Heavy Snowflakes Salon Bios.

	HEAVY SNOWFLAKES SALON Official multi-media night for Bayennale 2005 Artist Biographys:


	Seppo Renvall
	Seppo Renvall (b. 1963) is one of the leading video artists in Finland and a pioneer of Finnish experimental cinema. His extensive production includes films, videos, photographs, installations and happenings. Work by this internationally acclaimed artist has been screened at film festivals and exhibitions all over the world, and has also featured in Venice (1999) and at the São Paulo (2002) Biennials. The Kunsthalle exhibition shows short films and videos by Renvall from 1991-2005, as well as video installations. Also included are Renvall's major photographic series from the 1990s, many of them made with pinhole cameras. The imagery of Renvall's films is already apparent in his early photographic work, but the mainstay of his production consists of black-and-white short films. Renvall is also responsible for the first experimental feature-length film in Finland, FILM1999 (2000). The work combines many elements typical of Renvall's films: abstracted imagery, home videos and random documentation, which build up into a story that avoids conventional narrative structures and follows its own logic. Many of Renvall's works are about very ordinary events. In fact, the artist says that he only makes art from the reality he knows and is familiar with personally. The works also attest to Renvall's genuine interest in people. In many of them, the depiction of private experience succeeds in revealing something genuine about humanity in general. Renvall's works often recycle found visual material, such as discarded family snapshots or 8mm family films. One of his most recent pieces, Woody (2003), builds upon films shot by the artist's father. Woody was originally produced as a music video for Mira Calix. Renvall likes to combine experimental music and images in his works, or illustrate old Finnish hymns or folk songs - music not ordinarily heard on music videos. Sometimes the artist even performs his works to the accompaniment of live music. Renvall is known for happenings made together with artists and experts from a variety of different fields. With his brother Markus Renvall, he has produced The Ball Show (1998-2001), a happening/installation that makes use of disco balls, images projected via the balls onto walls, sounds, and all manner of gadgets and machines. The show itself is born from the interaction between the artists and the audience. Another happening that has attracted attention abroad is Sauna (1998-), a portable sauna made up of a tent and a barrel, a work of art that invites people to bathe while investigating the core of Finnish identity. Renvall's works are also informed by a social and political consciousness that stems from private experience. In his early short films he commented on the Winter War (1939-40), popular notions of the world and other people, or hidden ideological agendas in, for example, early 20th century textbooks. Renvall also takes a critical attitude towards commercial cinema and television, and the idea of man propagated by them. A catalogue entitled Seppo Renvall is published in conjunction with the exhibition. Edited by Susanna Santala and Maija Tanninen-Mattila, the book includes articles by the editors, as well as Tiina Erkintalo, Elina Heikka and Kirsi Väkiparta. The exhibition Seppo Renvall is produced by Kunsthalle Helsinki, Finland. The exhibition is curated by Susanna Santala and Maija Tanninen-Mattila. The exhibition is supported by FRAME, Finnish Fund for Art Exchange and Pro AV Saarikko. Seppo Renvall-exhibition was on display in Charlottenborg Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen September 4-26, 2004.

	Jari Haanperä
	Jari Haanperä is media-artist, director and light and sound designer. All his works are about light, sound and moving images. Haanperä is interested in analog technology but does allso use digital technique. He is interested early 20th century technology romanticism/mysticism as well as phenomenons of our time. He uses whole scale of moving image from precinematic methods to videos and 35 mm fiction films. He fades the line between dream and reality and observes surrounding world in that light. In his installations he combines second hand low tech and precinematic methods with electric light, acoustic-electronic and digital sounds, motorized motion, optics and objects. For each installation he builts technical equipments that are not just objects but the center of the work in which motion and images are born. His installations are moving images alive without of film. He has partisipated in exibitions tex at New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Kioto, Bangkok, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and Europe and he has had several domestic exibitions. Haanperä screenwrites, directs, makes scenography and composes music for his shortfilms. His films has partisipated in international filmfestivals tex in Edinburgh/Scotland, Sitger/Spain, Aubagne/France, Stuttgart/Germany, Budapest/Hungary, Nordisk Pnaorama/Norway and Iceland, Ontario/Canada, etc

	Maria Duncker
	Maria Duncker:"I`m a heavy recycler of tradition and local behavier,just turn them insideout It´s a natural way for me to reflekt on different situations in society." Duncker works come out qite surrealistic. The subjects involves all from timbermens daylig life to sensitive poemsinging and inbetween porn. Video,action art,installations,dresses,music. Some works are minimalistic experimental some narrativ. Duncker`s videos has recently been shown in the openings of EXPO 2005 in Japan and The Biennale 2005 in Vienna.

