in producing electroacoustic music. [4]

Figure 2: Dimi-A

Dimi-A is programmed by touching metal contacts on theinstrument’s touchpad, with two metal sticks (Figure 2).The absence of an alphanumeric, let alone graphic, displayfor the user interface makes the programming task fairly dif-ficult because the memory contents can only be checked bylistening. Also, the memory is volatile with no mass storagebackup, although Kurenniemi planned to make a cassettetape interface as an upgrade. [4] Despite these weaknessesthe instrument was used even for live improvisations.

Figure 3: Layout of Dimi-A’s touchpad

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Dimi-A has two operational modes, ”play” and ”com-mand”, between which the user can toggle by touching thearrow-shaped plates at the bottom of the touchpad (Figure3). In the ”play” mode the user can start or stop a sequenceby using the four arrow plates on the top right. The usercan also jump to any step of the sequence by selecting a barwith the numbered plates on the left and a step with thenumbered plates on the right. In the ”command” mode theleft-hand numbered plates will define a parameter numberand the right-hand plates the parameter value. These com-mands can be stored at any step of the sequence by usingthe ’R’-plate on the left. Each step can also have multiplecommands stored in it. Other plates on the top left are forerasing the memory. Dimi-A has dedicated parameters for(diatonic) pitch, volume, filters, vibrato, oscillator on/off,ring modulation, sequence jumps, and tempo.

Dimi-A was Kurenniemi’s first instrument built for thecommercial market. To promote the instrument DigeliusElectronics released the single entitled Dimi 1: Dimi is born

(Musica DSS-1) in 1970. The record included Kurenniemi’sarrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Inventio no. 13in A minor (BWV 784) entitled Inventio-Outventio. Bach’stwo-voice composition provided optimal material for demon-strating the capabilities of the instrument. The B side ofthe single contained Jukka Ruohomaki’s composition What

is time?. [15, 12]Kurenniemi presented Dimi-A to Peter Zinovieff, a British

composer and synthesizer designer, who stated that the in-strument was quite an attractive device, but its sound qual-ity was poor [3]. Despite the marketing efforts, only twoDimi-A units were manufactured. One of them is in theUniversity of Helsinki Electronic Music Studio. The otherone was sold to Ralph Lundsten, who later donated it tothe Musikmuseet, The Stockholm Music Museum. How-ever, with the attention gained by Dimi-A Kurenniemi andDigelius Electronics got funding from SITRA, The FinnishNational Fund for Research and Development, which theyspent on new instrument projects. [12]

3.3 Dimi-OWith the funding from SITRA the prototype of a video-

controlled organ, Dimi-O (Figure 4) was completed in April1971. Besides Kurenniemi, the electrical engineer HannuViitasalo played an important role on designing and con-structing the instrument. [4, 19]

Figure 4: Dimi-O

Dimi-O includes a four-octave conventional electric organkeyboard and a memory unit with a 32-step sequencer. Thememory locations are presented on a television screen fromwhich the player can read the contents of the memory. Acursor running over the screen tells which location is playedat the moment. On the screen the 32-step sequence is pre-sented horizontally and the four-octave key range (i.e. 48pitches) is presented vertically. In this respect Dimi-O waseasier to use than Dimi-A.

The unconventional part of the instrument is the opti-cal input by a television or video camera (Figure 5). Thepicture captured by the camera is converted to black andwhite and can thereafter be transferred into the memoryunit and used as a control signal. Adjusting the contrast ofthe picture affects the instrument’s response to the picture.When brightness is set to maximum the instrument plays acomplete four-octave diatonic cluster. When brightness isreduced only some of the notes are played.

Figure 5: Dimi-O block diagram

After the prototype of Dimi-O was completed, Kuren-niemi listed potential usages of the instrument[4]: First ofall, it can be used in a studio as a tone generator. There,an obvious application is to read graphic music notationthrough the video input. Secondly, Dimi-O can be used as asolo instrument or in collaboration with orchestras. Kuren-niemi also described a more avant-garde way of use of theinstrument: e.g. in ballet or at the theater with the cam-era shooting dancers or actors as well as in experimentalfilms where all the changes in the picture could be trans-formed into music. Eventually, Dimi-O was used even in apsychological test in the University of Oslo, Norway. There,Dimi-O’s camera was shooting the testees’ faces while theywere interpreting Rorschach pictures.

