Koneesta Koneeseen

I am Basti Kuhz, a technology artist and performer based in Oulu, Finland. My practice always begins with the same quiet question: I wonder if this works.

My performances are experiments made public—they start as ideas, are prototyped until they're ready to be shown, and are then presented not to impress, but to inspire. Silently, I hope you hear me say: "Look what I discovered." I believe that technology, when given new meaning through human hands, opens shared ways of experiencing the world.

In a time that moves faster than we can process, I intentionally work in reverse: slow down, pay attention, touch and feel something real. When AI-generated content floods our screens, you only know what's true by experiencing it yourself. That's why I invite you to my work. To me, a performance is simply a meeting point where curiosity overlaps.

Since 2025, I have served as president of Oulu Sound Collective ry, an association for experimental sound art. This role lets me stand at the front end of a growing community while sharing my experiments with wider audiences. Recent works include an ice kantele that melted during performance—letting climate change write the ending—a silent Dadaist poem, and a 3D printer transformed into a mechanical synthesizer that blurs the line between operator and machine.

In 1860, Finland's first steam-powered sawmill, Gestilä Ångsågverk, began operation in Alaranta, Oulu. For nearly half a century, up to 150 tree trunks were cut daily. Today, only a pipe and the remnants of its foundation remain.

For this performance, I conceived, programmed, and staged a speculative encounter with that history. Koneesta Koneeseen invites listeners into a future scenario where "cutting" is examined both literally and metaphorically: as an act of sharing or taking away.

What might we cut here in Alaranta tomorrow? Will we cut through silence to speak what's on our minds? Will art funding be severed? Can history be trimmed of its unpleasant chapters? Or will gene scissors rewrite our DNA, erasing illness altogether?

Using my 3D printer as a mechanical synthesizer, I posed these questions to a state-of-the-art machine—positioning it not as a fabrication tool, but as an oracle. Surrounded by the acoustic echoes of ancestral steam engines and industrial memory, the work asks us to listen closely to what the future might sound like when past, present, and speculation converge.