Mia Makela (a.k.a SOLU)
Contributor

solu(at)solu(dot)org
www.solu.org

Mia Makela (a.k.a SOLU) is finnish media+live cinema artist, teacher, investigator and cultural activist residing in Barcelona.

Her trajectory has led her from shamanistic studies to art. From art to media art and design. From media art to organization of events and workshops on contemporary digital culture. As part of fiftyfifty.org collective (until 2002), she organized Hacker Techniques workshop, Gameboy soundlab, Playtime event amongst ther activities.
She has given lectures on various themes including robots, audiovisual culture, tactical sound and her own artistic work. She has written articles on different subjects, including Vjing and Micromusic (Repellent Magazine). Her discussion with Vanni Brusadin was published in “Anarchitexts-Essays in Global Digital Resistance” (2002).

In 2004 she launched dorkbot.org in Barcelona presenting people who do strange things with electricity every other month in the local gallery Metronom. Her latest ocupation is PUBLIC.BCN which concentrates all her audiovisual activities under the same label (workshops, events, AVcommunity, site-spesific projects, ideas....)

She started performing visuals as part of audiovisual improvisational band called DADATA in 2001 and after the dissolution of the group she continued as SOLU. She has collaborated with many experimental musicians including Heidi Mortenson and Dj Rupture. With Mortenson she opened Transmediale festival in Berlin 2004 and performed at Zagreb Biennale of Music, Cimatics-festival in Brussels and Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki (2003). She has also performed at various other festivals including SONIC ACTS in Amsterdam, SONAR festival in Barcelona, AVIT in Birmingham, MAPPING in Geneve and TRANSIT_MX in Mexico City.

Her experimental music videos have been widely exhibited in festivals around the world: Xfest, Impact, Sonar, etc. Her style ranges from minimal abstractions and strongly processed material to multilayered ambiental landscapes. She processes her visual material with MAX/MSP/JITTER and other programmes like Isadora.

In 2006 she published her thesis on LIVE CINEMA language and elements, (Medialaboratory, Helsinki) which gathers her experience on realtime visuals. Her latest workshop titled ”Audiovisual Realtime Creation” took place in Spain, Germany, Belgium, Finland and Mexico.