Aalto University

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/
Recent Activities
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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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Connection to materiality: Engaging with Ceramic practice
(2014)
author(s): Priska Falin
connected to: Aalto University
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
This exposition introduces an exploration of ceramic material from the perspective of an artist-researcher. The ceramic material is explored through aesthetics and making. In this exposition the material connection is understood as a broad term introducing the idea of different levels of involvement with the material. The material connections are reflected from two different perspectives, giving a more holistic idea of what influences the act of making and perception. In this exposition, I explore the material connections mainly from the subjective perspective of a ceramic practitioner and partly from the perspective of the viewers who have no prior experience of the processes of making. Together with the written content, I show different works e.g. videos and a sound file that reveal parts of the processes in ceramic practice. The video and sound works are discussed here as process aesthetics, exposing the experiences, that have aesthetic quality, in the context of making. Through these examples I discuss different levels of engagement with the material and its processes. The aim is to open the material connections in a different light describing the idea of diverse levels of engagement in the ceramic practice.
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Female genealogy
(2013)
author(s): Maarit Mäkelä
connected to: Aalto University
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
The exposition uncovers my journey as an artist opening up to an ambiguous autobiographical space produced by narrative means. The space can be conceived both as mental and spatial. The mental space is an autobiographical state where identity is constructed through the stories we tell ourselves about our lives; the spatial space is a concrete exhibition, which is produced out of the mental one. During the journey I ask: How did the exhibition Mirrorplay come about, and especially, how did the creation process, resulting in the exhibition, progress? What were the means I used for creating this space, and what did it mean to me to work in this autobiographically flavoured space?
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Teemu Lehmusruusu: Pulse, at the Polyphonic Landscapes exhibition, 2023
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Teemu Lehmusruusu
This exposition is in review and its share status is: visible to all.
Video and audio documentation of the sonic sculpture Pulse by Teemu Lehmusruusu. Indoor installation view at the Polyphonic Landscapes exhibition held in Het Glazen Huis, Zone2Source, Amsterdam, 2023.
Pulse was commissioned by Zone2Source and Professorship Theory in the Arts at the ArtEZ University of the Arts within the Polyphonic Landscapes project 2022–2024.
The production is part of Teemu Lehmusruusu’s doctoral research at Aalto University, Finland.
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Lectio presentation for doctoral thesis: Relating to Clay: Tuning in to the Workings of the Aesthetic Dimension in Ceramic Practice
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Priska Falin
connected to: Aalto University
This exposition is in review and its share status is: visible to all.
This exposition introduces the Lectio presented by Priska Falin at Aalto University on 21.10.2022 at the beginning of her public defence, where she defended her doctoral thesis; Relating to Clay: Tuning in to the Workings of the Aesthetic Dimension in Ceramic Practice.
Lectio is based on the doctoral dissertation and can be found here: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/handle/123456789/117020