Layers in the Peace Machine

Ekho Collective’s immersive installation will be live at Oulu City Hall in January 2026

Layers in The Peace Machine is an immersive and multidisciplinary media-installation, entangling technology and art. Based on the literary work ”Peace Machine” by late Timo Honkela, the installation portrays peace as a dynamic process, that shifts and evolves with the interaction from the participants. 

Layers in The Peace Machine encourages the participant to reflect on their own relationship with peace and peace-related questions. What sort of memories, images and emotions arise? How to work towards a more peaceful world in everyday life?

Transforming multiple spaces at the Oulu City Hall, the artwork sheds light on the multifaceted concept of “building peace”. It offers diverse means to interact with the installation and other participants, through language, movement, senses and cognition.

The artwork is structured to emphasise the effects of these interactions on the work itself and other participants’ experiences. Through these means Layers in the Peace Machine is part of the dynamic discourse about actions, choices, mutual interactions and power, which all greatly affect the processes of peace.

Read more about the piece

The Layer of Sharing

The virtual part of the work, the Layer of Sharing, invites the audience around the world to share their own peace-related memory and to reflect on it in relation to other people’s memories. These memories on peace will later influence the artwork experienced at Oulu City Hall.

Nurjaton

Ekho Collective introduces its own contemporary interpretation to a vanishing Karelian folk tradition at the new museum Eliel in Joensuu.

Museum Eliel offers experiences of and insights into the history and present day of North Karelia.

Nurjaton is an interactive installation that renews the Karelian käspaikka tradition. The käspaikka has changed over time, but its basic elements, symbols, colours and expressions of form have remained recognisable.

The work weaves and unravels through audience interaction, combining tradition and the present moment. Here, the käspaikka is no longer just an object, but a living, responsive and multi-sensory experience.

Nurjaton is part of the Karelian Maiden exhibition that explores the diversity of being Karelian and the phenomena of folk culture.

www.museoeliel.fi

Ahto

Ekho Collective is bringing a new immersive artwork Ahto to the collection of the Malva museum. The peace examines the different phases of water, and changes together with the stream of visitors entering the museum.

We’re excited to bring the Ahto to the impressive, 15 meter tall “Valogalleria” space, where it will greet every visitor of the museum. Ahto explores water in both visuals and audio, and applies motion tracking and generative techniques to evolve the work with the visitors’ interactions. We’ve designed Ahto in collaboration with Malva specifically for the Valogalleria space. The work will invite visitors to join a meditative experience, while aesthetically exploring the middle-ground between the organic and the digital.

We can’t wait for you to see the work born out of a great collaboration with Malva, and are honoured to share the Malva exhibition space with world-renowned artists. 

Artistic concept, visuals and technical implementation by Ekho Collective (Minja Axelsson, Saara-Henriikka Mäkinen, Essi Huotari, Iina Taijonlahti, Joonas Nissinen, Kalle Rasinkangas, and Ilmari Pesonen).

Read more about Ahto

Laila

The interactive work created by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Paula Vesala, Tuomas Norvio and the Ekho Collective for the Finnish National Opera rejects the traditional roles of performing arts, as its music and visuality evolve and change in interaction with the audience.

Artistic concept, visuals and technical implementation by Ekho Collective (Minja Axelsson, Saara-Henriikka Mäkinen, Olli Kilpi, Essi Huotari, Iina Taijonlahti, Joonas Nissinen and Heikki Heiskanen).

Read more about Laila

After the premiere at the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, Laila will visit Oulun Musiikkijuhlat 14.-28.3.2021. (CANCELLED DUE COVID19)

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