15.07.2025
MUU & TAFF: States of Nature – Virtual Experiments
22 – 24 August 2025
Art House Turku, Mediastudio (Factory-building)
Nunnankatu 4, Turku
Fri 12-18, Sat-Sun 12-16
Free entry
Opening of the exhibition Thursday 21 August at 17:00-19:00
Featured artists are:
Soile Mottisenkangas
Juha Mustonen (Dos Robots)
Pauliina Salminen
Reetta Neittaanmäki and Kaisa Penttilä (Ambulance)
As part of the future theme of TAFF’s 10th anniversary year, an exhibition of VR art, produced by Artists’ Association MUU, will be on display in the Factory Building of the Art House Turku. The collective exhibition will showcase the potentials and the edges of VR as a medium through virtual installations and narrative-driven miniature worlds. The artists have utilised various techniques including 3D scanning, video-implementation, animation and soundscapes.
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience using 3D near‑eye displays and pose tracking to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world.
The VR-based experiments open a space to reflect on our relationship with the environment through a virtual lens. The exhibition brings together a diverse array of artists exploring similar themes from different perspectives.
The works were developed in a workshop on VR animation and VR art, organised by MUU and the Finnish Animation Guild in November 2023. The works have previously been exhibited at MUU Helsinki Contemporary Art Centre in September 2024 and at the Supermarket art fair in Stockholm in April 2025. The workshop was supported by the Promotion Centre For Audiovisual Culture (AVEK).
ARTISTS AND ARTWORKS
The Grouch (Marisija)
Ambulance / Reetta Neittaanmäki and Kaisa Penttilä
What do berries discuss in the clearing of a Nordic forest?
Ambulance group takes the viewer into a berry perspective to follow a pair therapy of a blueberry and a raspberry, which exposes the effects of forestry on familiar berries.
Ambulance is an artist duo formed by Kaisa Penttilä (b.1975) and Reetta Neittaanmäki (b.1974), whose works aim to raise issues related to the environment and society in a playful way. Ambulance’s previous work “The Plastic Godzilla of the Baltic Sea” (2018) toured festivals around the world, won an EU award and is currently being used as school book material.
Penttilä and Neittaanmäki have backgrounds in animation. They have studied at the Turku Academy of Arts and Aalto University and have had a long career in animation.
Lush urban pasture (Vehmas kaupunkilaidun)
Soile Mottisenkangas 2024
If the pasture were returned to the city environments, would the highly endangered bird ortolan bunting return too?
The artist integrates a pasture into the city to revive the endangered ortolan bunting. In the virtual gallery, the viewer can observe and feel a densely built suburban summer night under harsh artificial lighting.
Soile Mottisenkangas (b. 1971) explores virtual environments as a tool that allows residents to design the kind of biotope they wish to live in, coexisting with other species. In her first VR work, the artist is fascinated by three-dimensionality. Soile Mottisenkangas (MA in Film) is a media artist/film director, with documentary work being her forte.
House of Tales (Tarinatalo)
Dos Robots / Juha Mustonen
A tale of a house, its inhabitants, and the origin of a book.
The work will place the viewer in an idyllic neighborhood where the birth of a story and a book is in focus. At the same time, it is a statement to support the existence of traditional books.
Juha Mustonen (b. 1979) is an artist whose day job is in the IT world. For him, art allows creative self-expression and works as a platform to explore various styles, techniques, and technologies. This creation was largely created within the VR environment.
In a bubble (Kuplassa)
Pauliina Salminen
The piece is set in an underwater environment where gravity and points of view change. In this reversed world, the action occurs beneath the surface, and reality out of water is just a distant reflection.
Choreography by Scheherazade Zambrano and music by Erik M enhance the immersive experience.
Pauliina Salminen (b. 1975) is a media artist whose work looks at themes like identity and memory in relation to environment, border areas and intermediate spaces. She is particularly interested in underwater filming and the use of dance elements in storytelling.With the support of the Promotion Centre For Audiovisual Culture (AVEK).
Artist’s Association MUU
Artist’s Association MUU is a national association for artists working in non-traditional media and new media. Membership is open to practitioners that are Finnish citizens or reside in Finland.
Turku Animated Film Festival
TAFF organises the exhibitions as part of the City of Turku’s pop-up art programme. TAFF is organised in cooperation with the City of Turku Cultural Spearhead project. Other partners include the Arts Promotion Centre TAIKE, the Promotion Centre For Audiovisual Culture (AVEK), the Finnish Cultural Foundation’s Southwest Finland Fund and Scene Turku.
The actual festival will take place on 20-24 August 2025 at the Manilla Cultural Factory and the Art House Turku. TAFF’s competition series will present boldly original, uncompromising and inventive short animated films. In addition to the competition series, the festival’s programme consists of carefully curated thematic screenings and a selected supporting programme.