I’m a Media Designer who works with stop motion, animation, projection mapping, photography and film. Snow, ice, pine cones and rocks are my protagonists and natural environments are my stages. I believe that detailed observation of nature and the use of artistic expression through audio-visual media can have the power to move people emotionally and enhance environmental engagement. Hiking through peaceful forests and fells of Northern Scandinavia and Lapland gives me power and inspiration.
Arctic Design Week 2021 - Group exhibition of the TaPaMa project managed by Maria Huhmarniemi - Development of Art Workshops for tourism in Lapland - Poster presentation of Driftwood Workshop - developed in collaboration with Hendrik Kalk
19.02.2020 – 23.02.2020 - Oulu, Finland
TULIP - Snow sculpture at Nallikari Snow Fest 2020 - Team Snowdrop (Miia Mäkinen, Henna Timlin and Johanna Kurpat)
17.02.2017 – 26.03.2017 - Münster, Germany
Exhibition at Stadtmuseum Münster, as part of the Friedrich-Hundt-Gesellschaft e.V. - Verein zur Förderung der künstlerischen Fotografie in Münster
23.09.2016 – 25.09.2016 - Cologne, Germany
Exhibition at Photokina - German Youth Photography Award 2016 (Deutscher Jugendfotopreis 2016)
17.07.2015 – 19.07.2015 - Münster, Germany
Parcours 2015 - Exhibition at Münster School of Design, Presentation of animated movie Music and Emotion
24.06.2014 – 30.10.2014 - Münster, Germany
An-a-tomie - Illustration and photography exhibition at PAN-Zentrum Münster - Group exhibition directed by Prof. Dipl.-Des. Cordula Hesselbarth
01.12.2013 – 31.12.2013 – Münster, Germany
Photo exhibition: Party-Polaroids at Café Fyal
Awards
UArctic Photo Competition - Arctic Polarities 2022 - Students third place for my photography series illumination of snow
German Youth Photography Award 2016 (Deutscher Jugendfotopreis 2016) - First prize for my project Polaroids erleben die Party mit
Contact
For project collaborations or just to say hi, please contact me!
All contents, illustrations, graphics, photographs, videos and texts of this website are protected by copyright. It is not allowed to copy, modify, duplicate, publish or use them in any other way without the written permission of Johanna Kurpat (§15 UrhG).
Iceolation is a video I made for the Space, time, place workshop at the University of Lapland. For the video I used ice and made a time lapse of the melting process. Ice as artistic material is very meaningful because it is changing all the time and it has all kind of little details, like air bubbles or cracks. In the video I tried to visualize the feeling of isolation. At the moment the best people can do to slow down the spread of COVID-19 is to stay at home as much as possible. That is all we can do right now to protect the risk groups, like elderly people and people with underlying medical conditions. For me self-isolation can feel very cold. Like you are stuck in ice. Social life is frozen and you can barely breathe because of the storm of news about the Coronavirus crisis. I tried to visualize a message - that it is very important to stick together. Let us stay strong together even if we have to stay isolated, right now. We have to care about people in need! We are in this crisis together and we have to care about everyone.
Snow sculpting for the Arctic Fashion Show, part of the Arctic Design Week 2021
I worked for the Arctic Fashion Show 2021 as part of the snow and ice sculpting team. The theme that we chose was Revontuli (literally “fox fire”) which means northern lights in Finnish and tells the story of a fox that is running on snow and when the foxes fur touches the snow he creates colorful northern lights. We wanted to visualize this story with our sculptures. The process included a brief with the organizer of the arctic fashion show, planning in the team, the making of sketches and models and of course sculpting snow and ice. My main tasks were making the model of the fox head and sculpting one of the fox heads but I also sculpted some ice. The teamwork was great! The most challenging part was the weather because the temperature was above freezing and it was raining. But luckily the sculptures survived until the show.
Fox head sculpture
The stage with sculptures
Sculpting ice
Model of fox head – more details were added while sculpting
Snow & Ice Sculpting at Arctic Snow Hotel in Lehtojärvi and the Snow Lounge Salla
In December 2019 I participated in a snow and ice sculpting training at the Arctic Snow Hotel in Lehtojärvi. Here are some pictures of the process and final results - the theme was bears. The process included planning and designing the reliefs, sculpting snow and ice and setting up lights. I had the chance to work individually on my own snow reliefs.
In February 2020 I sculpted snow reliefs and ice tables for the Snow Lounge in Salla. Together in a team we created a jellyfish room. I made the concept design for the room and sculpted two of the jellyfish. Together with my teammates Adi and Giulia I designed ice tables.
Mother bear with children snow relief - in progress
Miia Mäkinen, Henna Timlin and I (Team Snowdrop) carved this Tulip out of a 3x3m snow cube. What a great experience! The idea of the Tulip came from Miia and I made the model for it out of modeling wax. Together in the team we planned the sculpting in detail. We sculpted the tulip for the Nallikari Snow Fest in Oulu where we worked next to other snow sculptors from all around the world.