A somewhat similar optical input method emerged againlater in the software intrument Dimi-H1 (2004).

3.4 Dimi-S and Dimi-TIn the summer of 1968 Kurenniemi visited an electroa-

coustic music conference organized by Teatro Comunale inFlorence, Italy. During the conference Kurenniemi was in-troduced to Manford L. Eaton’s ideas of biofeedback as asource of musical or compositional material. Two of Kuren-niemi’s instruments - Dimi-S and Dimi-T - are loosely basedon these ideas [12]. Dimi-S was also called Sexophone orKarlekmaskinen (Love Machine in Swedish). It is played by

1http://www.beige.org/projects/dimi/

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Figure 6: Dimi-S

four people holding iron balls in their hands. Ralph Lund-sten, who ordered the instrument, used it in some art exhi-bitions and just ”for fun” [8]. Two copies of the instrumentwere made and they are both located in Lundsten’s An-dromeda studio together with the only manufactured Dimi-O unit.

The control signal of Dimi-S is constructed from the changesin the electroresistance of human skin when people are touch-ing each other. The iron balls are connected to the Dimi-Smain unit (figure 6, right). Dimi-S also contains a light or-gan unit (figure 6, left).

Dimi-T (T stands for thinking) is based on the idea ofalpha waves produced by the human brain while sleeping asa control signal of the instrument. The user attaches elec-trodes on his scalp and the EEG (electroencephalogram)signal is measured. Then the EEG signal is used for con-trolling the pitch of an oscillator.

4. TECHNICAL DESIGN PRINCIPLESKurenniemi has experimented with digital circuits with

almost all of his electronic musical instruments. However,the design and functionality of these synthesizers do nothave much in common e.g. with digital synthesizers of the1980’s. Some of the techniques Kurenniemi has exploitedon his instruments are common in analog synthesizers andelectric organs.

Like the earliest electronic musical instruments, Kuren-niemi’s devices demand some engineering skills from themusician operating them. Kurenniemi’s instruments beingmostly experimental prototypes, the user interface does nothide the inner design of electrical circuits, and, indeed, thecircuits themselves have clearly had a strong influence onthe user interface design of these instruments.

With Integrated Synthesizer Kurenniemi started to exper-iment with digital circuits. The synthesizer has digital logicports from which the user can build different digital circuits,such as different sequencers, using a set of five patch matri-ces (of the same type as the EMS VCS3 synthesizer patchmatrix). Many of the digital circuits that Kurenniemi usedin his later synthesizers are probably results of the experi-ments made with Integrated Synthesizer.

Kurenniemi built a sequencer into most of his synthesizers.The simpler ones are quite similar to Buchla’s classic design

based on a single shift register. However, Kurenniemi wasinterested in automating the whole music reproduction pro-cess. Therefore he expanded the basic logic of a sequencerwith some simple designs. The first step was to exploit digi-tal counter circuits (Electric Quartet and Andromatic) withwhich the operator of the instrument could produce longsequences with modulations on the melody. The sequencerin Andromatic is a clever design where the state of a flip-flop on each sequencer stage can be set to either break, shiftregister or counter mode.

In the late 1960’s, Kurenniemi started to experiment withdigital memory circuits. Dico was the first synthesizer tohave a digital memory. It allowed to store 10 parametersinto each of its 12 sequencer steps. This design was fur-ther developed in Dimi-A, which uses an associative mem-ory scheme by making it possible to save up to 100 musicalevents, which could happen on any moment in an up to 256step long sequence.

