”Joutomaa” (translation: urban wildscape or wasteland) is a VJ-performance that explores the theme of urban nature. The performance moves inside a 3D landscape where nature and built environment intersect.
The piece explores the places, the urban nature that is not quite park or forest nor is it city. They can be old industrial sites overgrown by nature, a port by a sea or old railroad tracks. In english these places have many names: wasteland, urban wildscape, industrial nature. What goes on in these places in between? They can be places for play, for exploring, for building a sauna or organizing an event. Places for encounter, relax and adventure. They are also the home for many plants and animals when the city gets more crowded, and can be important for biodiversity. Because land is valuable in cities these spaces tend to be temporary, and eventually the overgrown nature disappears under new buildings. But urban nature always appears where least expected.
The piece creates an imaginary 3D "joutomaa" using Unreal Engine 5, and mixes pre-rendered and real-time rendered material. The performance moves inside the landscape, encountering the overgrown paths and possible dead ends, but also finding something unexpected. The landscape morphs over time as the journey starts from the city and then merges with nature.
The performance has been created with the support of Grafia ry.
Video from the performance. On the right: Hypertraxs, who performed with me and created a live electronic music performance.
Video of the performance.
The VJ-performance featured a character that explored the space in real time. The character was inspired by thistles.
For this project I really wanted to create an environment, where I could move in real-time during the VJ-performance, like in a videogame. For this I decided to use Unreal Engine 5. I created an environment inspired by urban nature and wastelands in Unreal Engine 5, and a character that could explore the space and guide the viewer. In the end, during the performance I decided to mix this real-time rendering approach with pre-rendered clips, to ensure that everything technical worked correctly.
Recoding from Resolume to show how the VJ-performance looked like on the screen.
Another recoding from Resolume to show how the VJ-performance looked like on the screen.
With this project I had the chance to learn Unreal Engine 5. It was a long but a rewarding process, that not only taught me technical aspects of the program, but also how to construct an environment that is interesting and versatile. Here is an early version of the environment.
Still from the 3D environment. The VJ-performance starts from the city, and moves from there through the construction site towards the urban wildscape or "wasteland". Boundaries between the city and nature are not clearly defined, as the idea was to show how these spaces merge together in cities. In Helsinki, an urban wildscape or wasteland could be defined as a space that previously had human activity such as ports or some industrial areas, and have since become overgrown with nature. In city planning these areas are usually not considered as parks in the traditional sense, and so these areas disappear later because they are constructed.
Stills from the 3D environment. Because urban wildscapes lack clear definitions they often become places where people develop different kind of activities. They can become places to play and exploration. In the case of Helsinki there is for example a community sauna and secret open air parties are hosted in different parts in the city.
An imaginary open air party where the attendees are plants.
Stills from the 3D environment.