Johanna Kurpat

Revontuli - Arctic Fashion Show 2021

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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.

• Client: LEHTOJÄRVI ARCTIC SNOWHOTEL
• Date: 2021-03-28
• Category: Snow sculpting

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Tulip - Nallikari Snow Fest 2020

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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.

• Client: NALLIKARI SNOW FEST
• Date: 2020-02-23
• Category: Snow sculpting

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Snow reliefs for Snow Hotel and Bar

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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.

• Client: LEHTOJÄRVI ARCTIC SNOWHOTEL, SNOW LOUNGE SALLA
• Date: 2019-12-13
• Category: Snow Sculpting

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Exploring transformations

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When the sun is shining pine cones open up to set their seeds free. When it is raining they close themselves to protect their seeds.

Environmental Art Workshop - University of Lapland

• Client: University of Lapland
• Date: 2020-05-14
• Category: Environmental Art, Video Art

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Iceolation

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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.

• Client: University of Lapland
• Date: 2020-03-30
• Category: Video Art

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Music and emotions

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An animated movie 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“

• Client: Münster School of Design
• Date: 2015-07-15
• Category: Animation

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Human body structures

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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.

• Client: Münster School of Design
• Date: 2014-04-19
• Category: Photography

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Party Polaroid

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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

• Client: Münster School of Design
• Date: 2013-12-01
• Category: Experimental analog photography

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Travel photography

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Travel, outdoor and wildlife photography – Hiking adventures and camping in the wilderness

On the website http://outdoorjoes.de my boyfriend Jonas and I posted live from a 800km long hiking trail which we walked in 2017. This trail goes through Norway, Finland and Sweden. As soon as we have time we will update the blog and more hiking reports and travel pictures will follow. Since 2013 we are walking long-distance trails together – during all seasons.

• Client: Portfolio Sample
• Date: 2015-09-30
• Category: Photography

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Changing Winter

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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.

Here you can read more about the issue http://climate.org/archive/topics/climate-change/reindeer-climate-change.html

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.

• Client: Master Arctic Art and Design
• Date: 2021-03-14
• Category: Projection mapping

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Embers

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Projection and sound interaction on snow

While I was filming sequences of the video artwork Embers 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 an aesthetic that I couldn‘t have created without the influence of nature. With the video Embers I want to animate the viewer to think about consequences of climate change such as melting snow and ice in arctic regions but also about the increasing forest fires during the summer. To illuminate this urgent issue I projected videos of glowing embers and burning wood onto the snow surface and I also included a sound interaction with fire sounds.

• Client: Master Arctic Art and Design
• Date: 2021-01-15
• Category: Projection mapping

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Enlichenment

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Light art experiment on snow

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.

• Client: Master Arctic Art and Design
• Date: 2021-01-29
• Category: Light art

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Glow

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Projection and sound interaction on snow

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.

• Client: Master Arctic Art and Design
• Date: 2021-01-14
• Category: Projection mapping

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Aurora and Moonlight

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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.

• Client: Master Arctic Art and Design
• Date: 2021-01-25
• Category: Light art

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Shadow

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Playing with shadows on snow

Using a light source, for example a simple LED light such as a flashlight, makes it possible to play with shadows. Using shadows of hands to tell stories is a very old technique – probably one of the earliest methods of making projection art.

• Client: Master Arctic Art and Design
• Date: 2021-01-29
• Category: Shadow projection

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Moon

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Light art experiment - illuminating snow from behind

This is a Light Art and Environmental Art experiment that I made with wind packed snow. The light source, a LED light that runs with batteries, was placed directly behind the plate shaped sculpture which represents the full moon. Some of the light shined through the snow, illuminated the sculpture and created a surface that almost looked like the surface of the moon. When I did this experiment I got inspired by the sky – the full moon was shining very bright this night.

• Client: Master Arctic Art and Design
• Date: 2021-01-25
• Category: Light art

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Sun

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Light art experiment - illuminating snow from inside

This is a similar experiment as in the example Moon. This time I used a warm light color and I put the LED light directly into the snow – not just behind. The aesthetic has similarities with some of my projection mapping on snow surfaces works but it is limited in creating movement. The expression depends on the color, the shape of the snow sculpture and the surrounding environment. It doesn’t have moving images like in other works. But sometimes also simple Light Art works can create strong feelings. For me it looks like a shining sun and I remember that I missed the warm sunshine a lot during the dark season in Lapland.

• Client: Master Arctic Art and Design
• Date: 2021-01-29
• Category: Light art

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Sound interaction

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Experiment of live sound interaction on snowballs

This was my first projection mapping on snow experiment in which I included a live sound interaction. The experiment was made in the city of Rovaniemi, in front of the apartment building in which I live. The sound visualization on the snowballs shows surrounding sounds such as the sounds of cars or me walking in the snow. For the projection mapping and the live sound performance I used the program Isadora.

• Client: Master Arctic Art and Design
• Date: 2020-12-06
• Category: Projection mapping

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