	Katya Gardea
	Moving sculpture and light works, self propelled by fire, Hidalgo Mexico. "Centinela" Katya Gardea La Esmeralda Mexico City School of Visual Arts NY Yale University MFA Lives and works in Mexco City and New York International Artist, Born Mexico City Shows both in Latin America and the US

	Pamela Z
	Pamela Z is a San Francisco-based composer/performer and audio artist who works primarily with voice, live electronic processing, and sampling technology. She creates solo works combining operatic bel canto and experimental extended vocal techniques with found percussion objects, spoken word, "MAX MSP" on a PowerBook, and sampled concrête sounds triggered with a MIDI controller called The BodySynth™ which allows her to manipulate sound with physical gestures. Her performances range in scale from small concerts in galleries to large-scale multi-media works in proscenium halls and flexible black-box venues. Pamela Z has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. She has performed in numerous festivals including Bang On A Can at Lincoln Center in New York, the Interlink Festival in Japan, Other Minds in San Francisco, the Pina Bausch Tanztheater's 25 Jahre Fest in Wuppertal, Germany, and La Biennale di Venezia in Venice, Italy. She has composed, recorded and performed original scores for choreographers and for film and video artists, and has done vocal work for other composers (including Charles Amirkhanian, and Henry Brant). Her large-scale, multi-media performance works, Parts of Speech , Gaijin, and Voci, have been presented at Theater Artaud and ODC Theatre in San Francisco, and her audio works have been included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum in Cologne. In May of 2004, her work will be presented at La Biennale de l'art africain contemporian – Dak'Art, in Dakar, Senegal. Ms. Z has composed commissioned works for new music chamber ensembles the Bang On A Can Allstars, the California E.A.R. Unit, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and St. Luke's Chamber Orchestra. Since 1986 she has been producing "Z Programs", an ongoing series of interdisciplinary events in which her own work has been featured along with that of other artists doing experimental work in various genres. She is a member of the electroacoustic ensemble sensorChip (with Miya Masaoka and Donald Swearingen) and the interdisciplinary performance ensemble The Qube Chix. She has done several concerts and experimental theater pieces with Zakros New Music Theatre (including their John Cage festivals), and has performed with The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. She is the recipient of numerous awards including a 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship, the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts, the ASCAP Music Award, and the NEA and Japan/US Friendship Commission Fellowship. She holds a music degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

	Alaric Burns
	Alaric Burns Eclectic Scientific Sound Monk Composer, performer, DJ, and creator of a bottomless vortex of sound blendage known only as Insect Funeral... Alaric combines deep audio sorcery with electronic media manipulation techniques stolen from the future. SUPER POWERS: Telekinesis, Bio-poly-Rhythmic Feedback, Time Travel Alaric will be presenting a DJ set with classic dub of epic proportions remixed to the stratosphere, & dubbed out to the furthest dimension in real time. Video Salon –1st Tuesday of the month http://www.dimension7.com/ Spin This –1st Saturday of the month http://www.dark-tekno.com/spinthis/

	Aaron Wolf Baum
	Aaron Wolf Baum studied physics at Harvard and Stanford University, where he received a Ph.D. in 1997. His work with fractal and living system-inspired electronic music began the same year. His first major project was a system that used fractals to continuously process and layer samples obtained from popular culture and the local environment via microphones. This system formed the voice of the Nebulous Entity, a giant, roving "alien information scavenger" that serenaded thousands of people at the 1998 Burning Man art festival. His next project was to develop an audio texture generator using biologically-inspired approaches to make weeks of environmental organic electronic music without human intervention. This project was exhibited in numerous galleries, audio/video shows and multimedia conferences in the San Francisco Bay area. His current project is an extension of these ideas to the creation of interactive, "living software" audio and video instruments capable of significant creativity of novel sorts, enabling collaboration and play between humans and new, alien life forms. The use of walkthrough video feedback loops and motion capture gloves creates an intimate, intuitive experience. This system was shown at SIGGRAPH 99, The Exploratorium Science Museum, Ground Zero, The Lab, Crucible Steel Gallery, and at Burning Man 2000. Upcoming shows for Dr. Baum include New Langton Arts and the Asilomar Microcomputer conference. http://www.drfriendly.com/

	Christopher Fleeger
	Christopher Fleeger makes use of the computer as a tool for cataloging timbre and establishing a musical neural network. Using gestural sensors and touch panels, he controls custom software written in various computer music systems. Field recordings and live input/microphones are the basis for much of his performance material. Fleeger's current work is "Barpieces, Computer Music Inventions", a collaboration with composer, Charles Engstrom.