"Fysikaalinen rengas" ("A Physical Ring") is a found-footage film. It’s based on raw material from an anonymous Finnish physical test that took place in the 1940’s. The original purpose of the test remains unknown today. By careful editing techniques, inanimate research footage is assembled to a piece of kinetic fantasy. An integral part of the piece is the specially commissioned, haunting soundtrack by Ø (Mika Vainio of Pan Sonic).

When Muybridge or Marey produced their first scientific films, they not only invented the technique of cinema but also created the purest aesthetics of it. This is the miracle of scientific film, its unfailing paradox. Only at the extreme end of profit-seeking utilitarian research, when aesthetic purposes as such are most sternly rejected, will cinematic beauty follow with supernatural grace.
(André Bazin, "The Beauty of Chance", "Ecran Francais", 21. 10. 1947)

An artist, filmmaker and documentarist, Mika Taanila integrates and goes beyond the different registers of contemporary art. His films, video clips and installations are built according to the principles of connection, interaction and collaboration. Between sound and image, the newest electronic culture and the technological aspirations of the 1960s, between documentary film and advanced experiment, between fiction and reality, Taanila is working out a novel and protean approach to our representations of modernity and progress through his futuristic techno-utopias (the films "Futuro" and "RoboCup 99"). These projects nearly always have something to do with projection (in both senses of the term), with machines and their autonomy or dreamed-of humanity (the artificial intelligence of the robot) and with time – including, therefore, its repetition.
(Stéphanie Moisdon Trembley)

"Fysikaalinen rengas" exists in two different formats: as a traditional 35 mm film print and as a site-specific installation piece.

Financial support: Veli Granö / AVEK, The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture in Finland

Mika Taanila (SF), born 1965, is an artist working fluently in the fields of documentary filmmaking, music videos and visual arts. His documentary films deal with the significant and alarming issues of human engineering and urban artificial surroundings. Taanila specializes in the futuristic ideas and Utopias of contemporary science.