Frequency division, a commonly used technique in elec-tric organs, was used on Dico, Dimi-A, and Dimi-O. During1960’s, the stability of oscillators was still a major problemamong synthesizer designers and frequency division offered asimple way to keep an instrument in tune as it requires onlyone oscillator, which does not need to be voltage controlled(the most common electric organ design uses 12 oscillators,one for each note of an octave) [13]. The oscillator is tunedabove the audible frequency range and all the notes of thesynthesizer are made by dividing the frequency with wholenumbers [14, 1]. The technique is easiest to implement whenthe waveform of the signal is a pulse wave and therefore it isthe waveform of choice in most of Kurenniemi’s instruments.

Besides the frequency division network, the ring modula-tor and the attenuator circuits of Dimi-A are ”quasi-digital”designs which are using digital logic ports and can thereforeprocess only digital waveforms.

5. USER INTERFACE ASPECTSThe design of Kurenniemi’s electronic musical instruments

is based mainly on the components that were available at thetime and on the ideas he got from the contemporary elec-tronic component catalogues [3]. On the other hand, his in-strument design is based on a very open-minded and exper-imental attitude regarding the user interface. Furthermore,Kurenniemi was prone to exploit unconventional methodsfor controlling and programming the instruments (e.g. op-tical input or biofeedback).

The user interfaces of Kurenniemi’s first instruments werevery technically oriented, reflecting the technical function-ality at the hardware level. Therefore, the input mechanismwas mainly ’plug in’ type. Partly this is reflecting the factthat the first instruments were tailor-made and he knew whowould be operating them. However, Kurenniemi interest-ingly did not choose to use a conventional musical instru-ment user interface (e.g. a keyboard) even in his later inno-vations where he had clearly put some thought upon the userinterface design and usability. The Dimi-A user interfaceclearly shows attempts to create an aesthetic and attractiveuser interface the overall user experience in mind - there wasalso a graphic designer involved in the first steps of the de-sign work. That reveals what a forerunner Kurenniemi was,since aesthetics and attractiveness have only lately gainedattention in the usability area. [9, 18, 7]

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The downside of choosing unconventional user interfacesolutions is that the instruments did not look familiar andtherefore it was probably harder to get financial supportand arouse interest in potential markets. If Kurenniemi hadchosen to pack the equipment e.g. into a cover of an electricorgan, the public’s and financiers’ interest might have beenmore significant.

Although the Dimi-A user interface looks attractive, theusability of the instrument is still quite unsatisfactory: theuser needs to remember what s/he has done, i.e. what pa-rameters were chosen. The user interface won’t give nearlyany feedback from the user’s choices, which is regarded asone of the main usability criteria in any user interface. How-ever, Kurenniemi continued being very innovative with someof his later instruments: for example, with Dimi-O he pre-sented an idea of reading notes with a video camera, andthen playing the music in question (nowadays the conceptof e.g. reading EAN-like codes digitally is widely spread).With Dimi-S the input technique was people touching eachother. With Dimi-T Kurenniemi presented the idea of usingEEG as an input method (we only start to see equipmentusing EEG as an input signal now).

6. CONCLUSIONSThe evolution of Kurenniemi’s instrument designs may

be regarded as a logical and gradual transition from analogto ”quasi-digital” to digital electronics. In his electronicsdesigns, Kurenniemi was more interested in programmabil-ity than in sonic flexibility or in developing novel synthesistechniques. In particular, Kurenniemi did not implement apurely digital sound synthesis system in any of his early orDimi instruments. However, his user interface designs weregreatly influenced by digital logic. This, combined by thelack of conventional control hardware, such as a piano-stylekeyboard (Dimi-O being the only exception), made adoptionof these instruments difficult for ordinary musicians.

Despite their unconventional user interfaces, there is some-thing appealing and fascinating in many of the instruments.In particular, the compact size and the austere but visuallybalanced user interface of Dimi-A, have made it a classic andgained it status as a work of art. The inter-artistic opticalinterface of Dimi-O and the somewhat provocative skin re-sistance interface of Dimi-S alone earned Kurenniemi a rep-utation of an eccentric artist and scientist. In some aspects,Dimi-S and Dimi-O remind us of the electronic instrumentsof Lev Sergeyevich Termen, a.k.a. Leon Theremin. On theother hand, the microprocessor based Dimi-6000, Kuren-niemi’s most flexible and technically advanced instrument,appeared only as a conventional CRT terminal and a set ofstacked aluminum boxes.

