Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

About this portal
At Aalto, we create solutions that enable well-being within the planetary boundaries. With us, you get the opportunity to learn, research and do meaningful things in a unique environment: we combine the expertise in science, art, technology and economy to develop creative solutions to the world’s major challenges, such as the climate crisis. We are a community of thousands of students, researchers and experts with passion and expertise for both system-level solutions and rapidly implemented new innovations. This Aalto Univeristy's Institutional RC portal is run by the School of Arts, Design and Architecture, a Nordic leader in higher education for design, fashion, games, media, architecture, film, art education and art. We produce world-class research in art education, design and design thinking, digital media and visual culture, urban planning, architecture and landscape architecture. We educate students to be global citizens, contributing to their communities with imaginative, collaborative, compassionate and unconventional approaches to some of the most pressing challenges facing the world today. The portal is managed by the AREA doctoral school's academic board members (from 2023 to 2027). The Artistic Research Doctoral School of Aalto (AREA) aims to advance and strengthen the role of artistic research in and across the fields of Arts, Design and Architecture with a special interest in the arts as transformational entities. The artistic research doctoral school continues Aalto’s decades-long contribution to the artistic research area in the Finnish and international contexts. This institutional RC portal is for Aalto University researchers, students and staff to submit their research and related activities in order to publish and archive their work.

contact person(s): Priska Falin

url: https://www.aalto.fi/

• 2. RAD Research Through Art & Design Research Through Art & Design course introduces a variety of approaches, methodologies, issues and concerns in research through practice. Here, research through practice refers to a broad continuum of artistic research approaches, arts-based, practice-led and -based research approaches, and constructive design research approaches, relevant across practices in Aalto ARTS. The course introduces researchers and their research work from Aalto and elsewhere, including and increasing dialogue with and among these researchers.
• 1. 2025 Aalto University research outcomes published through the Aalto University Research Catalogie portal during the year 2025.

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  RAD2024 (2025) author(s): Priska Falin, Alejandra Vera, Vilja Achté, Müge YILDIZ, Alexandra Zambrano, Amy Gelera, Seo Young Lee published in: Aalto University
  Research Through Art & Design course introduces a variety of approaches, methodologies, issues and concerns in research through practice. In this course, research through practice refers to a broad continuum of artistic research approaches, arts-based, practice-led and -based research approaches, including also constructive design research approaches that are relevant across practices in Aalto University ARTS School of Arts, Design and Architecture. This exposition was created within an Artistic Practice Workshop offered as an additional part of the main course. During this part of the course, the students are familiarised with the Research Catalogue. During the workshop, participants work on their page within a group exposition, drawing connections between the creative and the given or discussed literature from the course and their creative practice.
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  Traces from the Anthropocene: Working with soil at the Research Pavilion #3 (2025) author(s): Riikka Latva-Somppi published in: Aalto University
  Traces from the Anthropocene: Working with Soil Research Pavilion #3, Venice, Italy 2019 The video documents the artistic research project Traces from the Anthropocene: Working with Soil, that explores the relationship between humans and soil through a study of soil contamination in the Venice Lagoon area. In this research, ceramic artists collaborate with soil contamination experts focusing on the current state of the local soils and sediments, linking them with the anthropogenic impact in the area. The group of artists, researchers and MA students studied the soils and sediments of the Venice Lagoon using ceramic art and methods of soil contamination research. The video follows the artists on their sediment sampling fieldwork and documents the research environment, also recording the artists’ work at the Research Pavilion where they coiled large clay pots from local brick clay, and painted them with the contaminated soil. Working with Soil group: Maarit Mäkelä (PI), Riikka Latva-Somppi, Özgu Gündeşlioğlu and Catharina Kajander and students Tzuyu Chen, Pauliina Purhonen and Hanna Kutvonen. The project was led by Empirica research group of Aalto University’s Design Department and done in collaboration with the Finnish Environment Institute SYKE. The local brick factory Terreal SanMarco provided local brick clay for the artworks.
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• Research through Art and Design - 2022 (2025) author(s): Laureen Mahler, ANQI WANG, Erol Mintas, Blanca Serrano San Segundo, Claudia Auer, Sara Hulkkonen, Bilge Merve Aktaş published in: Aalto University
  Discussion space for RtA&D course at Aalto University
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• Writing and instructing research video (2025) author(s): Sara Hulkkonen published in: Aalto University
  This video sequence is part of a practice-led research that explorest the social and material actors in glassblowing practices. In this video the designer of the glass vessel under making is learning how to write on the clear glass blank with a blue glass stringer. During this process the designer becomes an apprentice glassblower. She also works as a research assitant in this project. The practitioner-researcher works as the designers gaffer for the vessel, as well as a master who is instructing the apprentice in learning a new skill. The four camera angles in the multiscreen video inform about different perspectives taken on the social and material actors in the study.
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  Subtle Ground: Feeling our ways towards a supportive method in ceramic practice (2022) author(s): Priska Falin, Helen Felcey connected to: Aalto University published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  This exposition focuses on the exploration and development of Subtle Ground, a method that directs attention during and through making with clay, in the context of creative practices in ceramics. The method takes a non-conventional approach to making; it focuses on being with the material instead of pursuing a conclusion in the creative process. The method directs the practitioner to follow aesthetic qualities in making understood from a pragmatist view on having an experience. In this exposition, the focus is on the author's collaborative work that has shaped the Subtle Ground method, particularly the workshop ‘Sensorial Ground’. In Subtle Ground, the idea of dwelling is emphasized offering the specific approach to making. The method consists of a series of exercises that direct attention towards subtle sense perception within the body. Through working with the Subtle Ground method, we suggest that it is possible to begin to understand the embodied dimension and how it influences creative practice. The Subtle Ground method has been built on the clay’s supportive qualities, bringing together sense perception and physicality, thus understanding the practice’s aesthetic qualities and connections to meditation.
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  In Between (2016) author(s): Priska Falin connected to: Aalto University published in: Research Catalogue
  The goal of this artistic exploration was not to find the one ‘true’ identity but to understand and cope with the transformation between different roles that challenge the perception of oneself. Who / what exists in between the roles? Instead of focusing on human subjects, I have used a city as an example for the exploration. The city of Rovaniemi works as the basis of the exploration where different ‘roles’ can be understood. In order to understand the identities of the city, I first mapped the different roles with informal questionnaires and focused on places that were left in between. The exploration aims to understand what emerges through a compilation of views that focus on something ‘in between’. The aim was to collect video clips that show the gaps and the places in between the well-known and recognizable locations. The interest of this exploration was to understand what can be revealed through focusing on the unnoticed or disregarded.
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