Staff biographies

Principal Investigator of Microtonal Music Studios: Music Outside Keys and Cultures


Dr Timo S. Tuhkanen (b. 1983) is an artist-composer, curator, and writer, whose work intersects between contemporary art, music, and research into the cultural and historical aspects of touch. Their work is concerned with designing and creating direct actions and socio-political interventions as an artistic practice through collective intelligence, relational aesthetics, and operational realism, and their subject matters often adapt inside an occupied environment of urban landscapes, digital platforms, and hydrosocial-spaces. Tuhkanen likes to describe their work as lived-through narrative fiction and mythopoetics, and they are interested in the psychological conflict between what is imaginable and what is realistically achievable and how this conflict materialises in the resources we construct. Tuhkanen received their BA and MMus from Brunel University of West London where their work focused on algorithmic music and non-narrative stage craft, focusing on opera. They received their PhD from the University of Leeds where their research focused on the aesthetics of touch in the philosophy and practice of musical composition. As well as currently being the director of the artist-run gallery Myymälä2 in Helsinki, they are an Affiliate Researcher of the Department of Musicology at the University of Turku, an artistic-researcher in the Atlas Project at Angewadnt University of Arts, Crafts, and Design Vienna and has been, among others visiting researcher at IRCAM Sound Music Movement Interaction lab and visiting lecturer at University of the Arts Helsinki and the Sibelius Academy.