Kurenniemi’s visions often went beyond what was possi-ble to implement with contemporary technology or what wasfinancially realistic at the time. He was, nevertheless, suc-cessful as an instrument designer having completed a totalof 9 different musical devices between 1968 and 1973. Sincethe marketing attempts for the Dimi instruments failed, andin spite of Kurenniemi’s many appearances in the Finnishmass media, his instruments remained fairly unknown un-til the late 1990’s when the Finnish electronic music sceneadopted him as their forerunner and ”godfather”. As a re-sult, Kurenniemi was celebrated as the guest of honor and

featured artist of the 2002 Avanto international media artfestival in Helsinki. There, many of his instruments wereplayed live, perhaps for the largest audience ever.

Most of Kurenniemi’s instruments have survived to presentday and many of them are still in working order. The re-maining instruments in Finland are stored, and occasionallyused, in the Electronic Music Studio at the Department ofMusicology, University of Helsinki.

7. REFERENCES[1] A. Douglas. The Electronic Musical Instrument

Manual. 6. edition. Pitman publishing, London, 1976.

[2] P. Kuljuntausta. On/Off: eetteriaanista

sahkomusiikkiin. Like, Helsinki, 2002.

[3] E. Kurenniemi. Taped interview by Mikko Ojanen andJari Suominen, Helsinki, 29 May 2004.

[4] E. Kurenniemi. Elektronisen musiikin instrumenteista.Musiikki, 1:37–41, 1971.

[5] E. Kurenniemi. Musical harmonies are divisor sets. InProceedings of Nordic acoustical meeting 88, pages371–374, Tampere, 1988.

[6] E. Kurenniemi. Erkki Kurenniemi:aanityksia/recordings: 1963-1973. Siboney, Helsinki,2002. CD.

[7] M. Kurosu and K. Kashimura. Apparent usability vs.inherent usability: experimental analysis on thedeterminants of the apparent usability. In CHI ’95:

Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human

factors in computing systems, pages 292–293, 1995.

[8] R. Lundsten. Taped interview by Jari Suominen,Stockholm, 8 June 2004.

[9] D. Norman. Emotional Design. Basic Books, NewYork, 2003.

[10] M. A. Numminen. Taped interview by Jari Suominen,Helsinki, 7 October 2006.

[11] M. Ojanen. Jukka Ruohomaen savellystuotanto jatyylipiirteet 1970-luvulla: Esimerkkianalyysi teoksestaPisces. Master’s thesis, University of Helsinki, 2007.

[12] M. Ojanen and J. Suominen. Erkki Kurenniemensahkosoittimet. Musiikki, 3:15–44, 2005.

[13] T. Pinch and F. Trocco. Analog Days: The Invention

and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer. HarvardUniversity Press, November 2004.

[14] T. Rossing. Science of Sound, 2. edition.Addison-Wesley, New York, 1990.

[15] J. Ruohomaki. Taped interview by Mikko Ojanen, JariSuominen and Kai Lassfolk, Helsinki, 4 December2004.

[16] M. Taanila. Future is not what it used to be. Kinotar,Helsinki, 2002. DVD.

[17] K. Tiits. Voluntaariassistentti Kurenniemi jaelektronimusiikin alku yliopistolla. Master’s thesis,University of Helsinki, 1990.

[18] N. Tractinsky. Aesthetics and apparent usability:empirically assessing cultural and methodologicalissues. In CHI ’97: Proceedings of the SIGCHI

conference on Human factors in computing systems,pages 115–122. ACM Press, 1997.

[19] H. Viitasalo. Taped interview by Mikko Ojanen andJari Suominen, Vantaa, 4 November 2004.

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