Team Snowdrop in front of the 3x3m snow cube
Sculpting in progress
Final tulip snow sculpture
Tulip snow sculpture with lighting
Model of tulip sculpture - later we had to simplify the sculpture because of too warm weather and melting snow
Macro photography with prepared vegetables, fruits and plants
Microscopic enlargements are often necessary to study interesting structures of the human body. I created a fascinating comparison between human body structures and structures of plants, vegetables and fruits.
Photographs of plants, vegetables and fruits are used to explore similarities with human organ structures. I developed a technique in which plants, vegetables and fruits are placed on a glass plate and are illuminated from below with an extremely bright lamp. This technique creates unique images and emphasizes the beauty of the structures.
First prize German Youth Photography Award 2016 (Deutscher Jugendfotopreis 2016)
How to make the pub atmosphere visible? In a unique way these Polaroids are illustrating what was going on in the pub. The party evening is reflected in the pictures. The Polaroids were placed in different areas of the pub and were part of the evening. One Polaroid was placed on the dance floor, lying there for the rest of the night. Other pictures were placed in the ashtray or at the toilet door. I used a Polaroid 600 to take the pictures in the pub at the same evening and then placed them at different areas of the pub. After the placement I left the pictures alone for the rest of the evening. While I was celebrating with my friends, a lot of people interacted with the pictures. The pictures are snapshots, moments of a party and they are showing traces of a wild party evening at the pub.
I made a reproduction of the original polaroids which have all the traces of the party on it. So that it is possible to see these traces in large format and in detail.
Polaroid 600 camera, Reproduction NIKON D80, location “Bullenkopp” in Münster
An animated film explains what happens in the human body and especially in the brain when we listen to music. The subject is very complex, because the music perception is learned by listening experience in everyday life, is dependent on culture and individual musical preferences.
Headphones visualize the human reaction to music without showing the person directly. Music, explanation and reaction are in focus. Transparency gradient on a white background creates a mysterious, foggy atmosphere. The journey continues deep into the brain. The project has exciting contrasts - Schematic representations of the brain combined with emotional textures and snapshots. An emotional soundtrack interleaves with explanations by a narrator.
Narrator - Joris Schwarz, Music – Jan Andrees
Research – Stefan Koelsch und Erich Schröger „Neurowissenschaftliche Grundlagen der Musikverarbeitung“, Manfred Spitzer „Musik im Kopf“, Eckart Altenmüller - Zeitschrift für Audiologie „Starke Emotionen und Gänsehaut beim Musikhören“, Daniel J. Levitin „Der Musik-Instinkt“
It is projected that changing snow conditions due to climate change will affect reindeer and therefore also the traditional lifestyle of indigenous people like the Sami communities in Lapland.
In the video I projected water textures on snow and I created a sound visualization of reindeer and snow sounds that I projected on a branch of a tree. It is an expression of what I read about the described issue and it aims to illuminate how the subarctic areas are threatened by consequences of climate change.
Embers is an experimental short film. Through artistic expression the short film aims to animate the viewer to think about consequences of climate change such as changing snow conditions and increasing forest fires in arctic regions. To illuminate this urgent issue I projected videos of glowing embers and burning wood onto snow surface and included a sound interaction with fire sounds. While I was shooting sequences of the short film something happened that I didn‘t plan – the snow melted in the evening because it was getting warm rapidly, about +3° Celsius, and overnight water drops on the small snowballs froze again which created a special aesthetic. So it can be said that the film is made in collaboration with nature.
For this artwork I used simple LED lights such as christmas lights, flashlights and a camp lantern that can change colors which made a really cool effect. I love how the colors of the different lights are mixing! This is something everyone can try out and not much technology is needed. For me it was the most interesting snow sculpting so far. I sculpted the trumpet lichens out of wind packed snow that was sticking to a huge beautiful rock.
For the video Glow I used the program Isadora for mapping and the projector was in a box for heating and protection against snow. The projector heated the box well and I had to add some ventilation for further projects. It was a bit experimental and also challenging because the laptop shouldn’t get too cold and sometimes the screen was not working as smooth as usual because of the cold. Putting the laptop on top of the box helped me to keep the laptop warm enough and then I managed to do the mapping in the cold.
Interaction with aurora borealis, moonlight shadow and orange LED light on snow and tree
For this illumination I put a LED lamp into the snow below the tree. In fact it is a simple camp lantern that is supposed to be for camping to light up the tent. I was lucky that northern lights were dancing in the sky this night and also the moon was shining bright and created shadows of branches on the snow sculptures. For the plate shaped snow sculptures I used wind packed snow which I cut out of the ground.
Experiments with sunlight and LED light on snow sculpture
The use of sunlight led to an intensive exploration of carving wind packed snow. In a piece of wind packed snow I carved lines that almost got through the snow and I left only a very thin layer of snow which made it possible that sunlight or LED light can shine through. The use of sunlight caused further thoughts about the use of energy for an artwork. In fact, doing experiments with artificial light made it mandatory to get power either from a house that has electricity or from a battery. When it is possible to use sunlight as an energy source and for artistic expression it could be considered more sustainable.
